4 ms·

In business not really, the majority of home users are on WiFi though.

by cmdrfred 9y ago

Majestic121 9y ago
On laptop, sure. But on desktop? I've never met anyone using something else than plain old RJ45
- hueving 9y ago
  Happens all the time. Lots of people in apartments/houses who don't want an RJ45 running through the hallway nor do they want to pay for RJ45 wiring (particularly when renting).
- CJefferson 9y ago
  Interestingly, in the last 10 years I've not met anyone who bothers with RJ45 in the home. Everyone in the UK gets a free wifi router with their broadband, and tends to just use that. Not saying you are wrong, just different areas are different.
  - takluyver 9y ago
    My parents live in a 200-year-old house with Cat6 ethernet in the walls. They needed to replace the electrical wiring, and decided to get it installed at the same time. I don't think they've regretted it, especially as thick walls attenuate the wifi signal. I'm pretty sure this is unusual, though. More broadly, I think home desktops are getting rarer in the UK. Wifi is the obvious answer for portable devices with wifi capabilities built in, even in dense housing with lots of devices interfering with each other.
    - cr0sh 9y ago
      That definitely is unusual, but when you're doing a whole-house electric refurb (given what little you mention, it sounds like a tube-and-knob switchout, right?), you likely have everything torn up to hell and back, so you might as well fix or add anything else behind the walls while you can.
- noir_lord 9y ago
  My media PC is on wifi because I rent the place and couldn't be bothered to lift the carpets to run a cable right around the room. It's some piece of crap TP-Link but it works 100% of the time so far.
- nommm-nommm 9y ago
  Consumer machines have WiFi pretty standard now, my desktop has WiFi. It came that way from the manufacturer. Not everyone wants to rewire their house to where they want their computer.
- baldfat 9y ago
  I would say the vast majority of people use wifi for desktop. (Not myself personally except on the third floor of my house). You might be surprised by the percentages. also don't underestimate the power of stealing your neighbor's internet. I have a fun little router that's named "dontstealmyinternet". I kept the router's default passwords but have it blocked. It gets about 5 attempts a month from new machines.
- theandrewbailey 9y ago
  People do. One of my friends asked for a "USB to USB" cable last week. (you have how many phones but no USB cables?) Turns out that he wanted to connect the USB type A port on a WD My Cloud (NAS?) directly to his desktop, because connecting the drive via ethernet to the router and transferring over wifi from his basement desktop estimated that it would take 2 weeks.
- recursive 9y ago
  Hello! Nice to meet you.
- jlgaddis 9y ago
  My < 6 month old, $4500 USD desktop has 2 x 1 GbE plus 10/100 BMC, but I put an Intel 7265 PCIe card in it and use that instead. I do use one of the Ethernet ports but it just goes to another router next to my desk (connected via crappy Powerline to the rest of my network) for testing w/ KVM.
jasminz 9y ago
Ok, I would assume this is something that might differ between countries. Here in Scandinavia I've met extremely few people running their desktops exclusively on WiFi since it's generally unreliable when having lot of devices talking to same AP/WiFi router in a noisy environment with lot of other networks taking up same frequencies. Actually, I would say running Powerline to desktops is more of a standard approach here.
- cmdrfred 9y ago
  I'm in the US. I'm told houses are bigger and further spaced apart here. So perhaps that is why it's more common here.
  - sqeaky 9y ago
    This sounds plausible to me. Here in Omaha, when I lived in an apartment and there were 30+ APs visible I had to be careful to pick the frequency based on what worked and what didn't, and when I did get it to be reliable I had short range. I am pretty sure this was just because of noise and cross-talk. Now in a house I see maybe 10 APs and they are all at the edge of their range and I rarely need to tinker with it and it works all the way across the street.
  - cr0sh 9y ago
    The reason wifi is more common in the US has to do with cost. Most people when buying a new house can stomach (not sure why, because it can't be a large portion of the overall cost of a new house) multi-line pulls from each room to a central wiring closet. Plus, you have to have that central closet (or panel at a minimum) somewhere out of the way, and most people just don't get that kind of tech (the idea of a central area for a home server, plus networking stuff, etc). So - the lines aren't installed (at one time, houses were offered with the option, and if you are willing to pay today, you can still get it - but most people don't). After the fact retrofits aren't done because such an install is very difficult to do (especially in modern houses with horizontal firebreaks between the verticals, little to no attic with vaulted ceilings, etc) - which also means its expensive. So instead, people go with wifi. It's cheap, no need for a dedicated wiring/network termination panel and/or closet, and can be taken down and taken with you if/when you move. Personally, I prefer a wired system; when I moved into my house I installed a few drops myself where I knew there'd be some dedicated hardware (TV area, my office, library, and my shop); the other rooms I never installed anything because it didn't matter. For those, the wifi I have fills in those blanks adequately. I ran all the lines back to a custom wiring closet I built in my shop, and terminate everything there (plus a few of my servers live there too).

