this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2024
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[–] LittleBorat3@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Until the clip breaks off...

[–] Donkter@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago

You could have 30 clips break and it would still be cheaper.

[–] DaddleDew@lemmy.world 79 points 1 week ago (6 children)

Does this ridiculous number of antennas even do anything or is it just marketing wank?

[–] themoonisacheese@sh.itjust.works 121 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Technically, it does provide better connection speeds by enabling the router to avoid channel hopping, so it can talk to multiple devices (or the same devices if it has multiple antennae) at the same time. This is part of the recent wifi6 and wifi7 standards so more and more devices will start to gain speeds using this technique

Realistically computers have at best 2 antennae and this is largely marketing wank.

[–] Soup@lemmy.world 42 points 1 week ago

Though if you have multiple devices all trying to connect to wifi, like even a phone for example, then a computer having two antenna that it can actually use 100% of the time still sounds valuable to me.

[–] MrPoopyButthole@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Lookup "phased array" and "beam forming"

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[–] apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world 76 points 1 week ago

Lord Sauron would like a word.

[–] empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com 39 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (14 children)

It does. Wifi uses MIMO (Multi-in, multi-out) to run multiple concurrent data streams over the same channel width, which overcomes individual channel bandwidth limitations (there's only so much radio frequency space to go around). Each stream having its own antenna, and having larger antennas, gives stronger signal/noise ratios, less retransmitted packets, and overall better connections.

A lot of those high end "gaming" routers are often oversold though.... MIMO improves throughput if you have an Internet link it can saturate; realistically even a midrange 2x2 802.11AC router will provide more wifi bandwidth than your internet does. And for gaming, they do nothing to improve latency no matter how many streams you run, as wifi's inherent delay (5-15ms) is pretty much a fixed quantity due to its radio broadcast time-sharing nature. The meme is correct. A $6 ethernet cable beats any and all wifi routers and client adapters, and always will.

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[–] MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 11 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I'm a network professional with a specialty in wireless.

Yeah, beam forming and mimo are the main reasons for antenna diversity. There's also more radio chains in those units typically, and more radio chains can provide better speeds if you have client devices that can take advantage of the extra radio chains (both sides need to have the same, increased number of radio chains to see an increase).

The antennas are fairly small/thin pieces of wire that are not very long, so the antennas don't need to look like that, but the quantity is useful.

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[–] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 67 points 1 week ago (2 children)

tell that to the $800 of copper running through my walls.

[–] stupidcasey@lemmy.world 54 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Hay $800 worth of copper, I found a 1000ft roll of shielded pure copper for $2.11 because someone misplaced the decimal point I know because it was listed for $2.1199 every thing was automated through amazon so they just shipped free shipping to, thank for listening $800 worth of copper, your the best.

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[–] Magister@lemmy.world 37 points 1 week ago (6 children)

My PC, laptop, work laptop, are all wired using gigabit. But my laptop on wifi reach 1200Mbps so it's faster than cable!

[–] nickhammes@lemmy.world 25 points 1 week ago

Faster than gigabit, but not 2.5 gigabit. Your cables likely support the speed, just your ports and switching hardware are capped at gigabit.

It's not extremely expensive, but unless you move around a lot of big files, you're probably getting very diminished returns, even spending less than twice as much for 2.5x speeds.

[–] latesleeper@lemmy.world 20 points 1 week ago

Impressive, I lose half my speed with the router around the corner.

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[–] wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 33 points 1 week ago (2 children)

*Excluding running ethernet cables to every room through the attic, down the walls to wall jacks. Also the cost of the jacks, and the various switches needed for several rooms. And the contractor to do it all.

But hey for like $600 I have cat6a in basically every room so

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 22 points 1 week ago (5 children)

And the contractor to do it all.

Why wouldn’t you do it yourself?

[–] maniclucky@lemmy.world 18 points 1 week ago

Like, in an old house its a massive pain in the ass to run that, but still firmly in DIY territory.

[–] wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago

Disabled, so physically cannot do it, or I would.

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[–] Zess@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

And then you still need a wireless router to get Internet on your phone unless you use data at home like a crazy person.

