The problem that I’m having (and why I asked that) is because I was assuming that you would have some knowledge which you don’t seem to have with a lot of my comments. I’m really not trying to be rude, but it makes it a lot more difficult to explain the flaws in your reasoning when you’re talking about topics that are beyond your knowledge as if you know them well.

I have explained the realities of the situation to you, if you don’t want to accept them, that’s fine, but you’re basically arguing with an expert about something you don’t really understand very well. I’m happy to explain stuff but you should just ask rather than assume you know better because it makes it much more difficult for me to understand the gaps in your understanding/knowledge.

So ultimately, for routers, we have a number of limited resources. Firstly, yes, interfaces, but also the usual stuff - CPU, RAM, etc.

Now, I mentioned before that routing protocols are very complex - they have many metrics which are taken into account to determine what path is ultimately best for each packet. This is a process which can be quite intensive on CPU and RAM - because the router needs to “remember” all of the possible routes/destinations a packet can travel, as well as all of the metrics for each destination - distance, delays, administrative distance, TTL, dropped packets, etc. and then make a decision about processing it. And it needs to make these decisions billions of times a second. Slowing it down, even a tiny bit, can hugely impact the total throughout of the router.

When you add another connection to a router, you’re not just increasing the load for that one router, but for the routers which connect to the routers which connect to those routers which route to the routers that route to that router… you get the idea. It increases the number of options available, and so it places additional burden on memory and processing. When the ultimate difference in distance even an extra 100 miles, that’s less than a millisecond of travelling time. It’s not worth the added complexity.

That’s what I meant when I said that an extra hop isn’t worth worrying about, but adding additional connections is inefficient.

I’m becoming more and more convinced that you don’t really know what you’re talking about. Are you a professional network engineer or are you just a hobbyist?

When many people say socialism, what they mean is capitalist democracy

Lol. Lmao, even

I just wanted to let you know that I really enjoyed this comment. I think it has some good advice but the writing style is kind of unique, it’s almost alien in a way that I can’t quite explain, I liked it!

Yep, I mean, the comment you’re replying to literally contains the phrase, “the biggest issues are interference…” haha

Likewise, it’s something that’s likely to improve as we tend to move away from the 2.4GHz band.

Dropping packets is definitely more of a problem for streaming in particular, rather than anything else, because like you said, if you drop packets you’re going to get degraded quality video. If you were gaming locally, it wouldn’t really affect you as much. Online games have extremely good, well designed methods of compensating for dropped packets in a way that streaming will never be able to match.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that topology - the fact that you seem to think that the design is a bad thing really demonstrates your lack of understanding here.

For example, have you never wondered why we don’t just connect every device in a network all together like a big daisy chain? Or why we don’t use a mesh network? There is a large number of reasons why we don’t really use those topologies anymore.

I don’t want to get into the specifics, but in general, the more networks a router is connected to, the less efficient it is overall.

The propagation delay is pretty insignificant for most routers. Carrier grade routers like those at the core of the internet can handle up to 43 billion packets per second, another hop is absolutely nothing in terms of delay.

Sorry, what I wrote here was unclear, I wrote it needs less boosting in another comment, but re-reading this one, it does sound like I’m claiming it needs no boosting over any distance - that’s not what I meant though! I just meant that you can run an equivalent link without any boosting further than you could with copper.

Interference isn’t actually that big of a deal for Ethernet over copper, unless the installer does something silly like run UTP alongside high power electrical lines, or next to a diesel generator, or something. Between shielding, the use of balanced signals, and the design of twisted pair, most interference is eliminated.

Thanks for the response, it’s nice to chat with you :)

latency of the medium is so equivalent as to be practically unmeasureable

More or less, yup. There are some cool uses of RF to achieve very high bandwidth, low latency connections (5G as a common example, but Wi-Fi 7 has a theoretical maximum speed of 46Gbps - while this is still far behind the maximum speed of Ethernet (We have 400Gbps Ethernet in use, with 800Gbps in development), it’s catching up very fast - and since most households and businesses with copper cabling will be using mostly CAT5e or 6a Ethernet (1Gbps/100m and 10Gbps/100m respectively), Wi-Fi will soon likely be faster than most copper Ethernet networks. It’s also very likely that 5G internet will all but supplant ADSL and VDSL connections in the coming years. I think twisted-pair copper cabling is following in the footsteps of coax :)

Even with in-home fiber

The minimum latency of a connection through fiber is about the same (actually, slightly less, but not enough to matter) than the same connection made through copper. Signal propagation speed is not a benefit of fiber over copper - the benefits of fiber are that you can have many, many more connections in the same diameter of cable than with copper, it’s immune to electromagnetic interference, and it can run much further distances without needing signal boosting.

most WiFi routers don’t have particularly fast CPUs, or high-performance buses.

