Or instead of being a penny pincher get an AX wireless router and not contribute more ewaste.
Which would you recommend?
The EAP660 is pretty good. I replaced a few mesh routers with a single EAP660 on a second floor ceiling. I like that they allow you to run a single one without a controller. I'm happy to no longer tie my router to my access point as it was getting to be a bit too much effort to make changes or upgrade before I split their roles. No WRT support, but I don't think that's a concern for just an access point.
Off-topic, but I just learned about another, practical networking utility, yesterday. "powerline adaptors" [0] Basically, buy these adaptors and for ~$100, you can have create a "wired" LAN connection using power outlets in a home. [0] https://www.techradar.com/news/the-best-powerline-adaptors
It would be more practical in many places now to use leftover "hardline" phone plugs, especially because when they are disconnected from service they are sometimes quite literally disconnected and you have much fewer concerns about bleedover into neighbors. Speeds won't be great for that sort of ethernet-over-phone wire, especially because most landlines used awful, cheeap wires, but in some cases it is faster than p…
This happened to me. The phone lines are actually cat5 so just need a new socket for home ethernet. That was a happy day.
Off-topic, but I just learned about another, practical networking utility, yesterday. "powerline adaptors" [0] Basically, buy these adaptors and for ~$100, you can have create a "wired" LAN connection using power outlets in a home. [0] https://www.techradar.com/news/the-best-powerline-adaptors
It would be more practical in many places now to use leftover "hardline" phone plugs, especially because when they are disconnected from service they are sometimes quite literally disconnected and you have much fewer concerns about bleedover into neighbors. Speeds won't be great for that sort of ethernet-over-phone wire, especially because most landlines used awful, cheeap wires, but in some cases it is faster than p…
I've seen a lot of phone runs done with cat5e. Phone line adapters might not even be necessary in many cases, only new wallplates!
Minor Quibble: £85 is not a cheap ethernet switch. It's an entertaining and informative read, but it's more like low-end datacentre hardware than that cheap €25 switch I've got in my home office. A little disappointing as I was hoping I'd have a cheeky high-bandwidth raspberry-pi alternative on my hands ...
Well it's cheap'ish for a managed gigabit switch...and "managed" is where you begin to add $$$, even in cheapo world. Also current price on ebay for a refurb N1108T-ON unit is 360 quid, so I reckon relatively speaking you could say it's cheap.
Yeah, I found the same thing on the prices - but interestingly looking at completed sales, prices are more like ~£100. I'm assuming something has recently changed to make people mark them up more, and no-one's biting yet.
It would be more practical in many places now to use leftover "hardline" phone plugs, especially because when they are disconnected from service they are sometimes quite literally disconnected and you have much fewer concerns about bleedover into neighbors. Speeds won't be great for that sort of ethernet-over-phone wire, especially because most landlines used awful, cheeap wires, but in some cases it is faster than p…
I've seen a lot of phone runs done with cat5e. Phone line adapters might not even be necessary in many cases, only new wallplates!
It is nice if you are lucky and the installers weren't cheap. I've seen a few of the places that use Cat 5 to service phone cabling do crazy things in the walls like split twisted pairs to different wall plates and bad cheap phone transformers (that grossly bleedover noise across the twisted pairs, entirely removing the benefits of twisted pairs in the first place in some cases) in long Cat 5 runs.
There's a lot of things that made Cat 5 cheap for running phone lines in houses and most of them make Cat 5 useless for Ethernet, unfortunately.
Off-topic, but I just learned about another, practical networking utility, yesterday. "powerline adaptors" [0] Basically, buy these adaptors and for ~$100, you can have create a "wired" LAN connection using power outlets in a home. [0] https://www.techradar.com/news/the-best-powerline-adaptors
It would be more practical in many places now to use leftover "hardline" phone plugs, especially because when they are disconnected from service they are sometimes quite literally disconnected and you have much fewer concerns about bleedover into neighbors. Speeds won't be great for that sort of ethernet-over-phone wire, especially because most landlines used awful, cheeap wires, but in some cases it is faster than p…
Even if you could manage to find some ADSL+ equipment, you are going to tap out at around 48Mbps, I'm not sure if you can push unshielded, twisted 2-pair wire any faster. One downside would be that all of the phone jacks in the house are tied together, it would be a A->B kind of connection. I regularly get much faster speeds with my powerline adapters and if you have multiples paired, they create an actual network on the powerlines.
The author mentioned that 10gig switches were expensive and loud, but these days you can get fanless 10gig switches for pretty cheap. I have a fanless mikrotik switch at home with 4 10Gb SFP+ ports that cost like $130 (and has excellent industrial design).