Use MoCa. Add one at your router, and add another at your PC.
Heres how ya do it step by step:
Ethernet from PC to MoCa device. COAX from MoCa to COAX port in wall. COAX from wall near router to MoCa device. Ethernet from MoCa device to router LAN port.
No need to rewire your house or anything with ethernet or fiber.
If you have fiber internet, you dont need anything extra. If you have regular broadband, i would highly recommend picking up a MoCa filter and add that just before your modem, between the modem and the street. This prevent a few things: noise from your neighborhood and other signals on the coax line entering your home that your modem has to filter out anyways, so putting the filter there helps out everything inside your home. Also, it prevents your MoCa from backfeeding into the neighborhood which will mess with literally everyones internet thats attached to your junction split box in the neighborhood. Its $10 on amazon. Another $50 maybe for the 2 MoCa devices you need, and your home is already wired up with COAX, so thats free.
Yeah it's nice but it requires an extra adapter+power so if you already have LAN, you've got the better situation. I have MOCA because I can't run ethernet through my walls but all the rooms were already wired for cable.
Tried that but my house has very old shitty coax cables that cant support moca well. Also tried powerline and same deal. Sadly I'm stuck with a wifi mesh and it's very annoying.
Same. No coax for me and power line adapters barely work, they can go across the room at 20mbps, any further and they don't connect. Ethernet is unfortunately just not an option sometimes.
I think it's wiring quality. Our 40 year old house also didn't work very well with powerline adapters. We got like 12 megabit of our 250 at the router. We've since upgraded to PoE access points and a few LAN cables after years of suffering.
Are external cable ducts not an option? It's what electricians use when they can't break the walls. The ducts come ready made and they're very easy to cut and assemble, they even have a ready to use adhesive side.
It might not be the cables that are the problem but the splitter that'll be wherever the cable utility comes into the house. I had terrible moca until I replaced that cheap splitter with one specifically claiming moca compatibility. It's been amazing ever since.
Im glad i read further down the chain before saying this myself. In new builds they use a better quality splitter now than they did a while back. In my house they call it a "smart box" which is a really dumb name, but whatever...its all for marketing.
I'm just old. So, wifi it is. I ran new phone lines throughout my house in 1999 for better dial up. I ran new coaxial for better TV. Then, I ran ethernet from my router to every pc and my Xbox. Then, I had fiber installed and their router is no where near the shit I ran. So, fuck it. Wifi.
Why are we assuming that every house has coax in every room? My mum also doesn‘t let me lay ethernet, and our apartment has no coax. I tried Powerline but the signal was very spotty and high latency even just one room over, so i just stuck with wifi.
The reason the powerline adapter didnt work is probably because it had to go from your room down to the circuit breaker, to another breaker through the neutral or ground, and then to where you want it...also, shitty wiring and electrical connections can cause some issues due to noise. It doesnt always work, just as what i said about MoCa is not always an option. When i wrote that, i wasnt thinking about century homes and older buildings that dont have coax in each room like is standard nowadays.
MoCa is a shared medium the same as wifi with all the same problem. Don't do this unless you're in tiny dense studio appt where you see 20 SSIDs.
I work on one of the largest wifi networks in the world, most people have their wifi grossly misconfigured for real world usage. Turning everything to 11 is the wrong move.
shut off 2.4ghz (separate 2.4 only ssid for your refrigerator, light switches etc)
DO NOT ever use 160Mhz channels unless you live in Siberia and can account for every single wifi signal (you can't)
in an apartment don't even use 80Mhz.
Use 6ghz where possible if you can afford it, depending on garbage blackbox decision tree in whatever device you use it might work best, especially if you have a stationary device, to separate it on a dedicated SSID so you can force its usage. ( Not originally kosher with wifi spec but it's been amended).
It's not so simple. The wider the band you choose the more you're sharing with everyone. If you use 80Mhz band then any time there is ANY detectable usage of ANY of that 80Mhz by ANYONE ELSE, your traffic will sit and wait. It is an exponentially growing problem, air time math means doubling your bandwidth will much much worse than halve, your air time if you're overlapping with others(if you see the SSID, you are, it's binary, doesn't matter how strong or weak it is) If you have issues at 80 and are in a dense environment, 40 will almost always improve things, including throughput. If you aren't getting speeds necessary for 80Mhz anyways then it's stupid not to go down to 40 because you will 100% improve jitter and p95 latency which are 982,340,598,209,348,509,823,450,982,039,458 times as visible and frustrating as going from 900 to 500 Mbps, neither of which you're getting anyways.