That’s one of the main issues, yeah - consumer grade electronics are usually total junk, especially the free routers provided by ISPs, but I’m also thinking of those absolutely horrible “gaming” Wi-Fi routers provided by the likes of ASUS - they have decent specs, but they’re just absolutely overloaded with features that gobble RAM and CPU. Dear consumer electronics manufacturers, please just let the router be a router, and let the Wi-Fi APs be Wi-Fi APs. Combine the router and the Wi-Fi AP if you must, but absolutely please stop suggesting that people can run a hundred services from routers. You should totally upsell that feature in a separate node appliance or something! Sorry, I got distracted.

it’s cheaper and easier to get a fast ethernet switch than a fast WiFi router

I agree, but I also don’t - most consumers don’t really know what a switch is or why they might need one. Most switches found in houses are either integrated with a router, power line adapter, or Wi-Fi access point. While a good switch is absolutely going to be much cheaper than a good Wi-Fi AP, most people wouldn’t really look to buy one. They might search for “Ethernet hub” on Amazon and luck into buying a decent switch, but I think most people think in terms of Wi-Fi these days, so it’s probably easier to get a Wi-Fi AP than a switch.

Also, just a minor nitpick: “fast Ethernet” is a little confusing, as terminology, because that’s the marketing name used to refer to 100mbps Ethernet connections (often indicated on network devices as FE) - so named because it was the successor to 10mbps (regular) Ethernet. (damn you, marketing people! I blame y’all for what you did to USB) When we discuss this kind of thing, it’s clearer to refer to ‘high speed Ethernet’ or refer specifically to line speed (e.g. 10GbE) - unless we’re talking about 100mbps Ethernet! Although, even then, it’s probably a bit confusing these days - I’d call it 10/100 Ethernet usually, rather than fast Ethernet, unless I was being really lazy (“yeah just stick it in the f/e port”)

I doubt any of this has as much of a latency impact as WAN factors

It definitely can do, but in a properly functioning network, I’d agree. If you have a faulty connection or significant source of interference or impedance, then that would be much more of an issue than anything else - otherwise, yeah, it’s going to be the Internet where most of the latency comes in to play. I would estimate that probably 75% of people could get big improvements to their online experience by making changes to their home network, but at a certain point, yes, contention becomes the bottleneck, which is not so easily solved :)

Yeah, it’s one of the symptoms. Lots of people who otherwise don’t have ADHD do experience that same feeling, though. The best thing to do is to look at the other symptoms and see how well it seems to fit. Doesn’t have to be every symptom, but if 4-5 seem to fit it’s worth pursuing diagnosis imo.

WiFi is, and probably always will be, a fraction of the performance of an ethernet connection

In terms of bandwidth, sure, but not in terms of latency, in fact, theoretically, WiFi could be faster than Ethernet. WiFi uses radio waves, which travel faster in air than electrons do in copper and photons do in glass.

The limitation for WiFi is really at the physical layer - i.e. encoding/decoding. With that said, we do already have WiFi with transcoding fast enough to give sufficient performance for fast-paced gaming. While you’re totally correct that, at the moment, Ethernet is more capable in terms of bandwidth and latency, that’s not necessarily going to be true forever, and WiFi is good enough for any purpose at home use. The biggest issues are interference and attenuation - e.g. thick walls, sources of electromagnetic interference

I always wanted a big brother, though! I quickly checked your profile and saw you mentioned mid 30s, which makes you a little older than me, so I guess wish granted… although I am 6’4" and closer to 250lbs, so I guess we’re both big brothers-es. :P

Hit me with your craziest, hottest take - I can handle it!

It’s probably against the rules of this community and potentially against the law, so I’ll just say that I disagree with a value which Gandhi and Martin Luther King share, and that I agree with some, but not all, of Malcolm X’s beliefs.

Put it in the big collection of ADHD tips at the back of your brain that you immediately forget as soon as you think about something cool that you wanna say :D

I think you replied a bit too hastily - I agree that we do treat people differently based on appearance, it’s actually in my comment:

In my experience, physical appearance is a factor for how people judge you

I try my best to treat people well regardless of their appearance or physical attributes, but you’re absolutely right in that some of it is implicit (i.e. we have no control over it).

