this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2024
976 points (98.8% liked)
Technology
59143 readers
2600 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
So the ISP isn't to blame when the cheap ISP-provided hardware fails, and the solution isn't for the ISP to replace insufficient ISP-owned hardware but for you to buy your own instead?
The "wire everything" approach is a little excessive for most home networks too, outside of exceptional circumstances modern WiFi on modern hardware is more than enough for home users. It's only worth the time and money to wire everything if you've identified specific issues with signal loss or noise, don't just do it by default.
I don't know why the ISP would initiate an upgrade you never asked for especially when they provide both faster speeds and better hardware as an up sell. If you want to live in 2009 it is indeed your problem. I made a fair bit of commission upgrading people to much much better hardware and speed for not much more money. Hi would you like your internet to be 20x faster and be able to use it upstairs for 15% more. Yes of course you do.
You should wire
This is where your money comes from it should work as fast and as consistently as possible. Being 10% less reliable isn't acceptable.
If your console, cable box, and TV are all on the same shelf as the modem/router why are they competing for bandwidth with your laptop?
The speed the second or subsequent devices are able to provide to all of its clients put together is limited by the speed of its connection to the first device and if its too far for a 5Ghz connection this wont be that fast. EG your upstairs router might support in theory a 600Mbps connection but if its connection is 80Mbps and 4 devices are connected an individual client may get as little as 20Mbps even if its connection to the router/AP is 600Mbps
See that's your entire problem right there, you're in sales. Your incentive is to drain every penny you can out of customers through useless up-sells and selling hardware to get the service they're already paying for.
You literally just argued that if your 600mbps router only supplies an 80mbps connection then your 600mbps connection is 80mbps. And speed isn't divided equally by the number of devices connected either, that's just ridiculous. The impact of a connected but idle device is minimal. Also, why would you need 600mbps for only 4 devices? You could stream 4k video on all four devices 24/7 and you're still not using even a quarter of that bandwidth; you're looking at a recommendation of only 15mbps to 25mbps per user for a 4k-viable internet connection.
Here's a ping to my stock ISP-supplied router on another floor and three rooms away via wifi:
It's obviously impossible to improve a 0% packet loss, switching to a wired connection would be a considerable cost for minimal benefit (though admittedly that ping is unusually good, I'd normally expect slightly over 1ms average). I'm also getting over my advertised speeds according to fast.com and speedtest.net despite being on wifi and running through Mullvad so I suppose the problem might just be that I'm not using whichever scummy ISP you work for.
I have a home office and have work from home (or hybrid) for pretty much my entire career, even before WFH was normalised. I can assure you a wired connection is not a necessity to work from home.
Bandwidth is the amount of shit the modem can pull down and thereafter divided per client further subject to the limits of the service itself and any chokepoints in the network with data hitting the client no faster than the slowest leg.
As far as wifi 5/6Ghz is fairly fast but good for no more than 100–200 ft inside and oft less depending on material in between and conditions and subject to interference to boot. Most people in multi story dwellings have poor connectivity over 5Ghz upstairs without a second AP on that floor and rely on slower 2.4Ghz and furthermore may have a limit to the connectivity between AP which effects downstream clients.
That is what I meant by the 80MBps if the link between Router and AP is 80Mbps the AP can only provide a maximum of 80Mbps connectivity with the outside world shared between all its clients no matter how strong its connection. This is why I suggested a wire between router and AP. Factually real world clients usually have 20-300Mbps over wifi and need nicer clients AND equipment to provide good service whereas wires provide 1Gbps over cheap as equipment from 10 years ago.
P.S. I worked in support and had a really good solve rate I made money mostly by helping people improve their service in tangible ways that made sense to them. Just because an industry is scummy doesn't mean everyone in it is.