• shneancy@lemmy.world
    6·
    1 day ago

    i love cables, cables are the best thing, give me snakey boy, give me wired headphones, give me wired keyboard and mice

  • Doom@lemmy.world
    55·
    2 days ago

    Wifi? You may as well believe in magic. Buy a box of cable and one of these!

    No testers - raw dog it. Party like a Quake party in 1999.

    • rmuk@feddit.ukEnglish
      58·
      2 days ago

      And now I will sing a traditional song of my people.

      🟧⬜,🟧,🟩⬜,🟦,🟦⬜,🟩,🟫⬜,🟫.

        • zackhow@programming.dev
          10·
          2 days ago

          Crossover, but it isn’t needed anymore since most modern devices can detect what they are connected to and adjust.

          • Feidry@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            5·
            2 days ago

            Well there was A and B and it’s been long enough since I made any cable, I don’t remember which one everyone uses and which one only weirdos use.

            • netweirdo@lemmy.zipEnglish
              4·
              2 days ago

              T568B is the one everyone uses while T568A is the odd one.

              I don’t get what’s particularly bad about T568A though? I was told it’s just plain worse than T568B for anything faster than gigabit and I swear I never saw any store bought cables using it.

              • Zanathos@lemmy.world
                7·
                2 days ago

                The configuration has absolutely no bearing on performance. It is purely for standardization. Straight through cables work with either because it’s literally just connecting the copper on either end. The difference between A and B is just flipping 2 pairs around although I forget which. Only 4 or 5 cables of 8 are even used to this day which is crazy.

                • adjectivenoun@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  2·
                  2 days ago

                  There are 4 pairs of 2 wires, for 8 overall. They are all used, but the pairs are redundant. From what I understand, when you send a positive pulse on, say, the solid blue wire, you also send a negative pulse on the stripy blue and white wire. The twisted pairs should counteract any interference, but if it doesn’t, the arrival of the bumps with opposite polarity should foolproof things a little.

                  Oh yeah it’s called differential signalling.

        • adjectivenoun@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          2 days ago

          OK so I just learned, like, last week that there are two standards. Why are there two standards? WTF?

          (The context is I was turning an Ethernet cable into an EtherCAT cable, which is a stupid industrial standard where you only wire up pins 1, 2, 3, and 6, and then charge the end user 200 times more for the cable.)

          • RamRabbit@lemmy.world
            3·
            1 day ago

            There are two standards as it allows one to make a crossover cable. (Do B on one side and A on the other)

            I also find crossover cables completely useless and refuse to own one less it gets mixed into the pile. Everyone has a router/switch, which negates the need completely.

            • black0ut@pawb.social
              4·
              1 day ago

              Back at the beginning of times ethernet, you needed the crossover cables to connect routers to routers, switches to switches or end devices to end devices. They wouldn’t work with the straight cables.

              The standard still needs those cables to be crossover, but nowadays the port itself can detect what type of cable you connected, what type of cable it needs, and rewire itself to accept whatever you throw at it.

              The same thing happens when you directly connect 2 PCs together without a switch in the middle. But the ports also adapt themselves and work it out.

              You could also use a crossover cable, and your devices would figure it out too.

    • SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      7·
      2 days ago

      Had one. Somebody stole it at a lan, many years ago. Haven’t bought another one, since, because I’m dumb.

    • mrgoosmoos@lemmy.caEnglish
      3·
      2 days ago

      I bought a cheap tool years ago and a few hundred feet of cat6 and some connectors and wall plates

      ran my main AP off my own crimped cords for years without issue. speed tests always showed full speed

  • heartSagan5@lemmy.zip
    17·
    2 days ago

    The router is useless-ish without the $3 snakey boi.

    “Ish?” Because you could set it up as a Wireless repeater?

    • Ephera@lemmy.ml
      5·
      1 day ago

      You can get routers which use a SIM card for getting internet access. They’re pretty cool. You just plug them into a wall outlet and bam, you’ve got your WiFi with internet access.

