Reply to post: Wired vs wireless

Wired vs wireless

I set my home system up my way: put the comms stuff on a nice little demarc, all comms go there. The ISP wanted me to use wireless for just about everything. Not happening. I ran Cat 6 twisted pair from the demarc to a central switch and from the switch to the various rooms. The set top boxes for the tvs had both coax and RJ-45 connections; I ran Cat 6 to them. No, thanks, I'll live without the nice wireless set top boxes which the ISP wanted to charge a 'nominal fee' for. All desktop computers and all printers connected with Cat 6. I'd have run Cat 6 to the landline phones, too, except that they were already wired. Some of the 'smart' devices, tvs, BR players, that kind of thing, had RJ-45 ports; they got Cat 6 connections. And I had a few spare Cat 6 connections for laptops. And a dedicated wireless access point located centrally, next to the main switch, connected by Cat 6. I turned off the wireless on the ISP's device (which was a pain, for some reason they really wanted me to use their system. No thanks.) and set up two separate networks, a 2.4 GHz and a 5 GHz system. I put those 'smart' devices which didn't have RJ-45 and older laptops onto the 2.4 GHz net, and reserved the 5GHz net for newer laptops, cellphones, tablets, etc. I have also turned off DNS and DHCP on the ISP's device, and have a dedicated DHCP/DNS/authentication server doing things my way, next to the wireless access point and the main switch. And I put my NAS there, too. Yes, it took a lot of Cat 6, and couple of gigabit switches, but I have a fast network. And a laptop connected to Cat 6 is noticeably faster than when connected to the wireless access port, even if the WAP allegedly runs at speeds of up to 1500 Mb/s, precisely because wireless is a shared resource while Cat 6 from a switch is a dedicated resource.

I may get a second WAP and use that for 2.4 GHz exclusively while using the first for 5 GHz exclusively to try to improve the wireless speeds, but there's not much that can be done, mostly due to congestion. A check shows that no less than six wireless systems, mostly from (ugh) Comcast, are broadcasting close enough to me to have three or four bars, and several more have one or two bars.