Wi-Fi Vs Hard Wired Home Network and the Internet

With the advancement of wireless technology, how relevant is hard wiring your home to access the internet? You may be surprised to hear but it’s more important than ever. It is extremely important to ensure data passes through without interference to your Foxtel box, home theatre system, your TV, gaming systems like the PS3 or PS4 to enable streaming services like Netflix and Stan and stream music without dropouts too.

More and More internet capable equipment

We only need to look back about 5 year ago at how many devices we had that connected to the internet and then wireless devices in general, not as many as today right. Today we have everything from TV’s, home theatre systems, gaming consoles, phones, tablets (iPad and android), multi room audio systems and now even our watches can connect to the internet (apple and android watches), no doubt future internet capable fridge’s and washing machines will become a lot more price comparative, and then who knows what else will be internet capable.

So as more technology is introduced into our homes, our use if the internet will only increase, we cannot escape that, so a well-built infrastructure is necessary to maintain proper connection otherwise problems from slow to no connection at each/all devices will occur.

A well designed system

So we’ve established that the infrastructure is important, but where and how to start? If a device has both options to hard wire as well as wireless, always choose the hard wire option first if possible, only then will you be guaranteed that you will have the best connection possible, wireless should only be used as a last resort or if you cannot hard wire your device like a phone or tablet.

Devices like Foxtel boxes, TV’s, home theatre systems, computers, gaming consoles and most portable music systems (multi room audio systems) are all capable of being hard wired, if they are not hard wired, issues can develop from the device constantly buffering (trying to catch up) to the connection failing, especially noticeable if streaming HD movies from a NAS system internally (within your home) or externally using services like YouTube, Netflix or Stan.

The work involved to hard wire your equipment

Hard wiring your devices is not as simple as it sounds, unless your equipment is in the same room as your modem/router you can go ahead and plug it in and away you go. Australian standards in wiring rules exist everyone and if these are not followed, hard wiring your devices will become a waste of time and money. Without confusing you too much, data talking is like fax tones and for those of you that remember what a fax machine looks like and sounded like, it’s the same idea, if noise is introduced into the cabling due to poor installation, this will interfere with the sending and receiving data and hence being a waste of time and money.

Conclusion

Wi-Fi is a great idea but should only be used as a last resort, hard wiring all other devices will give you the best results for internet and data access, most equipment has a choice of either being wireless or hard wired, some are wireless only and some are hard wired only like Foxtel boxes for example.