Ethernet

According to ChatGPT: When data is missing in a lossless audio stream, playback pauses, drops out, or briefly goes silent, because the decoder cannot reconstruct audio without exact data—and it will not invent approximations.

So if you have sufficient bandwidth, are streaming files using lossless encoding, your streamer is getting perfect copies of the original files. No “line noise” or other mysterious interference. As long as you’re feeding the streamer fast enough, you’re good- whether you have a wired or wireless connection. 

@mggartner appreciate your 30 years of IT experience. Maybe I'm misinterpreting your post after rereading it. My response was going to say:

I just don’t think anyone is arguing data integrity, though. EMI and RFI aren’t changing the 1s and 0s. EMI/RFI can potentially affect the noise floor of the analog output. It’s not a data problem, but an electrical problem. 

EEs - feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. 

The analog output isn’t on the network cable or wifi. That’s coming out of the DAC. (Digital to Analog Converter.)

I’m not sure how you’d get analog noise on a digital connection. You don’t hear static on a Sirius XM radio. There are plenty of other places you might get analog noise though. As I said - you can believe whatever you want. I just saw a lot of gibberish in this thread with nothing backing it up. If a $150 CAT8 cable sounds better to you than a $10-15 CAT6, that’s OK with me. 

@mggartner this is not a new subject. Stop arguing. Research threads on this and other forums and all the information available on the internet. You don’t know what you don’t know. Besides you’re derailing the discussion which is rude. 

The OP wants to know if it’s OK to use a 25 foot cable or wifi for his connection. Either one is perfectly fine, as long as his audio isn’t pausing or dropping out. (BTW - The max length for Ethernet cables is 328 feet.) All the other talk about high end cables and mesh routers or whatever is off the topic. I think folks should get straight answers to simple questions. That’s not arguing, and it’s not rude. I’m sure you know a great deal about high end audio. Maybe you just need to learn more about ethernet.