The router is useless-ish without the $3 snakey boi.
“Ish?” Because you could set it up as a Wireless repeater?
$3 for CAT cable is not realistic but you still have my upvote
for a short prefab patch cable to go from modem to router, it’s actually a bit higher than what we pay.
I’ve grown to hate these routers. They only seem useful if you live in an apartment and place them in the middle and your walls are made of paper. Bought a few through the years thinking more money = better wifi, but wall construction and placement have much more impact. Living in a brick house, they’re pretty shit. I’ve switched to non gamified wifi AP’s connected to ethernet and the wifi’s been great. Still prioritize wired wherever possible though.
One of the worst things about those routers other than having generally poor coverage despite looking like a Crown of Thorns was that if you actually took advantage of the more advanced features like VLANs, port forwarding, static routes, FTP and all that stuff and set it up… It inevitably seemed that there was a 99% chance that a firmware update would not allow you to restore a backup of the router config on the updated device!
That happened a couple times, spent days getting everything set up only to find out the firmware update refused to load a config made with an older version. F that. Never used those routers again.
Used to live in a 2 story house built in the 1900’s. It had plaster & lath walls. I ended up with 4 AP’s scattered about before we had decent WiFi coverage.
If something looks cool and flashy and has tons of “extra functions” I stay the fuck away from it because I know the target demographic and I know it’s going to be shit in surprising ways.
Wifi? You may as well believe in magic. Buy a box of cable and one of these!
No testers - raw dog it. Party like a Quake party in 1999.
And now I will sing a traditional song of my people.
🟧⬜,🟧,🟩⬜,🟦,🟦⬜,🟩,🟫⬜,🟫.
A or B, can’t be bothered to look it up
B
https://youtube.com/shorts/EsoLNh9POhE
The rest of the channel is pretty funny too
My brain was like that’s to many wires… Until I finally was like oh orange white … One wire lol. Them everything fell into place.
Wasn’t there a second configuration too?
Crossover, but it isn’t needed anymore since most modern devices can detect what they are connected to and adjust.
Well there was A and B and it’s been long enough since I made any cable, I don’t remember which one everyone uses and which one only weirdos use.
T568B is the one everyone uses while T568A is the odd one.
I don’t get what’s particularly bad about T568A though? I was told it’s just plain worse than T568B for anything faster than gigabit and I swear I never saw any store bought cables using it.
The configuration has absolutely no bearing on performance. It is purely for standardization. Straight through cables work with either because it’s literally just connecting the copper on either end. The difference between A and B is just flipping 2 pairs around although I forget which. Only 4 or 5 cables of 8 are even used to this day which is crazy.
I think it’s something to do with the crosstalk between strands.
Had one. Somebody stole it at a lan, many years ago. Haven’t bought another one, since, because I’m dumb.
What is one of these called?
It’s called a crimp tool or a crimper.
Thank you! The name totally escaped me haha
If I have a PhD in WiFi, does that make me a wizard?
It makes you almost qualified to answer why the damn printer won’t work.
Come on now… Not even god can answer that one.
Someone should consider asking an AI to fix a series of platters, it’ll probably just shut itself down.
Why doesn’t it work? Because it’s fucked… That’s why
I bought a cheap tool years ago and a few hundred feet of cat6 and some connectors and wall plates
ran my main AP off my own crimped cords for years without issue. speed tests always showed full speed
deleted by creator
Why the fuck do they join the cables that need to go separated into the connector? Setting these up is a pain in the ass.
The “twisted pair” part of it makes it work like coax at the frequencies it uses unless you bend it too much.
Btw, dafaq with router prices? Do they think they sell laptops?
Still a computer. And quite integral one. If it doesn’t work, your internet and all devices that connects to it won’t work. This is a device that has to work 24/7 and produce 0 issues at any time ad long ad it works. Higher end ones also have quite a bunch of useful settings and customization options. A normie might not need them, but a power user would appreciate these settings and how reliable this router is.
But for 750 that is overkill.
Their prices have doubled the last decade. I mean relax guys, you sell routers…
Have you seen current laptop prices? It’s wack.
walmart here just closed-out a ton of laptops to ‘make room’ for the holiday garbage… really cheap… and they weren’t the 4gb junk either. most had 8gb, some had 16gb ram+1tb nvme. started at <$100 and nothing with integrated graphics was more than $300. the last one with discrete graphics was already in someone’s cart when i got there.