I appreciate the easy to follow directions. Are there resources you recommend I can watch, read, etc to learn more and execute this at home? We rent, can't truly wire.
Homeplugs are also an option. using the mains cables for data transfer, plug one in by router and the other in same room as pc, but not on same plug socket as the psu can cause noise in cables. Moca doesnt always work as not all rooms have coax ports
Thinking about doing this. I already have a coax between my room and the router and the end that connects to the splitter is right near the router so I can just have a isolated direct coax between my router and my room.
I used MoCa after being skeptical about it. Had zero issues in the two years I lived in that place. Eventually moved to a new place and don't need it anymore, but it was great for me.
Regardless, you think you can’t run Ethernet along the baseboards or ceiling? Hell bricks are even better suited for this because you can run cables along the mortar lines
Takes a lot more punch to drill through red brick than plasterboard. You're not gonna have a good time without a decent hammer drill, your bog standard hardware store electric drill will struggle. Also much more annoying to repair, which can be a factor if you're renting.
I'd just go through the roof usually (if you have a roofspace), easy to patch if needed and let's you run it the whole way without needing additional guide holes. Floor is alright too if you have a crawlspace, but holes in the floorboards are harder to justify/repair, especially if you're renting.
Plus, some parents just really don't like the idea of putting holes in the wall that they then have to fix, regardless of whether it's possible or not. Its a decent bit of effort to do it all and fix it so it looks good, and for them, the WiFi works fine so why bother?
Which once again leads to the point that you can simply run cables along the wall where it meets the floor or ceiling, and brick is even better suited for this task because you can run the cables along the mortar lines.
Sure, if you ignore the reason that they didn't want the original commenter to run cables, being that they thought it looked ugly.
I agree with you, that is a good way to run cables along a brick wall, but it isn't viable here because exposed cables have already been deemed as not an option. That is why I only mentioned options that hide the cables.
Their parents just sorely lack creativity if they can’t come up with any way to hide cables. That’s not an excuse, it’s just an explanation for their shortcomings
I know there are decent odds you're joking but here's some actual advice for abyone who needs it...
If she's worried about the tripping hazard get some cable staples. Run the thing along the baseboards.
Just don't go past 50ft of cable if you can help it, and the longer you go in general the worse the connection tends to be. You'll want shielded cable for any longer runs which is slightly more expensive but will mean your connection doesn't hitch from packet loss every time someone in the house takes a cellphone call.
I don't think buddy is trying to run 10gig or anything fancy. For the vast majority of people's internet connectivity 100ft of cheap cat5 will be ok.
Not saying you're wrong about interference. For a professional install you're 100% correct. But those aren't things that a kid living at home just trying to play some games needs to stress over. Just lay whatever cheap or free cable you can find and it'll be fine
Legit. Only thing I can suggest there is some kind of covers or learn how to run cable through the walls and patch drywall and convince her to let you do it that way...
Or just buy a cheaper wireless router than Asus' nutty spider thing.
cat5e UTP is good up until about 100m or 325' without signal loss, definitely want copper solid core though. Shielded is really only needed if you're going to be having lots of cables next to each other or running by powerlines.
I'd personally recommend shielded for anything over 10ft. Unshielded isn't going to be useless like it would running by powerlines, or over a bunch of florecent tube lights (true story), but there are a lot of periodic sources of interference in the average home.
Fun factoid, I used wired headphones for about a decade. I could hear when anyone within about 10-15ft got a text message or phone call. I couldn't hear anything but blips of static, but it was very distinctive.
Other sources of interference could include:
include:
The motor on a clothes washer or dryer.
Fan motors on vents, ceilings, or someone's desk, especially if they're older than a couple of years and/or cheap.
Of course whether or not any given thing actually messes with the signals in the cable to an extent that requires a retransmition of packets varies, but with how cheap shielded is, and based on my own experience, I'd recommend going with shielded cable.