      Plus you can even get them with integrated powerbank, so you really don’t need to plug anything anymore.

    • helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.world
      4·
      2 days ago

      Yes, some wireless routers can be used as repeaters.

      Routers like that are really multi-purposes devices that handle routing, switching, and wireless. If you’re only using a local network, you can still have the wifi network and all your devices communicate through that. You just won’t have internet access.

      With out the router/switch, the cable’s usefullness is reduced - at least in the networking application we’re talking about (the cable itself is incredibly usesful for many other things besides ethernet). You can connect (most) devices directly together for communication, they’ll just self assign an IP address.

      In less words, you can have a network with just a wireless router and no cable, but you can’t have a network with only a cable and no router (well, you can’t with ‘normal people’ devices)(also you don’t need a router for a local network, only a switch - but the home versions are often combo devices and just called a router).

    • adarza@lemmy.caEnglish
      81·
      2 days ago

      for a short prefab patch cable to go from modem to router, it’s actually a bit higher than what we pay.

    • idk (she/her)@szmer.infoEnglish
      31·
      1 day ago

      i got 10m of cat 6 for 28pln(around $8) at my local store, and to overpower the router on the picture you probably only need cat 5e

    • kaotic@lemmy.world
      21·
      2 days ago

      There’s a few 10 packs of 6 foot cables on Amazon for around $18, that’s less than $2 each.

      • TrollTrollrolllol@lemmy.world
        21·
        2 days ago

        The leftovers from a 100’ roll i bought 15 years ago, some dusty ends and a crimper. $3 is probably too much. It’s probably been 15 years since I’ve done it too but I still remember the order: Orange-white, orange, green-white, blue, blue-white, green, brown-white, brown

  • nymnympseudonym@piefed.socialEnglish
    793·
    2 days ago

    WiFi has its problems but they don’t include a tiny plastic tab costing $0.002 that inevitably breaks off, making the physical connection susceptible to fail at the tiniest touch of a butterfly’s wing

  • nonentity@sh.itjust.works
    3·
    1 day ago

    Wireless data links should be the exclusive domain of temporary, nomadic and/or sacrificial links.

    If the channel is permanent, static, or critical; as much of the path as practicable should be provisioned with constrained energy transmission.

    • BartyDeCanter@piefed.socialEnglish
      4·
      2 days ago

      Cat 6 is what, $0.15 a foot? Plus maybe another $0.50 for the connectors and boots? That’s a 16 foot snake for $3.00.

      • WolfLink@sh.itjust.works
        2·
        2 days ago

        I think last time I bought one it was a 50 foot one for something like $15-$20.

        People are mentioning buying from a spool but I am thinking more going to my local computer store,so there’s a some markup.

        • BartyDeCanter@piefed.socialEnglish
          1·
          2 days ago

          I bought a 1000 foot spool a few years back when wiring my house and have used it for helping out friends and family ever since. I’m not sure how much I have left, but I’ll probably pick up another whenever I do.

  • PieMePlenty@lemmy.world
    24·
    2 days ago

    I’ve grown to hate these routers. They only seem useful if you live in an apartment and place them in the middle and your walls are made of paper. Bought a few through the years thinking more money = better wifi, but wall construction and placement have much more impact. Living in a brick house, they’re pretty shit. I’ve switched to non gamified wifi AP’s connected to ethernet and the wifi’s been great. Still prioritize wired wherever possible though.

    • IphtashuFitz@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      2 days ago

      Used to live in a 2 story house built in the 1900’s. It had plaster & lath walls. I ended up with 4 AP’s scattered about before we had decent WiFi coverage.

    • Ann Archy@lemmy.world
      9·
      2 days ago

      If something looks cool and flashy and has tons of “extra functions” I stay the fuck away from it because I know the target demographic and I know it’s going to be shit in surprising ways.

    • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
      5·
      2 days ago

      One of the worst things about those routers other than having generally poor coverage despite looking like a Crown of Thorns was that if you actually took advantage of the more advanced features like VLANs, port forwarding, static routes, FTP and all that stuff and set it up… It inevitably seemed that there was a 99% chance that a firmware update would not allow you to restore a backup of the router config on the updated device!

      That happened a couple times, spent days getting everything set up only to find out the firmware update refused to load a config made with an older version. F that. Never used those routers again.

  • TrackinDaKraken@lemmy.worldEnglish
    27·
    2 days ago

    I climbed up in the roof crawl space (by no stretch is it an “attic”) and ran Cat6 to every room in my house 15 years ago. The living room and two smaller bedrooms got one, and the master bedroom got two.

    I’m very happy with the upgrade. I also run WiFi, of course, for phones and tablets, and my kid’s Steam Deck, etc.

    • Midnight Wolf@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      I did the same but cat6a like 5 years ago. Though mine was primarily to limit wireless packet snooping/attacks, especially for devices that never got wpa3 support, not speed. There’s like 50-60 devices on my network and all but two were wireless…

        • Midnight Wolf@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          2 days ago

          I just ran patch cables, got them from Monoprice. Every room got a different color, in case I ever need to repair/replace a rooms connecting cable. Router to switch, switch to wall, wall to attic to other wall, wall to device. With faceplates + keystone jacks between the two sides of the walls.

          • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
            2·
            2 days ago

            Patch cable is stranded so it is pretty flexible. I can’t imagine you’ll need to redo one unless some nefarious animal starts gnawing on something.

            • Midnight Wolf@lemmy.worldEnglish
              2·
              2 days ago

              Yeah, it’s one of those things where I was like, ‘it’s no extra cost, and can save me headaches in the future’ so why not. And I used the same colors for the entire run of each room, so if I ever forget what color a room is, I just look at the wall plate and cable.

              • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
                2·
                2 days ago

                Yeah I’ve never had colors but we used to run them in offices when we needed and we would just label the patch panels and wires and id just tape the ends and mark a sharpie like A1, A2,…A8, B1 etc when pulling, where A would be room and number would be the port. Then if you had multiple racks/closets we would do something like 224-C4 on the plate side, so you could say this is patched in in room 224, rack C, switch 4.

                I remember after a hurricane we were moving my company to another building and installing everything, we had crabs under the floor in the tubes they had to run cables so you could access them in the center of rooms or in areas that wouldnt have an easy drop on the first floor. First time I ever had gotten pinched by a crab trying to get them out lol.

                Pretty sure I started discussing one project and ended with another, so that may make no sense. Sorry for rambling.

    • teslekova@lemmy.mlEnglish
      21·
      2 days ago

      Knocked a hole in the wall for my network cables in the 90s. My mum thought I could have, like, asked first. So fussy.

  • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    19·
    2 days ago

    WiFi 6e and 7 are legitimate competitors to standard 1gig Ethernet. Setting up my new WAP I got 1.4gbps down on my phone. And I think my laptop touched 2 at one point.

    But Ethernet will always be more consistent.

    • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
      241·
      2 days ago

      WiFi 6e and 7 are legitimate competitors to standard 1gig Ethernet.

      In isolation, perhaps. Now cram 25 neighbors in high density housing in range with one another all using the same spectrum and see if that performance still is sustainable.

      • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        6·
        2 days ago

        6ghz wifi doesn’t go very far, you’ll almost never see 25 6ghz connections.

        At work I still get about 700 down with 25+ devices connected. There’s legitimately about 50 wifi connections despite being 30 floors up, but they’re all 2.4ghz which is worthless. Even 5ghz kinda sucks. But 6ghz? Rock solid.

        • JordanZ@lemmy.world
          1·
          1 day ago

          I don’t think you see many 6ghz because people just don’t broadcast it because they don’t have the hardware for it. I know several people that haven’t moved past 2.4ghz. I think I’m the only one in my immediate area that does 6ghz. The range is short but not that short. I should pick up my immediate neighbors.