In business not really, the majority of home users are on WiFi though.

Majestic121 9y ago

On laptop, sure. But on desktop? I've never met anyone using something else than plain old RJ45

hueving 9y ago
Happens all the time. Lots of people in apartments/houses who don't want an RJ45 running through the hallway nor do they want to pay for RJ45 wiring (particularly when renting).
CJefferson 9y ago
Interestingly, in the last 10 years I've not met anyone who bothers with RJ45 in the home. Everyone in the UK gets a free wifi router with their broadband, and tends to just use that. Not saying you are wrong, just different areas are different.
- takluyver 9y ago
  My parents live in a 200-year-old house with Cat6 ethernet in the walls. They needed to replace the electrical wiring, and decided to get it installed at the same time. I don't think they've regretted it, especially as thick walls attenuate the wifi signal. I'm pretty sure this is unusual, though. More broadly, I think home desktops are getting rarer in the UK. Wifi is the obvious answer for portable devices with wifi capabilities built in, even in dense housing with lots of devices interfering with each other.
  - cr0sh 9y ago
    That definitely is unusual, but when you're doing a whole-house electric refurb (given what little you mention, it sounds like a tube-and-knob switchout, right?), you likely have everything torn up to hell and back, so you might as well fix or add anything else behind the walls while you can.
noir_lord 9y ago
My media PC is on wifi because I rent the place and couldn't be bothered to lift the carpets to run a cable right around the room. It's some piece of crap TP-Link but it works 100% of the time so far.
nommm-nommm 9y ago
Consumer machines have WiFi pretty standard now, my desktop has WiFi. It came that way from the manufacturer. Not everyone wants to rewire their house to where they want their computer.
baldfat 9y ago
I would say the vast majority of people use wifi for desktop. (Not myself personally except on the third floor of my house). You might be surprised by the percentages. also don't underestimate the power of stealing your neighbor's internet. I have a fun little router that's named "dontstealmyinternet". I kept the router's default passwords but have it blocked. It gets about 5 attempts a month from new machines.
theandrewbailey 9y ago
People do. One of my friends asked for a "USB to USB" cable last week. (you have how many phones but no USB cables?) Turns out that he wanted to connect the USB type A port on a WD My Cloud (NAS?) directly to his desktop, because connecting the drive via ethernet to the router and transferring over wifi from his basement desktop estimated that it would take 2 weeks.
recursive 9y ago
Hello! Nice to meet you.
jlgaddis 9y ago
My < 6 month old, $4500 USD desktop has 2 x 1 GbE plus 10/100 BMC, but I put an Intel 7265 PCIe card in it and use that instead. I do use one of the Ethernet ports but it just goes to another router next to my desk (connected via crappy Powerline to the rest of my network) for testing w/ KVM.

jasminz 9y ago

Ok, I would assume this is something that might differ between countries. Here in Scandinavia I've met extremely few people running their desktops exclusively on WiFi since it's generally unreliable when having lot of devices talking to same AP/WiFi router in a noisy environment with lot of other networks taking up same frequencies. Actually, I would say running Powerline to desktops is more of a standard approach here.

cmdrfred 9y ago
I'm in the US. I'm told houses are bigger and further spaced apart here. So perhaps that is why it's more common here.
- sqeaky 9y ago
  This sounds plausible to me. Here in Omaha, when I lived in an apartment and there were 30+ APs visible I had to be careful to pick the frequency based on what worked and what didn't, and when I did get it to be reliable I had short range. I am pretty sure this was just because of noise and cross-talk. Now in a house I see maybe 10 APs and they are all at the edge of their range and I rarely need to tinker with it and it works all the way across the street.
- cr0sh 9y ago
  The reason wifi is more common in the US has to do with cost. Most people when buying a new house can stomach (not sure why, because it can't be a large portion of the overall cost of a new house) multi-line pulls from each room to a central wiring closet. Plus, you have to have that central closet (or panel at a minimum) somewhere out of the way, and most people just don't get that kind of tech (the idea of a central area for a home server, plus networking stuff, etc). So - the lines aren't installed (at one time, houses were offered with the option, and if you are willing to pay today, you can still get it - but most people don't). After the fact retrofits aren't done because such an install is very difficult to do (especially in modern houses with horizontal firebreaks between the verticals, little to no attic with vaulted ceilings, etc) - which also means its expensive. So instead, people go with wifi. It's cheap, no need for a dedicated wiring/network termination panel and/or closet, and can be taken down and taken with you if/when you move. Personally, I prefer a wired system; when I moved into my house I installed a few drops myself where I knew there'd be some dedicated hardware (TV area, my office, library, and my shop); the other rooms I never installed anything because it didn't matter. For those, the wifi I have fills in those blanks adequately. I ran all the lines back to a custom wiring closet I built in my shop, and terminate everything there (plus a few of my servers live there too).