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:

• Hot spot from my cell phone - not ideal because I pay per gig of data and it's not fast enough for gaming

• 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?

• 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?

• 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?

Like millions of people, I have a router at home, with WiFi and admin passwords set up.

If an attacker request comes in, there are no port forwarding rules set, and the router should say "hey request from the internet, I don't know to which device you want to go, sorry I'll drop you then", and I'm secure. But I don't think it's that simple. If a packet from the outer network can attack my LAN without using port forwarding, how?

Which router settings should I be really looking for to make home LAN more secure? Or what are the keywords of network security to start with?