Because the stupid administration put bullshit arbitrary rules on routers the remaining ones are in short supply.
Nah here in Europe its the same shit. A 100-120€ router a few years ago might cost 200€ today. Top tiers are also doubled in price.
Compounded that 2.5gb is the norm now with wifi7. Consumer routers with 2.5 were inflated to being with last I checked and I have no idea what they cost now.
They are computers, more or less. Very specific and controlled computers, with only exactly what they need to do their job. Mostly anyways.
The snaky boy is more than $3 these days, at least if you get a long one.
Also for just cheap cat5, it might not actually faster than modern WiFi.
It’ll have higher latency if that matters.
cat5 beats wifi in terms of wall penetration though, assuming you penetrated that wall with a drill and then pulled the cat5 through
Say “penetrate” again, I’m almost finished.
Buy them in spools.
Cat 6 is what, $0.15 a foot? Plus maybe another $0.50 for the connectors and boots? That’s a 16 foot snake for $3.00.
I think last time I bought one it was a 50 foot one for something like $15-$20.
People are mentioning buying from a spool but I am thinking more going to my local computer store,so there’s a some markup.
I bought a 1000 foot spool a few years back when wiring my house and have used it for helping out friends and family ever since. I’m not sure how much I have left, but I’ll probably pick up another whenever I do.
If you want to come to my house and run cable feel free.
Is that a euphemism?
I’m open to both interpretations!
What’s the difference between jam or jelly you ask? You can’t jelly that cabling in there … Wait a second. This joke doesn’t work either way
Aww, not quite big enough to lay pipe? :3
Missed opportunity to call it a “$350 e-waste spider”
Not just any spider either, an australian one!
E-waste spyware spider
spyder
I don’t understand. Who thinks these are comparable?
They serve very different purposes.
Whaaaat? No waaayy. Jokes on da internet?
WiFi has its problems but they don’t include a tiny plastic tab costing $0.002 that inevitably breaks off, making the physical connection susceptible to fail at the tiniest touch of a butterfly’s wing
Gotta get cables with a tab protector! They’re lifesavers.
I just redo the connector if the ends break. Those cable clamp pliers were worth it, now I just need more opportunities to clamp some cable
Personally, I prefer the ones that don’t kill my fingers, or none at all
the boot is certainly a nice thing to have!
but we all keep our rj45s and crimpers handy right? we all live this low voltage life? Right?
RIGHT??
edit typo
Orange-white orange green-white blue blue-white green brown-white brown
I remember trying to terminate some Cat5e in uni. I don’t think a single one of the cables I made up were able to do gigabit… actually I don’t think a single one was able to do 100 megabit. I’m colourblind so ordering the wires correctly was essentially impossible, but all of us involved were fucking up in various ways…
With the successful recitation of the secret chant, your acceptance to fraternal order of crimping is now complete.
for B!
WG-G-WO-Bl-WBl-O-WBr-Br gang rise up.
Auto-MDIX is a pathway to color patterns some consider to be unnatural.
Can I learn this power?
I certainly do. I store mine along with my cable tester in a Beretta pistol case because it confuses people.
The Verizon guy liked coming to my place, asked me if I wanted modem upstairs or downstairs, told him it didn’t matter, left side right side either way. 5ms ping maybe $100 in crimpers and cat7 from Lowe’s.
I always install the boot when I make my cables.
They merely prolong the inevitable
I actively despise those things. When they’re the full boot they tend to be too tough. When they’re the tiny little things they do almost nothing. Plus the tabs will still break anyways eventually.
I like the flex tab that doesn’t have a hooked end.
Usually the tabs break from getting stressed the other direction while being “tugged gracefully and never with undue force”
I have destroyed my fingertips a few times having to unplug lots of cables with a boot, from unifi stuff that had the ports slightly recessed. I hate both of those designs so much.
Stop messing with them. You don’t need to keep putting them in and out. Also, it’s easy to replace them with a $30 kit.
