Less than ideal router strength, curious what my Tech Tilderinos would recommend
I just moved, and my new apartment is set up a little weird - gotta love old construction. As a result, the router has to be in the other end of the home from my PS4 which is my primary internet consumption device. The way I see it I have four options:
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Hot spot from my cell phone - not ideal because I pay per gig of data and it's not fast enough for gaming
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Run a really long Ethernet cord - possible but would be a little bit of a project. I looked into it a little and I'm curious if there is any appreciable difference between Cat 5, 6, 7, or 8 from a home user perspective. Also, what's a good resource for buying one, since Amazon is not really trustworthy anymore?
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Use a WiFi booster - I don't really have any experience with these. Would it be as fast as using the router, and if I used an Ethernet cable to connect my PS4 to it would it still be limited to wifi speeds?
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Get a stronger router - considering I technically rent my router from Verizon this is probably the most cost effective way to go in the long term, any suggestions for brands?
When I lived in an apartment I ran Cat 5e everywhere and never had any issue resolving 1gbps.
If I were running it through the walls though, I would probably go with something better purely for the sake of futureproofing (gigabit ethernet is already starting to feel pretty slow), but most people aren't moving large files over their LAN like I do.
It's 2.4 and 5ghz, I think it's about 4 years old at this point. My cell phone gets wifi in the living room but not the PS4 so I'm guessing it's more an issue with the PlayStation.
I have FiOS and there's two boxes that I'm not sure what they do in addition to the router. The router is just connected to the other ones with an Ethernet cable. Would I be able to switch out just the router?
One of those, the one that outputs Ethernet to the router, is the ONT and handles the conversion from fiber to Ethernet. It should be on tbe outside of your home, and that can't be swapped out. It's the demarc for their lines where everything past it outside your home is Verizon's responsibility, whereas everything on the inside past it is yours. I don't know if Verizon has a different setup, but my ISP (CenturyLink) is set in such a way that you can replace their router after the ONT with any one that supports VLAN tagging, and only need their modem for DSL service. I know AT&T requires their router for all home internet, including FTTP though, so it may not be a possibility.
Asus routers, Ubiquiti equipment, and OpenWRT-based ones all work in my experience for that. It may be worth looking into seeing if you need a modem at all on top of the ONT.
As far as Ethernet, we have a few 100' flat Ethernet cables set up (one from the modem by our kitchen to the router in the living room, two going to the bedrooms) that are white and blend in nearly perfectly along our baseboards/frames of the doors so there's no cords to trip over once they got nailed up with some cable stays that came with the cables.
I don't know if you've considered this, but another option could be powerline ethernet adapters, although they may require a bit of configuration in an apartment building. This would include preventing other people from connecting to your powerline adapters, and making sure that both power outlets are on the same circuit.
EDIT:
There are also adapters for coaxial ports, if your apartment has those.
I recently moves to an old house with thick walls, so wifi kinda sucks. I got a powerline adaptor, Amazon link, and it works well. I get an average 10 mbps from an average of 5 mbps that would crash all the time. I would recommend it.
Thanks, I had no idea something like that existed!
I had this exact same issue when I lived in an apartment. Lots of people are recommending better wireless access points, which is fine, but it doesn't address one major issue with apartment networking: radio interference. Consumer wireless networking devices only have a limited slice of bandwidth to work with. In a crowded place like an apartment complex, you can have hundreds of devices in range of eachother transmitting on the same small selection of frequencies. This can drastically reduce the range and reliability of your wifi. While it will probably still be fine for web browsing or even watching video, it can manifest as big lag spikes when playing online games. 5GHz wifi mitigates this to an extent (there are more bands to work with), but has it's own problems with not penetrating building materials as well.
I ended up buying a spool of Cat 5e at Home Depot and running it under the baseboard all the way to a gigabit switch I placed behind my entertainment center. You don't need the stuff with a plenum sleeve. It's legally required if the cable is going in a wall or ceiling, but for this purpose it just costs more money while making the cable bulkier and less flexible. A higher grade cable like Cat 6 will also have the same problems, and unless your apartment is very big it shouldn't be necessary to achieve a gigabit link.
Repeaters are really cheap and easy to set up nowadays. $20-30 per repeater, all you really need is a power socket. You can spend more for fancier/better repeaters, but honestly multiple cheap ones is often the best solution as you can maintain a strong signal.
Alternatively you could do PoE (power over ethernet) where your house's power lines are used as a way to transmit eternet signals. These tend to max out around 300mbps, however and at this point I wouldn't recommend them over a wireless repeater unless absolutely necessary.
This one boasts 2000Mbps
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01FFBN4MO/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1
I have a couple 1000Mbps adapters, and I never saw them link up faster than about 450Mbps between themselves.
You also have to be really particular about where they're placed to get speeds like that-- unless they were literally the only thing in the specific outlet, and they were placed in the outlets closest to each other, they'd get bad speed drops whenever our A/C would kick in.
Isn't PoE basically the reverse of what you're describing? From my understanding it's where power is sent down unused ethernet wires, so a voip phone can get power and data from the same cable for example. And powerline adapters are where a data connection is sent down electrical wiring in a house from one end to the other.
Have you looked into mesh network routers?
If you're unfamiliar with those, they're basically repeaters but with better software and hardware integration. You put a base station with your modem and then spread the satellite units throughout the house to spread the coverage out and fill in the problem areas. The satellites communicate directly with the base station via a dedicated wireless channel.
There's tons of them out there from different makers and I'm sure they all have pros and cons, but I can only vouch for Netgear's Orbi routers. I've got three in my 1,500 square foot house (one base station and two satellites). They work great and I've never had any issues with them. I have one in my TV room, with all of the game consoles plugged in to that via ethernet, which then talks to the main hub.
I'm a total Ubiquiti fanboy, so i have to recommend the Amplifi line: https://amplifi.com/, specifically the Instant line.
https://amplifi.com/instant
It's super simple to install, has fantastic support, and each mesh point also has an Ethernet port for wired devices.
Plus, Amplifi systems have a built-in VPN so you can tunnel back to your home network from wherever you are.
I can't see anyone else suggesting a Powerline.My router is downstairs on the opposite side of the house, it would be pretty difficult and destructive to route a cable that distance.I bought a cheap (40£) powerline kit, and got one with passthrough. The router's connected to the socket downstairs which is on a power strip, and the one upstairs is connected to the main PC, which I turn on and off as needed. It's working fine and the data rates are slightly higher than I would get via wifi.
EDIT: I see now that someone recommended PoE which I think is the same? Hm.
EDIT2: Oh, I really should have grepped for it instead of looking manually, ha.