          My AP’s have a scan mode. Picking up peoples cars and stuff. It’s insane how many 2.4 ghz there are. I’m in a residential neighborhood of single family homes not an apartment or townhome area.

          2.4ghz band

          5ghz band

          6ghz band

        • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
          4·
          2 days ago

          The increase in frequency reduces signal penetration. Things like walls become major sources of signal attenuation. In open office plans, with no obstructive walls, no problem. In a house or apartment where you’re separated by multiple walls (and the materials/thickness those walls are made of) that can add up to significant signal loss.

          I haven’t personally tried any 6GHz wifi technologies. Have you used it in any places where you’re separated by obstructions from the access point?

          • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            3·
            2 days ago

            Yes. I got 1.4gbps down through 2 walls. 6ghz penetrates a lot further than you’d think. And even weak 6ghz is better that 5ghz until the very outer reaches of signal. 6ghz wifi is truly magic.

            • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
              1·
              2 days ago

              And even weak 6ghz is better that 5ghz until the very outer reaches of signal.

              I’m not doubting you, but I’m confused how this can be. My understanding is generally ss the wavelength of the radio wave shrinks, signal through medium attenuation increases. What is it about 6GHz over 5GHz that provides that island of stability you’re describing?

              • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
                1·
                2 days ago

                I’m not saying that 6ghz has more range or anything. I’m saying that weak 6ghz is better than 5ghz at any signal until you get to the outer limits of 6ghz. 6ghz is just that much faster that even when the signal is weak it’s better. And it’s so much faster that even when it drops packets it can resend them so much quicker. And the latncy is lower, so there’s less time between requesting a retransmit, and getting that data.

                • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
                  1·
                  2 days ago

                  Ah gotcha, so you’re saying 6GHz is better than 5GHz because of higher information density irrespective of lower signal penetration. That makes sense. Thanks for taking the time to explain that point. I appreciate it.

      • socsa@piefed.socialEnglish
        3·
        2 days ago

        The newest specs have various flavors of MIMO and beam/null forming which helps cut down on co-channel interference. Having 8 antennas isn’t just a gimmick these days, which is pretty cool.

        • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
          1·
          2 days ago

          Thats good to hear. I’ll have to look into this more. Thanks for sharing some of the specifics. My interest is now piqued!

      • Malica@lemmy.zip
        3·
        2 days ago

        I’m lucky I live out in the boonies. Been on 7 for a couple years and it’s been great for us.

    • imetators@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      12·
      2 days ago

      Still a computer. And quite integral one. If it doesn’t work, your internet and all devices that connects to it won’t work. This is a device that has to work 24/7 and produce 0 issues at any time ad long ad it works. Higher end ones also have quite a bunch of useful settings and customization options. A normie might not need them, but a power user would appreciate these settings and how reliable this router is.

      But for 750 that is overkill.

      • Zanathos@lemmy.world
        4·
        2 days ago

        Compounded that 2.5gb is the norm now with wifi7. Consumer routers with 2.5 were inflated to being with last I checked and I have no idea what they cost now.

      • Kyden Fumofly@lemmy.world
        1·
        2 days ago

        Nah here in Europe its the same shit. A 100-120€ router a few years ago might cost 200€ today. Top tiers are also doubled in price.

    • Feidry@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      5·
      2 days ago

      They are computers, more or less. Very specific and controlled computers, with only exactly what they need to do their job. Mostly anyways.

      • adarza@lemmy.caEnglish
        1·
        2 days ago

        walmart here just closed-out a ton of laptops to ‘make room’ for the holiday garbage… really cheap… and they weren’t the 4gb junk either. most had 8gb, some had 16gb ram+1tb nvme. started at <$100 and nothing with integrated graphics was more than $300. the last one with discrete graphics was already in someone’s cart when i got there.