“easy”
Easy my ass, somehow managed to make everything like I should at uni when we were taught these and still connection didn’t happen on tester. Even our prof was baffled after we redid the process with her watching and it still failed. xD
Some of those old testers were bullshit IMO. The one we had for our CCNA class, half the time it said the cable was bad, it would work just fine, full speed, no drama.
Yeah, I test them in use or with a voltimeter. If the voltimeter works (and the tester doesn’t) the tester is bullshit.
“”“easy”“”
I currently have one that doesn’t click, and during gaming sessions it will get hot and pop out just enough to disconnect me. I have no idea why I haven’t replaced it yet.
Don’t forget to replace it.
Have you replaced it yet?
Hey sounds like you need to replace that cable. Just a reminder.
Second reminder to replace the blue miscreant.
Reminder to replace this
Just get repair clips, no need to cut the cable and re-crimp.
Also get snagless cables, they tend to use a much higher quality plastic for the tabs.
If you own a 3D printer, there are even quite OK model files available. Just print them in the right orientation (so they don’t break along the layer lines).
More spikes = more internet, duh.
If we put more spikes on the router, maybe there will be less spikes on the ping graph. 🤔
I climbed up in the roof crawl space (by no stretch is it an “attic”) and ran Cat6 to every room in my house 15 years ago. The living room and two smaller bedrooms got one, and the master bedroom got two.
I’m very happy with the upgrade. I also run WiFi, of course, for phones and tablets, and my kid’s Steam Deck, etc.
I was going to call bullshit on that timeline…but hot damn it’s already been 25 years since cat6 arrived.
Knocked a hole in the wall for my network cables in the 90s. My mum thought I could have, like, asked first. So fussy.
I did the same but cat6a like 5 years ago. Though mine was primarily to limit wireless packet snooping/attacks, especially for devices that never got wpa3 support, not speed. There’s like 50-60 devices on my network and all but two were wireless…
Did you do solid core in the walls? Then stranded just for the final stretch or all solid?
I just ran patch cables, got them from Monoprice. Every room got a different color, in case I ever need to repair/replace a rooms connecting cable. Router to switch, switch to wall, wall to attic to other wall, wall to device. With faceplates + keystone jacks between the two sides of the walls.
Patch cable is stranded so it is pretty flexible. I can’t imagine you’ll need to redo one unless some nefarious animal starts gnawing on something.
Yeah, it’s one of those things where I was like, ‘it’s no extra cost, and can save me headaches in the future’ so why not. And I used the same colors for the entire run of each room, so if I ever forget what color a room is, I just look at the wall plate and cable.
Yeah I’ve never had colors but we used to run them in offices when we needed and we would just label the patch panels and wires and id just tape the ends and mark a sharpie like A1, A2,…A8, B1 etc when pulling, where A would be room and number would be the port. Then if you had multiple racks/closets we would do something like 224-C4 on the plate side, so you could say this is patched in in room 224, rack C, switch 4.
I remember after a hurricane we were moving my company to another building and installing everything, we had crabs under the floor in the tubes they had to run cables so you could access them in the center of rooms or in areas that wouldnt have an easy drop on the first floor. First time I ever had gotten pinched by a grab trying to get them out lol.
Pretty sure I started discussing one project and ended with another, so that may make no sense. Sorry for rambling.
$350? Since when? My piece of shit was north of $750
That thing better have SO many spikes for that price.
My router:
It’s pretty great but yeah, that’s a lot
Wtf did you buy? You could have gotten a wired router with a couple of access points for that.
Tp-link 🤷
I have a TP-Link router (with the wifi shut off) and three TP-Link PoE access points, and I still paid much less than that for the entire setup including cable to wire my house.
TP-Link is supposed to be the cheap alternative, FFS!
The Wifi cabal is blocking phones with RJ45 poets.
I’m an RJ45 poet, and didn’t knowet.
I’ve used a Framework Ethernet card with my phone to give mobile data to my router when my home internet went down.
Plug the phone directly into your laptop using USB. Reject RJ45. Embrace UART.
Many routers also support this, I did this with my Mikrotik Hex S.
Faster than using the hotspot as well
It makes sense this would work (at least on Android lol) but it never occurred to me. So thanks for sharing!
