When to Run Ethernet Instead of Wi-Fi — and How to Do It Cheaply
Cat5e, Cat6 and Cat6a compared against 2.5G, 5G and 10GBASE-T, plus PoE power budgets, MoCA over existing coax, and how to get a cable across a finished house.
How networks actually work
Wi-Fi standards, routers, mesh systems, cabling and the unglamorous troubleshooting that makes a house work properly.
Cat5e, Cat6 and Cat6a compared against 2.5G, 5G and 10GBASE-T, plus PoE power budgets, MoCA over existing coax, and how to get a cable across a finished house.
Download speed is the least useful number on a speed test. Latency under load, jitter and packet loss decide whether calls and games work — and bufferbloat is usually the culprit.
Dead zones follow physics, not luck. Work through router placement, wall attenuation in decibels, band choice, DFS channels and real RSSI measurements before buying hardware.
Shared wireless backhaul roughly halves throughput per hop. Here is when a mesh is worth it, when one router plus a wired access point wins, and how roaming really works.
Multi-link operation, 320 MHz channels and 4K-QAM are real, but their value depends on 6 GHz spectrum rules and your client devices — not on your internet plan.