A question for anyone who's desktop PC is on Wi-Fi only, not Ethernet

The house is 25 years old and is not wired for Ethernet cabling. Now if you want an RJ11 telephone jack or a coaxial TV drop every room in the house has 2-4 of those. Due to the current location of the Wi-Fi access point running a cable to my desktop PC is very impractical. I am stuck with using Wi-Fi for it. My laptop PCs report a connection of 866mb/sec. My desktop reports an average of 520 or less and it sits on the floor between the desk and the wall. Extending and thereby raising the antenna should allow them a stronger signal. I was hoping to hear some confirmation of that from people here. A quality mesh system is also a solution but far far more money so I am going to see what improvement I can realize with antenna first. The extension cables arrive tomorrow. Fingers crossed.

I have a 24 year two story home an it wasn’t that difficult to run Ethernet to my office and bedroom on to top floor from the basement (where my router and 10Gbe switch is). I’m in Canada where there is R50 blown insulation in the attic, R20 fibreglass in the outside walls, and the house has central heating and air conditioning.

I ran three cat 6a Ethernet cables from my switch up through an inside wall using the cold air returns for most of the route then to the attic then dropped it down the walls to where I wanted them located on the top floor. Running to a location on the main floor was easier since I have drop ceiling in the basement. Knowing where other electrical wires came up through the floor I knew where to drill a hole to feed my main floor cable to a new renovation box I put in the wall.

So ... it can be done, it just takes some work. Any good electrician could do it for you in about a day if you’re not handy ߘ

Of course, if you don't want to run cables! Duh. Now why didn't I think of that?

I asked because wireless has gotten good, but with a wire, it's still faster and more reliable.

Not sure where age of the home comes in to it, but for the record, I live in a 170 year old building, that clearly was not equipped with cat 5e. I just ran my own. I didn't realize new homes would have it wired in, that's a nice touch.

Naturalist wrote in post #19227292
I guess I do it cuz I don't know no better?? Can you share a link to the system you use? (I think I saw you post one up earlier, if I am recalling correctly.....63 years of gray matter clutter, y'know)

Are you talking about the Mesh wifi I upgraded a few months back?

TP Link Deco x60
https://photography-on-the.net …/showthread.php​?t=1519653

This is a set of three router/repeaters. Of course, (perhaps ironically given the segue) they are all connected via Cat 5e for best performance!!!!

CyberDyneSystems wrote in post #19227595
Not sure where age of the home comes in to it, but for the record, I live in a 170 year old building, that clearly was not equipped with cat 5e. I just ran my own. I didn't realize new homes would have it wired in, that's a nice touch.

Except if the builders didn't know what they were doing. My townhouse was "wired" with ethernet. All wires led to a junction box and weren't even terminated. I've had to use my own router or hub.....and it took awhile to terminate every wire and find out how many outlets in the house were actually dead. Luckily some of the most important ones were live (and my home office is on an opposite wall from junction, so I could do my own wiring).

I've now got it setup that I have my modem and wifi 6 router in my living room (so streaming devices and HTPC are running off ethernet, and I have strong wifi signal). I have a 1Gb switch at my junction box for desktop or network printing in my office, and a wifi 6 repeater on the top floor. I will say that now that I have a couple wifi 6 devices (iPhone 12 and a new gaming laptop), I have been impressed with the wireless performance). At shorter distances, the wifi internet speed has been the same as what the modem was getting at the time.

Raising the antennas has helped. Previously the highest Win 10 reported speed was 520Mbps and now it mostly stays over 700 and has peaked at 866. It gets the occasional short lived dip into the 300s but that is rare now.

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/2kV1​8Aj