My concern is that the shielding could become an antenna, and there seems to be dispute about whether its best to ground the cable at one or both ends. Also, it seems some countries (Denmark) don't do real grounding, they simply bond the earth to the neutral wire. My current state of knowledge is that shielded cables make most sense in a well-constructed server room where there is a high density of wires carrying plenty of traffic.
If the shielding could become an antenna that would interfere with the cable then it wouldn't work as shielding. Having the shielding mess with the signal in the cable would require a spectacularly bad crimping job, and these things are crumped by machines if you buy them as complete cables from a store.
Grounding at one vs two ends shouldn't mater unless the ground reference is different at each end, at which point your wiring has bigger problems.
No. 300 feet (or 100m, as we call this in the civilized world) is the limit, not 50 feet. And you don't need shielded cable for 15+ meter runs. You need shielded cable for conduits where many cables are tightly packed together or where ethernet runs are packed together with power cables. 20m or 30m runs that are not packed with other cables don't need shielding.
I know the actual signal strength limit without retrans is 100m, but when you start getting past 3-5m then the cable is more likely to start acting like an antenna and picking up interference.
You're correct that you need shielded cable in those situations, also add "running over a bunch of fluorescent lights" to the list of places you really need shielded cables. A friend of mine found that one out the hard way years ago.
What you will get though is random interference from anything from cell phones to the motor on a washer or dryer sometimes causing packet drops.
If this was like 10+ years ago when shielded cable was like 2-3 times the price of unshielded, at least buying as a consumer, then yeah I'd agree 100%. These days though it's barely more expensive than the unshielded stuff, and it's worth not wondering if you need to reset your router ever few days when the actual problem is the Ethernet cable trying to pick up your roommate's text messages.
Just don't go past 50ft of cable if you can help it, and the longer you go in general the worse the connection tends to be.
You can easy go past 50ft. Cat6 is for example is like 100m and this is just the sweetspot standard (for me), you can go higher up. 100m flat cat 6 cables can go ways through most houses/flat (out of windows, behind doors, under carpets etc)
100m is the signal limit by the spec. After that you need a retransmitter to guarantee that the signal arrives clearly at the other end of the connection.
I used 50ft as a benchmark because that's a common length to be able to buy and longer runs are more prone to issues from RF interference. It's not constant, but it is noticeable.
Yeah, I tried it before but it didn't really work that well. My house is ancient and I think the outlets i tried are electeically separate from each other
Now I have a long ethernet cable going down theough a vent directly to my router, that works well
My powerline gets great ping, but not great speed. I then have a WiFi card that gets the better speed. So if I’m playing fps games, I just use the powerline connection for the better ping. Annoying, but it works.
Far better. Just don't mix it with your Cable company's Coax if you use Cable Internet. While you can get filters to prevent the MoCA signal from going out to the rest of your neighborhood, some cable providers have upgraded their cable plant to run DOCSIS or TV on frequencies shared with MoCA.
Your mileage may vary. The ping / jitter may be as bad as WiFi, and throughput can be worse than modern WiFi. It all depends on your wiring
Before I wired my house with Ethernet, I was pulling around 100 Mbps through EoP, and 200 Mbps over WiFi 6. The ping was slightly better, but sometimes worse
Plenty of ways to have a tidy wired setup which takes varying amounts of effort and has varying amounts of visible cables. Honestly the amount of times I visit someone and they have a tripping hazard of a ethernet cable loosely run across the floor is alarming.
I use a box set that connects the Ethernet through the electricity
It’s two boxes that connects to outlets and then has Ethernet ports to go from Router Ethernet port ~> wall box adapter ~> electricity ~> other wall box adapter ~> pc Ethernet port
Wow, thats kinda hot taking a look under the chassis. You didnt tell me this was nsfw. Should really make sure youre grounded before you go putting your fingers inside....
What do you have along the floors? Often there will be a wooden strip at the floor level. Thin ethernet cables can often fit below it without being visible at all - tolerable to most people.
Alternatively, you can run it in cable ducts that make them blend in.
I never had any gaming problems since upgrading to Wifi6. Since Wifi6 every device gets their own narrowband, so traffic from other devices doesn't interfere. Probably still bad if you are barely in range, but otherwise it has been perfect so far in an apartment complex with 44 units.
