Cables or WiFi..?

[John K]

Loads of folk have said why bother with cables, wifi is all you need. Well seeing how I was virtually rebuilding the house I ran CAT6 to all the rooms. And I sort of used to do it for a living 20 years ago. 

 

This weekend was time to start wiring it up, TV room first as the temporary WiFi had been struggling with large media files.

 

Well, think it was worth it as I just dragged a 2gb film from my NAS to the media PC in an estimated 15 secs.

 

It peaked at 89.3mbps transfer. And it is currently hopping through a few hubs that will be removed ASAP to only use the new Netgear 116. Hoping after some optimisation it might hit three figures. 

 

And not suprisingly my media PC now has no trouble streaming from the NAS. Got to love gigabit switches.

 

Mind you cabling in the patch panel was a biblical agg. Turns out my punch tool isnt really right for it and I had to push all the cores home with a super fine screwdriver. 

 

After it took me an hour to figure out that was the problem...

 

So was I just being OCD, or do any of you hanker for cables..?

 

And will any of the IT geeks spot the cabling mistake. Picture was taken before I clocked it and fixed it.

[Northwarks]

I put cat5 cabling in my house when I moved in before wifi was a proper thing, each room has a rj45 socket. Roll forward 20 years and I use both wifi and cable, have a meshed wifi network for all of those gadgets and Raspberry Pis and use cable for things like Sky tv, NAS and iMac etc.

i think there's a place for both, as a security bod I prefer cable over wifi in every situation. 

[Kit Car Electronics]

1 hour ago, John K said:

And will any of the IT geeks spot the cabling mistake. Picture was taken before I clocked it and fixed it.

Oops A

[John K]

6 minutes ago, Kit Car Electronics said:

Oops A

Jeez, that didn't take long...

Can I attempt to defend myself by saying the colour code legends were biblically easy to confuse. And yes, if I did it for a real job, I'd know the colours by heart.

I genuinely did spot it before plugging the first devices in...

I hate the CAT6 I used, the bl**** cores have to be untwisted then pulled apart unlike the old CAT5 which could just be untwisted. And when you have sausages for fingers its slow going...

[Kit Car Electronics]

1 minute ago, John K said:

Jeez, that didn't take long...

Only because I recently did the exact same thing 

[John K]

1 minute ago, Kit Car Electronics said:

Only because I recently did the exact same thing 

Dude, you so didn't have to admit that so quick..!

Should have it 24 hrs and left me seriously impressed with your level of observation and knowledge. 

The stupid thing is, I had B on the top rail and A on the bottom.

Actually, all the hubs / switches are auto sensing, would they have clocked it and compensated?

[John K]

3 minutes ago, John K said:

Actually, all the hubs / switches are auto sensing, would they have clocked it and compensated?

Ignore me, I would have punched down the wall end correctly so I would have had different connections on the end of the same cable...

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

44 minutes ago, John K said:

Ignore me, I would have punched down the wall end correctly so I would have had different connections on the end of the same cable...

Aye, and your patch leads would have been one or the other too. All makes for mucho confusion.

Wires every time, radio for last local legs. There's so much wireless traffic around these days that WiFi ranges aren't what they used to be, so you have this sort of arms race of ever more powerful/aggressive WAPs, that then just start the cycle all over again as more people get access to the technology.

Depending on house size or data bandwidth required, we're either copper or fiber from the main distribution point to the rooms. It just works so mush better and more reliably, especially with media rendering devices running off central server boxes.

[Rhett Turner - Black Country AO]

For anything that's in a fixed position (TV, Desktop computer, PS3/4 etc) I try to use a wire of some sort. When we extended I added cat5E to the rooms I could and I've managed to drop cables to some of the other rooms and the loft, for other rooms I've used some of those boxes that use the ring main. Had I been or if I am in the position in the future I think I would drop a network cable into all of the rooms.

[John K]

Agreed its horses for courses...

But as of this morning the only things on WiFi are tablets and smartphones (which are too thin for an rj45 anyway ), its a good feeling from a secutity PoV to be able to go round disabling WiFi on devices.

Although living on the edge of a village full of OAPs I don't think I was in a hack risk category - apart from outraged DERV owners...

And it seems I'm stuck at 90mbps from the NAS, its now connected to the media PC via one 116 Netgear switch and I'm still only getting 90mbps. Guessing its the read speed on the NAS thats the bottleneck.

I always planned on having a small backup NAS (6tb) in the shed in a metal box and syncing from the house to the shed (I have a coil of CAT6 wait for the new drive to run it out there) and then get something seriously beefy for the house. 

So ultimately the NAS in the house will move to the shed.

Its not only Westies that suffer from Upgraditis you know...

[corsechris]

If you want to be proper picky, you haven't maintained the twist on the pairs properly for CAT6 spec.....

I tend to use copper where I can. I've avoided going overboard though, no patch frame at home, thank you very much. Saw enough of that at work to last me several lifetimes.

[Lyonspride]

I prefer ethernet, I had no end of trouble with WiFi, caused by several neighbours turning their routers off when not in use, every day i came home from work I had to change WiFi channels to avoid interference........ In the end I ripped up the carpets and ran cat5 through the house to a network switch. Besides, I pay a fortune for internet, why limit it to WiFi speeds????

[Stuart]

I'm lucky if I get 5mbps transfer to/from my NAS units, but I'm still using Netgear Ultra II because nothing after that supports Logitech Media Server - so my wonderful Squeezebox Touch units would be scrap if I changed NAS.  Unless anyone knows differently of course........

No cables and hard floors so can't really run any, but audio streams well wirelessly and and video via powerline adapters.  A reboot of something required once every couple of days though

[Blatman]

Mb/s or MB/s? Remember interface speed is measured in bits, file sizes are measured in Bytes. Gigabit switches transfer 125MB/s so a 1GB file takes (or should take) 8 seconds over a 1Gb/s link. Add in network overhead, cable resistance, sockets/plug insertions etc and a little time gets added.

so you have this sort of arms race of ever more powerful/aggressive WAPs,

Isn't WAP transmit power is governed by legislation? Max transmit power for the UK in both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz is 100Mw IIRC. Doesn't matter if it's Cisco, Ruckus, Meraki, BT, Sky or Draytek, TPLink or whatever. The difference is the quality of the device and what else it is doing at the time along with features like rogue AP suppression. Don't get me started on the ridiculous BT adverts showing wifi connectivity under a helicopter or basement to attic in a mansion 'cos it just don't work. 

As for wifi Vs cables... cables all day. Wifi is for things that CANNOT be cabled or that are in motion often. By all means have phones and tablets on wifi (duh...) but TV's, games consoles, DVD players, Sky receivers/SkyQ or Virgin receivers, AVR's, NVR's (CCTV recorders), network printers/MFU's, I would (and do) get a cable in to them.

[Grizzlee]

7 hours ago, Blatman said:

As for wifi Vs cables... cables all day. Wifi is for things that CANNOT be cabled or that are in motion often. By all means have phones and tablets on wifi (duh...) but TV's, games consoles, DVD players, Sky receivers/SkyQ or Virgin receivers, AVR's, NVR's (CCTV recorders), network printers/MFU's, I would (and do) get a cable in to them.

Wot he said