By the way, unhoused people often are in that position through no fault of their own, and should absolutely be listened to, and supported in any way that we can. Many of them are educated and have very insightful things to say. It’s worth keeping in mind that it’s absolutely possible that all of your property and wealth could be taken away at any moment, and think about how that might shape your perspective.

Thank you for being so open and honest about your experiences, I think that’s very brave of you, and I appreciate that a lot.

I’m not going to invalidate your experience, of course, but it’s not universal. I’m physically disabled and beyond obese, and personally, I feel that the rest of my appearance leaves much to be desired, but I haven’t had big issues with rejection/isolation since I was a teen, I had some personality/behavioural issues which I have overcome quite well imo, and now I’m relatively successful socially, despite my appearance absolutely deteriorating.

Likewise, my experience is not universal, but I believe that your opinion, that your physical appearance is 100% responsible for how people interact with you socially, is completely wrong, and in some ways harmful. It plays a major part, I won’t deny that, but if you’re the most gorgeous person on the planet but have every personality defect known to humankind, I don’t think you’ll experience truly meaningful, long-lasting, loving relationships with others.

100% yes, it’s so hard to kick that urge to just go on and on and on. I allow myself to do it here on Lemmy as a bit of a break from filtering myself in real life, so some of my comments are barely edited streams of consciousness :)

A lot of advice is given to people with ADHD for how they can make neurotypical people comfortable and seem more productive, but less is given to maintaining good mental health with ADHD - definitely make sure that you have ways of letting yourself loose and make sure not to be too hard on yourself when people don’t appreciate your style :P

Be careful you’re not mixing causation and correlation, if you have self-esteem issues due to your appearance, that might be affecting how you come across in conversation. In my experience, physical appearance is a factor for how people judge you before you open your mouth, but if you speak with confidence and make good contributions, people will look past your appearance.

Just in case you weren’t aware, this is a very classic symptom of ADHD, you might want to check out the other symptoms and resources online to see if it fits you. There’s medication for ADHD which may help? I have ADHD, so that’s why I’m sharing.

A tip I once got was “three before me”, which means every time you speak, you let other people speak 3 times before you add anything else. I find that helpful if I can remember to do it.

When I think of something to say, I feel a strong urge to blurt it out - partially because I am excited by this amazing thought I just had, and also partially because I’m worried I might forget it.

Another thing you can do is take notes of things you want to say, write them down - that also helps you evaluate if they’re actually worth saying!

Theoretically it doesn’t really matter whether your connection is fiber or copper. Electricity moves through copper roughly at the same speed as light moves through fiber. The advantages that fiber has over copper is that it can be run longer distances without needing boosting, and that you can run an absolute fuckton more end-to-end connections in the same diameter of cable. More connections means less contention - at least at one end of the pipe. The problem then moves to the ISP’s routers :)

I’d say that the chances are actually quite good that you’ll get fiber internet within the next 10 years. Whether or not it improves your internet connection is another question entirely!

Even with fibre (which is slower than the speed of light)

This makes no sense. Are you referring to the speed of light in a vacuum? Fiber transmits data using photons which travel at the speed of light. While, yes, there is often some slowing of signals depending on whether the fiber is single-mode or multi-mode and whether the fiber has intentionally been doped, it’s close enough to the theoretical maximum speed that it’s not really worth splitting hairs (heh) over

There are additionally some delays added during signal processing (modulation and demodulation from the carrier to layer 3) but again this is so fast at this point it’s not really conceivably going to get much faster.

The bottleneck really is contention vs. throughput, rather than the media or modulation/demodulation slash encoding/decoding.

At least to the best of my knowledge!

you’re often back-tracking across the continent before your traffic makes it to the end destination, with ISPs caring more about saving money than routing traffic quickly

That’s generally not how routing works - your packets might take different routes depending on different conditions. Just like how you might take a different road home if you know that there’s roadworks or if the schools are on holiday, it can be genuinely much faster for your packets to take a diversion to avoid, say, a router that’s having a bad day.

Routing protocols are very advanced and capable, taking many metrics into consideration for how traffic is routed. Under ideal conditions, yes, they’d take the physically shortest route possible, but in most cases, because electricity moves so fast, it’s better to take a route that’s hundreds of miles longer to avoid some router that got hacked and is currently participating in some DDoS attack.

Those games are quite well matched with cloud streaming. An example of a game which isn’t suitable for cloud gaming would be competitive FPS games such as rainbow 6 siege, where the additional delay imposed by connection between the player and the game can be quite a significant disadvantage. The only way that this would be low enough to become acceptable would be if you live close enough to the host device that the latency is very low, or or the host device is very close to the game server itself.