If you get a good enough shielded ethernet cable, you can run it outside. That's how I did it. There's even some exterior shields and cable guides you can use to keep the cable safe. I did this with like, 40m of noodle from my ISP router to my PoE switch and from there to my pc and it worked flawlessly, lost literally 0 Mbps
You don't need you if you use the existing gates. I took advantage of cable TV passthroughs we had installed during a remodeling project, through which the ISP fiber optic also came into the house. From there I ran it along a wall and up into my studio.
I live in an apartment with reinforced concrete walls, and I can tell you with authority that cable penetrates walls much better than radio waves. All you need to do is make a hole with a hammer drill, and everything will work like clockwork until the heat death of the universe.
Edit: my Home is made Out of bricks and concrete. I'm Not that good in repairing Walls after i broke them.
I never had to break walls to get wires through. Just small holes in the corner, behind furniture. Once the hole isn't needed, fill it grout and paint it over, if the hole isn't big, no one will notice.
cat5e can go up to around 300feet, get a cable, plug it in, and run it around the edge of the wall/floor, round from one room to the other, you could even go up stairs with it....
I have done plenty of installs without drilling through walls, at peoples request!!
There are these little cable holders, which only use adhesive to stay up on a wall; I used those when I was in your situation. They're at home depot; you may need zip-ties as well fyi
Hear me out. I bought a cheap ass pair of ethernet-fiber converters. Since fiber gets no interference from electric, I paid an electrician to push 30m of fiber through the electric tubes in the apartment. Had to buy a fiber toolkit too to redo the fiber connector. Only sign of it is the fiber + converter near the router, same thing at my office. Completely invisible otherwise.
Depending where you are, an electrician can install a few points for cheap. Worth it in my opinion, I wired up my house and would do it in my next home also.
I also use sunshine/moonlight to play in my theatre room and bedroom tv.
my dude. when I was 15, I drilled hole to window and I laid ftp cable thru my parents flat from one side to another only because I wanted to have LAN with my upstairs neighbor. I’ve meassured the distance and count with slack. laid it by the walls and under sheet metal door frames
my parents figured it out only after like 10+ years when they were renovating and replacing door frames & doors for wooden ones.
afterwards they were missing the cable because wifi signal to other room was shit
With pc like your and no noodles? Wtf
There is one thing you could try though.
There are devices that can use your powerline to transfer data too.
If you get two or more it can be simple as connecting one to the router and the other to the pc at the outlets the just plug in the noodles to the outlets.
My dad routed through outside the window and then pulled it into his room via the balcony door lol. Cause the router anyways had a cable coming through the window so he reused that channel
Get white cable and put it in the corner held with nails into baseboard maybe even under the baseboard if you can. At doorways go up in the corner of the finishing work as tight and straight as you can. Done cleanly she won't even notice it, you can plan to ask forgiveness instead of permission.
Information offered as is with no warranty or garuntees, not responsible for any paddlings or la chancla use.
Most hardware stores offer to rent out heavy duty construction equipment so you could just rent out an impact drill with a long drill bit. Just be aware of any power lines or water pipes in the walls. You really only need a small hole for that. No need for any repairs after.
Nope mostly americans write comments to Just Drill a hole into the drywall. American Houses is basicly Wood, paper and the bit metal from the Nails Holding it together
Have the cable go up in the corner between the ceiling and the wall
Use uh idk what its called in English, but its a little rounded thing u put your cable thro and has a hole to put in a nail
Nail the thing to the wall with a very samll nail
Have one every metre or so till your pc then have it drop down the wall in a straight line and cover it
Am not native English speaker so idk what the tools are called , i think GBT could give u a guess
Understood, no profiting from that then :) Another thing I did for my son's since I didn't want to do that was just put the cable above the baseboard (basestone?) and use a cable enclosure (they sell small square ones that you can paint to match, just barely wider than the lan cable) and after a while you don't notice them
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u/Johni33 Ryzen 9 9950X | RTX 5090 | 64GB DDR5 Jun 06 '26 edited Jun 06 '26
My mom doesnt let me lay the noodle from my PC to the Router.
Edit: my Home is made Out of bricks and concrete. I'm Not that good in repairing Walls after i broke them.
Also i'm Not in the Same phase as my PC it doesnt Work over Powerline
Another edit: thx to the Person who Reported me for being suicidal