That a wire/cable has always been more performant than wireless has never changed. Wireless is only “better” in a cost-avoidance scenario—when you’re avoiding the cost of deploying plant in a city or ripping up walls in your house. But from a performance standpoint it’s never been a contest. What does a wireless antenna eventually use for backhaul? A hardline connection—split amongst all the wireless clients! So the wireless connection at the end of the hardline is just added latency, interference potential and performance problems compared to everyone jacking into a dedicated hardline directly.
That said, if you’re supporting wireless in your house with a single Best Buy router or a “mesh” AP solution, you’re also probably not getting the best performance that wireless could offer you. APs truly do better when serving fewer devices (both from a thermals perspective, a software perspective, and from a signals perspective). To the extent that you can distribute devices across multiple hardwired APs, and increase the strength of the signal in local areas of the house, the better off you’ll be. Instead, consider a distributed AP solution where each access point is hardwired. That’s the best wireless can do, but at the end of the day, each AP will still be sharing one ethernet cable amongst all its clients. Hardly better than each client having their own dedicated ethernet connection.
Multi-AP deployments in the home are pretty affordable, especially when you consider that the top-end Netgear AP at Best Buy will cost a rapacious $400-500 and offer subpar performance on its best day, and be a massive SPOF on its worst. Something like Ubiquiti’s UniFi Wireless product line (not affiliated in any way, but have deployed them) can get you into a dual AP setup relatively cheaply (<=$350?). Most consumers, if they’re at all technically inclined, will be better off skipping those Best Buy solutions and deploying a more commercial-level wireless (and wired) solutions at home.
If hardwiring, use the best ethernet cable you can afford to offer some degree of future-proofing. Cat6a can support 10G in up to 100 meter runs, so you don’t even need to think about depending on fiber for the home installations anytime soon. I know you were just trying to jam out an ethernet solution at your house, and I totally respect that, but would also encourage a quick trip to Home Depot or similar to get Cat6a jacks, a crimper, some “old work” low voltage wall boxes and some keystone faceplates. Consider running two cables to each location so you have two available ports at each drop. Redundancy is only one advantage provided by this strategy. Wiring is the kind of work best done right, and done once! It can be a hateful effort, especially if you don’t have a munchkin to run around crawl spaces. :D
That a wire/cable has always been more performant than wireless has never changed. Wireless is only “better” in a cost-avoidance scenario—when you’re avoiding the cost of deploying plant in a city or ripping up walls in your house. But from a performance standpoint it’s never been a contest. What does a wireless antenna eventually use for backhaul? A hardline connection—split amongst all the wireless clients! So the wireless connection at the end of the hardline is just added latency, interference potential and performance problems compared to everyone jacking into a dedicated hardline directly.
That said, if you’re supporting wireless in your house with a single Best Buy router or a “mesh” AP solution, you’re also probably not getting the best performance that wireless could offer you. APs truly do better when serving fewer devices (both from a thermals perspective, a software perspective, and from a signals perspective). To the extent that you can distribute devices across multiple hardwired APs, and increase the strength of the signal in local areas of the house, the better off you’ll be. Instead, consider a distributed AP solution where each access point is hardwired. That’s the best wireless can do, but at the end of the day, each AP will still be sharing one ethernet cable amongst all its clients. Hardly better than each client having their own dedicated ethernet connection.
Multi-AP deployments in the home are pretty affordable, especially when you consider that the top-end Netgear AP at Best Buy will cost a rapacious $400-500 and offer subpar performance on its best day, and be a massive SPOF on its worst. Something like Ubiquiti’s UniFi Wireless product line (not affiliated in any way, but have deployed them) can get you into a dual AP setup relatively cheaply (<=$350?). Most consumers, if they’re at all technically inclined, will be better off skipping those Best Buy solutions and deploying a more commercial-level wireless (and wired) solutions at home.
If hardwiring, use the best ethernet cable you can afford to offer some degree of future-proofing. Cat6a can support 10G in up to 100 meter runs, so you don’t even need to think about depending on fiber for the home installations anytime soon. I know you were just trying to jam out an ethernet solution at your house, and I totally respect that, but would also encourage a quick trip to Home Depot or similar to get Cat6a jacks, a crimper, some “old work” low voltage wall boxes and some keystone faceplates. Consider running two cables to each location so you have two available ports at each drop. Redundancy is only one advantage provided by this strategy. Wiring is the kind of work best done right, and done once! It can be a hateful effort, especially if you don’t have a munchkin to run around crawl spaces. :D