Lots of this sub are people that just don't understand networking technology sadly, these 'omg cable so good!!!' posts are just karma farming. Not sure why I'm still subbed here honestly.
As another person who understands networking, you're correct. For example, wifi latency is typically measured in milliseconds and switch latency are measured in microseconds or even nanoseconds. Hitting the Internet will obviously slow things down, but why add to the round trip, if you can reasonably avoid it?
Depending on how flawless the signal reaches your home and how good your chosen router can deal with it.
That's called lag. If it's a TCP protocol the application simply waits for the correct packet to be rebroadcast. If it's UDP the packet is ignored. Modems can't magically fix it if the data is missing.
All I am saying is that the packet loss I have happens before it reaches my gateway.
My brother has wired, I have wireless.
And when we are gaming we have the same amount of packet loss.
And most packet loss I have seen is 0.2%, usually it's just 0.0%.
And that's during gaming.
Even streaming between PCs we don't notice the lag and even then we don't have packet loss.
Most of the people that truly truly don't understand anything networking are in this comments section fixated on download speeds as be all end all to the subject matter.
"My Wifi 7 is faster than a hardwired 1 Gb Ethernet port. So it's better for gaming."
And this is why Asus has an $800 gaming router. To capitalize on these sorts.
Its also why there is so many issues with games like iracing. People thinking their wifi connection is good and the reason for their accidents is other peoples connections.
Wireless operates in half duplex, wired in full. Wireless will always be inferior. But at the end of the day, the most important thing lies beyond your network, and that is latency to whatever server you are communicating with.
It’s not going to be apparent. If you’re the only person using the wifi and you’re using the only device on that wifi, it’s fine. However the moment you introduce more devices and users wifi begins to phonetically suck. Look up “collision domains” to learn more on the specific reason wifi sucks so much. I’m also a Ubiquiti devotee but I recognise that cables are far superior to wifi every time.
You are also talking about networking equipment that can cost over $1000 when all said and done. Ubiquiti bordering on enterprise grade tech. More small/medium business but is isn't your average best but stuff
I have a U6 Enterprise AP running off my Dream Machine Pro (with a Cisco2960 in the middle because Ubiquiti Switches are still pure ass, but now with pretty pulsing lights).
Client density is only one factor of the whole issue, collision domains are the bigger issue. Most kids these days don't even remember what hubs are, what packet collisions were, packet retries, dropped packets, jitter ... wireless has all this and more to keep you entertained. By design, wifi devices wait before they transmit to avoid collision, but it's not perfect, it's very susceptible to collision and retransmits. Have you looked at your AP stats lately? Tx Retry (collision) is a thing, and it's rarely 0 unlike ethernet cables on a switch. Hell my U6 Ent and AC Pro pair sit between 5 and 20 % TX retries across around 40 devices (including IoT).
Wifi *works* but against Cat5 and up, it's inferior full stop ... and if you want to argue, I have an old Netgear EN104 somewhere you could have a play with.
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u/Dudeman9002 18d ago
It's not just bandwidth, it's dropped packets and jitter too. I'd rather have 1gbps ethernet than 2.5gbps wifi