True, and I can see why you prefer it that way. If I moved into a house already pre-wired with coax to multiple rooms, I might consider it as well. No reason not to use the existing infrastructure. Now, if I were doing it from the ground up with a focus on my needs, which are streaming and computer network access, I’d run gig ethernet everywhere. That’s living the dream for me. As it is, we mostly run wifi with the exceptions of the main television in the living room (uses a Roku hooked via ethernet) and my computer (because to hell with the kids I say, I make the payments, I get to hook directly into the router over ethernet cable).
EDIT: I should note that I’ll never win a parent of the year award with that attitude.
1 or 2 story with unfinished attic and unfinished basement, preferably mostly square shaped.
Finished basement restricting access. Coupled with a not square footprint.
Finished attic space.
House old enough to have coax but not ethernet. Or, someone already did the coax retrofit age.
House so old, it’s lucky to have electricity, and you’ll be running something no matter what.
It’s not that you can’t add new wires, of any type, to any of these types of houses. But, there’s definitely different amounts of work and destruction to do it right in each of them. Hell, even doing it sloppy can be a pain, unless it’s truly super sloppy. I’m looking at you 100 foot ethernet cable strung down the hallway, up the stairs, and across the hallway, try not to trip on it.
As much as I hate Verizon in general, and what the hell are all those “fees” on top of the basic service. The network access has been super good, and looking for the ONT was part of our house shopping. (Looking for the ease of adding new wires didn’t make the list, at least not high enough in priority.)
Oh yeah, totally agree with you. I’ve never bought new or had built, I’ve only ever bought old houses, so my mileage is based on “what’s easiest to do with what’s already in place?” That usually means going with a single router and wifi for the rest of the house connectivity since I’ve never owned a place with coax or ethernet run through all the rooms. Oh, and making sure my computer is close enough to where the router is I can run a short cable to it. It did run a cable once through the floor and up under the panels of a drop ceiling to install a second wifi network so my sons gaming wouldn’t slow down the main wifi in the house, but generally I like minimal effort solutions.
This really messed with my head until I read the article. I couldn’t figure out what kind of company could force you to pay for a woodworking power tool whether or not you rented it. :-/
I wonder why he wouldn’t try to appeal to the FCC based on the Carterfone precedent. Charging a fee for use of a device which is 100% compatible with the network sounds exactly like when AT&T used to charge people to rent their phones and declined to allow third party equipment because of compatibility reasons. I know Pai doesn’t care about consumers either way, but this seems to be asking for a lawsuit that could be very fun to watch.
I think because industry shills like Pai claim that internet connections are an information service and not common carrier service that would be covered by Carterfone.
100% this, when Pai got the reclassification to Title II reversed he pretty much precluded the use of any sort of tactics or regulation that would apply to the phone system.
I use Frontier and somehow they aren’t charging me a router fee, but I’ve seen a lot of complaints on DSLReport from folks who are getting hit with this and have had a hell of a time fighting it. I also don’t use their crappy router anyway. Not only is it a piece of junk, but they can remotely manage it which I just find wrong. They have remotely reset it to factory on more than one occasion at which point my Wi-Fi was reset to an insecure state for a brief time until I reconfigured it. Yeah, fuck that shit. I don’t want them “remotely managing” anything for me aside from the ONT (which they do own and I have no way to configure).
I use a Ubiquiti USG3P router, and you know what it took for it to start working? I had to fucking plug it into the Ethernet port on the ONT. Pretty crazy, right?
But anyway, Frontier sucks, but the alternative for me is Comcast… which sucks even more. While I can get higher speeds through Comcast for better rates they aren’t symmetrical (what’s the point of Gigabit download speeds if the upload is capped at like 50Mbps), and I’m also capped at 1TB/month which is bullshit. I get 200/200 through Frontier which isn’t great, but at least it’s unmetered (and speeds are not subject to the whims of other customers in my area).
As it is, we mostly run wifi with the exceptions of the main television in the living room (uses a Roku hooked via ethernet) and my computer (because to hell with the kids I say, I make the payments, I get to hook directly into the router over ethernet cable).
