Technology

If we don’t want our homes to eat Wi-Fi signals, companies will need to start eating the cost of choosing better Wi-Fi-penetrating materials — or, at the very least, they will need to stop putting fiber connection points literally inside walls.

Or you could just USE THE DAMN ETHERNET DROPS THEY SO KINDLY BUILT FOR YOU.

Of course you're going to get shit signal if you put one AP in a metal box and expect it to cover the whole house. that's why they built that box and ran Ethernet throughout the house.

I try not to shit on articles too much because I understand that the vast majority of writers these days are given a prompt and talking points by their editors but...

I have the privilege of knowing how to troubleshoot this stuff on my own largely due to my profession as a tech journalist. To others, this stuff is a foreign language. Knowing how to set up a home internet system is not a skill everyone has, and the complicated steps required to do it properly make moving to a new place more stressful, especially if you work remotely and need the internet to earn a paycheck.

Clearly setting up a home internet system is also not a skill this tech writer has.

This is a solved problem. It is a mesh network. Yes, you can spend insane amounts of money for a ubiquiti solution (and they are nice...). Or you can wait for a sale on a google/amazon solution. Or you can just look into stuff like the tp-link omada system where your access points are 30-40 bucks and can act as both repeaters and extenders, depending on your setup.

Don't get me wrong, ethernet is always better. But it really is not necessary in the vast majority of use cases. And considering the cost of building or renovating a house, I would not look into drywall alternatives in addition to adding ethernet drops.

Also, if they think THAT networking panel is a mess then... I very much question if they have ever touched an ethernet cable before. I have seen top of the line data/computing centers which were less neatly cabled than that picture.

I didn't bother reading it all but seems like the writer is mostly complaining about their personal tech issues and blaming their house, which seems to have an almost ideal setup for building a good network.

Overlooking that is very possible, but I guess I expected more, isn't The Verge a tech site?

Wait, so this person is irritated about the fact that he's not getting good signal by stuffing his Wifi router into the wall? Do they not realize they can just use one of those Ethernet lines to place the router in a more open spot? Or even have multiple APs throughout the house?

Hmm. I just moved into a new house in SoCal, and I'm not having any of the problems he describes. In fact I'd describe the installation of my symmetric 2gbps fiber connection as very clean, and WiFi propagation has been excellent.

I'm not ecstatic that the router they provided is an Amazon eero, but I could replace that myself if I wanted.

What a bunch of ignorant, industry shilling, bullshit. If that guys a tech journalist, he should be replaced by ai.

Speaking as someone with an 80 year old house, with really dense materials like concrete, plaster, steel rebar and lathe work, you people in modern homes have no idea how transparent to WiFi your house already is.

Damn that’s a simple structured wiring box. Is that really the best he can do for claiming it’s complex. He needs to offer someone technical a case of beer to spend an hour tidying it up.

WiFi? That’s your idea of “digital infrastructure “ that needs to be modernized. Holy shot there are so many more important things, even if you limit yourself to digital infrastructure

This is the best summary I could come up with:

But I encountered more obstacles getting it set up than a track and field hurdler, everything from a missing fiber gateway port to my $1,000 robot vacuum losing connection every time it tried to clean too far away from the router.

I was saved by the ethernet ports in every room and my off-the-shelf Asus gaming router, but I couldn’t (and still can’t) do anything about the cable Cthulhu monstrosity lurking behind a metal plate in my closet that drives most of my frustration.

Over the last several years, more engineering and architecture firms have started including ethernet wiring in their building plans, but that’s as far as the digital infrastructure of a home usually goes.

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) noted in a recent blog post that if the US were to focus a significant chunk of its efforts on creating a better digital infrastructure instead of “fixing” our physical infrastructure, it would result in “superior longer-term economic growth, competitiveness, national security, and environmental benefits.” This includes outfitting buildings and dwellings with wired Gigabit fiber internet and, more importantly, taking into consideration which materials would obstruct Wi-Fi signals the least.

A plethora of architects, civil engineers, and project managers across Orange and Los Angeles counties in California all told me the same thing: Wi-Fi-penetrating materials typically aren’t a consideration unless it’s a large structure like an office building or warehouse; telecom technicians are called in then, but mainly to help with wiring.

With many states in the middle of a severe housing crisis driven in part by those rising material costs, it’s likely many companies will continue to build for speed.

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