I live in a one-room cottage that I built myself. I never intended to work out of here, but I’ve adapted slowly but surely. One thing I haven’t done is run an Ethernet cable from my router to my desk. It’s only about 12 feet (it’s a one room cottage after all) and I have an Ethernet adapter, but the cable routing will be a hassle and my WiFi has been fast enough.
I’m curious though if the rest of you, working from home, have made the same compromise. Who’s run cable and who’s settling for wireless.
Oldest comments (73)
I use wireless on my laptop and wired on my gaming desktop because I don't wanna buy a wifi card for it 😅
Wired. 2 PCs in this room with electronic height desk. I have a PC sitting above the TV which is fanless and doubles as my scraping engine and youtube.
yes
wired for gaming, wireless otherwise
Wired if it's a desktop PC, wireless otherwise.
My desktop is wired to the network but everything else I have is wireless. With a good wireless network, it isn't noticeable for most applications.
All in my house is wireless, laptops everywhere! I miss the Ethernet at the office, it was way faster than the internet that I have at home...
Wireless all the time
Wiffy as I like to call it! I do need to get a long ethernet cord since I am thinking of streaming myself coding.
Wireless, except:
In other words, I've gone to a lot of trouble to ensure that wireless works very well in my home. I got kind of lucky too because I upgraded most of my hardware to 802.11ax and got the nice AP literally just before the shelter-in-place orders went out where I live. I'm also a bit of an odd case though because until I get my internet service upgraded from the grandfathered-in legacy plan I'm on right now, WiFi is never going to be my issue with network performance (I'm on a 20Mb/s down 2Mb/s up DOCSIS link). Most of the reason I've gone to so much trouble for good WiFi is local transfers (I need to test across a lot of platforms regularly, and I'm running 30+ VM's on my home server for that purpose that I need to transfer data between regularly).
Any good advice on how to find the proper channels? I have a router/adsl-modem with crappy wifi that we use upstairs (somehow the copper gets in here) and a (theoretically good quality) AP connected to the same router via ethernet downstairs. I don't think they interfere, but sometimes my connection drops when I'm downstairs.
Other tuning tips are welcome as well.
You can use an App called WiFi Analyzer (from windows store on your laptop) or one of many on Android Store (i suppose you'll find some on mac store too but i'm not into iOS since 4 years ago).
Then you'll see which channels are used by your neighbors so are more saturated, same on specific band too.
I recommend you to set 2,4GHz on channel 6 or 7 if are not saturated, and 5GHz on the highest possible.
If you use your AP as wifi extender (bridge mode) it must work all ok, if you use it as AP "as is" with different SSID, it can cause interference if both are on the same channel/band or near one of another.
If you need more wall-penetration signal, set the wifi on the lowest possible channel (note some devices may not work on channel 1 to 3, if 3,4GHz or below 36 if 5GHz, depending on your country law that applies to wireless bands) and set the AP as Bridge mode (wifi extender). It should work fine.
Another option (preferred, more powerful) is to use a PLC on the main router to send signal to another router upstairs, then you can set the main one on the lowest channel (that works with all your devices and its not saturated) and upstairs one on the highest possible (with same criteria).
Hope it helps you.
@joelbonetr - when I switch to WiFi Analyzer's suggested channels, the next time I check, it suggests I go back to the channel I was using before the switch. Have you ever had that experience?
hahaha yes, of course, because when you switch to a channel, you will have a strong signal source near you on this channel (A.K.A. your router). The best way to check it out is shutting down your router, then analyzing and finally setting the correct channel / band. =D
Wireless works well for me in most situations unless latency is an issue. Unless I'm downloading some huge file or online gaming, there isn't a major difference to justify going wired.
I'm wired using an ethernet powerline setup. I also use wireless on my porch when doing administrative tasks such as answering emails and researching. I would prefer wired from my router as the speeds directly from the router are about 4X what I get with my powerline setup but I rent a really old house and upgrades like that our out of reach at this time.
Wi-Fi. I'm not a fan… for my laptop it's fine, but my desktop could really use an ethernet cable.
Problem is I'd have to route it through my wall somehow and I'm sooo not into that.
There are way too many apartments and people they their wifi hardware around me, so I get a much more reliable setup over Ethernet.
Also, I’m pretty sure someone nearby has a leaky microwave oven, because the signal drops every day around lunchtime…
I use wired connection all the time, as it's much safer to use it. I almost don't use mobile phone.