I moved into a new apartment and was surprised to see that all my rooms have CAT 5 Ethernet ports in the wall. However, cue my disappoint when I try to naively plug my router and machine in two separate ports to find that the ports don't actually work. After searching various forums, I found that I have to:

1. Locate the panel where all the ethernet ports connect
2. Wire them to an ethernet switch.

I found the panel but all the wires look like this:

https://i.imgur.com/Qzm72g0.jpg

I'm not sure what I need to do from here to plugging into my network switch. Any guides or advice would be extremely helpful. I don't need every port connected to the switch, only one or two. None of these look labelled so I might have a difficult time isolating which cable runs where.

And about the network switch... Any qualms about using an old router that has the AP turned off?

I'm running out of time to finish the spend requirements on a credit card promotion. I was planning on buying a VR headset, but I realized there was something that would actually be much more useful; a new router.

The market for consumer routers has been really strange; We are on the sixth generation, yet it's super common for consumer routers to be two or three generations behind, especially the less expensive ones. So much of the stuff on the market only goes up to 802.11n, and half of the time the firmware they include is halfway broken or is missing important features.

So I'm looking for a router that is relatively future-proof. I want Wifi 6. I want something that won't be interrupted by the microwave. Open source firmware would be excellent, but not a requirement. I don't need mesh networking; my house is not that big. I do want it to be relatively inexpensive; I'd consider $300 to be a hard limit unless someone has a persuasive arguement to justify the cost.

I would also prefer to avoid Netgear. I have no idea how they stay in business with the mountains of problems I have had with their products and their horrible support. The last time I owned a Netgear product, I was forced to give them my email address to download the driver and they illegally added it to their marketing mailing list without my permission. I don't do business with people who betray me.

Hi all -- I have had a Moto G5+ for the last two years, and have been largely happy with it. However, it's recently developed some serious issues w/ charging -- it tends to not ever get past ~45%, and the battery indicator seems to be ... disconnected from how long the phone actually lasts. I have attempted cleaning out the charging port (there was a lot of caked-in dust), changing the charging cable and port, to no avail. It works ok-ish for the moment, but I have largely been limiting it to emergency usage and I suspect it's on it's way out.

So, I find myself in the market for a new phone. In the past I have typically gone with whatever the cheapest reasonable Android phone has been (hence, the G5+ which I really do like quite a bit besides the poor camera). I am not a heavy phone user, and I really don't care about having the latest and greatest, my priorities are:

• long battery life (my Moto G5 lasts two days fully charged)
• cheap (say 200-300$, the SE on this thread is probably the upper bound of what I'd want to spend)
• reasonably performant
• preferably reasonable privacy protections (probably a pipe-dream)

The Moto G series have checked all boxes (apart from privacy) in the past, but I am considering whether I can take this opportunity to rid myself of another Google device in my life. I was thinking potentially going for a refurbished iPhone, but I really have no idea what to be looking for there. I haven't used an Apple device since my iPod (iTunes on Windows PTSD is real, and I don't even want to think about Linux support), and I am more than a bit hesitant to tie myself into their ecosystem, but it's hard to deny their superiority from a privacy standpoint.

I had also considered a Librem 5 at one point, and would be willing to spend a bit more for something so privacy oriented. But the 6-month order window, and other things I read about Purisms' roll-out have left me a bit wary there.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!