Does our “need for speed” make our wi-fi suck?

Another benefit is that I can cram 4 of them inside a single cable runner at the one spot I have to (no space for a switch). Where it's just one cable you run them bare and they look very clean.

The old ones I have are still CAT5e, the newer ones they sell are CAT6 at the same thinness. All unshielded (UTP).

10/10 would buy again.

In software-land, they even solved latency inequalities well-enough to keep things properly in-phase at 20KHz between different devices, to allow stereo imaging to work correctly betwixt two wirelessly-connected speakers. (This seems very passe' in these modern enlightened times of seemingly-independent wireless Bluetooth earbuds, but it was a tough nut for them to crack back in 2002[!].)

It wasn't all smiles and rainbows, of course, because the world never properly settled on one, true, universal implementation of something like Spanning Tree Protocol and agreed on how to use it. It was very possible for a person to really hose up their network by connecting Sonos gear the "wrong" way -- by connecting "too much" of it directly to the LAN.

But those potential problems were broadly mitigable by picking exactly one Sonos device to bridge the wireless SonosNet into the home's LAN: Ideally, a Sonos Bridge would -- uh -- provide that bridge, but any random Sonos speaker (or subwoofer!) would do just as well. This worked, but it involved some aspect of wifi.

And yeah, the problems could also be mitigated in other ways if they showed up: A person could certainly plug in their Sonos sub, sound bar, and surround speakers into Ethernet -- which was really quite neat and tidy if it worked, and it often worked. But it was a pickle if it didn't work because STP implementations can be an unadjustable boondoggle in the consumer space.

They had a really neat and rather unique thing going for quite a long time before the market shifted to make their products apparently be fickle, outdated, inferior, and expensive. ("What, no Bluetooth?" people once said, even though, being an independent network-based streamer, it doesn't have Bluetooth problems like a person walking to the other side of the house with their phone where everyone but them can hear it noisily glitch out until they wander back.)

Nowadays, SonosNet seems to be mostly dead, and the STP problems died with it. Common home wifi has also grown up a lot since 2002. So a person can hard-wire their Sonos sub, soundbar, and surround speakers into the LAN without fear of badness -- or use one or more of those wirelessly, instead. All without problems.

It was pretty neat. It's still pretty neat today.

Also MIMO.

And don't think it's relevant to compare what to do in a large space with what one should do at home. The requirements are entirely different.

In a large space with many users I'd use small channels and many access points. I want it to work good enough for everyone to have calls, and have good aggregate throughput.

In a two bed home I'd use large channels and probably only one AP. Peak single device speed is MUCH more important than aggregate speed.

And in a home it matters much more what channels are being busyed by neighbors.

For latency, of course, there is only wired. Even with few devices.

If something is free, you're the product. But if it isn't free, you're paying to be the product.

I operate a large enterprise wireless network with 80mhz 5Ghz channels and 160Mhz 6Ghz channels. It is possible if your environment allows.