[Discuss] Future-proofing a house for networking -- what to run?

[derek at ihtfp.com (Derek Atkins)]

Richard Pieri <richard.pieri at gmail.com> writes:

> On 9/13/2017 10:35 AM, Derek Atkins wrote:
>> You seem to be assuming that all traffic crosses into your ISP.  While
>
> As a practical matter, the majority of my network traffic *does* cross
> into my ISP.

Thank you for incorrectly projecting your usage patterns onto me.

>> this may be true for your use case, it is certainly not the case for me.
>> I've got a MythTV setup, which means much of my streaming media is local
>> traffic.  I'd much rather use a wired/switched network for that than
>> pollute the shared wifi.
>
> 1080p video streams (MPEG-4) need about 5-8 Mbps burst bandwidth.

Again, thank you for making incorrect assumptions about the type of
video being tossed around.  My streams are more like 10-20Mbps each.
Just looking at one recording I see 14.5Mbps.

> Gigabit Ethernet has practical throughput about 300Mbps.

BZZT.  You're off by a factor of about 3.

>  So that stream uses about 5% of the available bandwidth at most.

Even at 20Mbps, it's really only using 2.2% of the available b/w.  At
14.4Mbps it's down to 1.6%.

>   Meanwhile, 802.11g
> (which I consider to be the least common denominator for WiFi today) can
> deliver 20-25Mbps which is more than enough for several simultaneous
> streams.

No, realistically it can only deliver 1.  That is not sufficient.

>  It's borderline for 4K but if you're doing 4K video then you've
> probably upgraded to at least 802.11n if not 802.11ac.
>
> Myth/Plex are not compelling reasons for wires.

Says you.

Listen, this back and forth with you is fruitless.  You're not going to
convince me to go without wires, and I'm clearly not going to convince
you that there are cases where wired networks are better.  So let's just
agree to disagree and then I can get input from other people with
insight into the best wired technologies to install.

Thanks,

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins                 617-623-3745
       derek at ihtfp.com             www.ihtfp.com
       Computer and Internet Security Consultant