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[–] SleafordMod@feddit.uk 29 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Ethernet is obviously better but running ethernet around your home can be a pain in the arse

[–] MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 16 points 1 week ago (11 children)

A pain in the arse you only need to do once, and you can hire someone to do it for you for basically the same cost as a couple of the high end wireless routers, so in like 5 years, you break even.

Also, how much have you spent on your computer (s), phone(s), tablet(s), and all your other internet connected devices, and you won't spend like $500 on something that can run all that stuff simultaneously? Pouring literally thousands of dollars on connected devices, but most won't pay more than they would for a toaster, to get them on the internet, then pay out the wahzoo for gigabit internet that your crummy d-link router can't handle, and you wonder why all your fancy gadgets run like shit.... It's a lot like buying a Ferrari to drive on dirt/gravel roads.

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[–] workerONE@lemmy.world 24 points 1 week ago (4 children)

But what if you're gaming downstairs and the router is upstairs and then you have to go upstairs for pizza rolls so you take your gaming laptop upstairs and you're eating right next to the router and so you're just plugged in and then what if you forgot to turn off the oven and your girlfriend is yelling at you "You're going to start a fire! Why can't you remember to turn off the oven? What's wrong with you?" and then you go back downstairs to finish gaming?

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[–] Entropywins@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Let's see that ethernet cable do orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing...

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[–] JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 15 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Dude I just bought 4 refurbished Linksys MX4200 (tri-band) access points for $80 (total), put on OpenWRT, and built a mesh system. I'm incredibly happy with the result, especially for the price. And, I've got wireless bridges all through the house so I can keep some things off the forwarding channels and only in the back haul.

It's not wired, but it's close enough and doesn't require me drilling through all my walls running cable or carving out a space in the house for all of it to coalesce.

Granted, I'm in an area with not a lot of wireless interference...I work in enterprise networking and I've had a lot of issues with remote workers on wireless networks that weren't capable of handling the volume of data that the users were uploading. Sometimes just because there's too much interference...but a lot of the time it's because of misconfiguration (either out of ignorance or because the good features, like multicast-to-unicast, are missing), or printer drivers that spam the wireless with multicast whenever the printer is offline (which I've seen a surprising amount of times).

If you're on wireless...multicast is bad, mmmkay? Only "one" device can talk at a time on wireless (barring MIMO shenanigans), and when it's multicast traffic...it has to get sent at the lowest compatible rates. A lot of routers set this to 6Mbps or even 1Mbps by default. So your nice fancy "1200Mbps" wireless has to slow down a crawl every time your Roku wants to tell Alexa that it's there. Which is surprisingly often. Scale up for all the internet-of-crap stuff people have and it's a miracle their wireless works at all.

Oh and I've found people with extenders they don't know about. Ring Chime? Apparently it functions as an 802.11n (only) extender. Huge bottleneck right there. And then it can only be as good as the signal it gets from the next access point.

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[–] Im_old@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago (11 children)

I'm seriously thinking of getting a usbC-ethernet dongle for my mobile, for when I'm at my desk.

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[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago (14 children)

Wireless tech has improved greatly over the last 20 years. Speed, latency, bandwidth, stability…all generally excellent. 15 years ago I wouldn’t have wanted to use a wireless mouse or LAN connection. Now? NBD. They just work. Still have issues with poor signal in some areas, but mesh range boosters take care of that pretty easily.

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[–] nonentity@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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

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

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[–] IsThisAnAI@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Unless you need 6ft of cable or you just run wires on the floor it's more like $200 of plenium rated cable, and keystone jacks and the labor involved with the run.

My house with a half finished basement (easy access) took probably 16-20 hours running to 5 rooms.

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[–] Sabata11792@ani.social 9 points 1 week ago

But that cable can't summon Kel'Tuzad unlike the router.

[–] nimble@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 1 week ago

6.99 is just one cost though. If you're needing ethernet actually done in walls then you're going to be paying a lot more than an access point.

[–] cmhe@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago (9 children)

I spend a lot more money on good Ethernet switches. But at least that works and is easier to manage than Wifi.

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