+1 on hardwiring. I am also using a (technically) custom Blue-Jeans cable from my modem/router to the opposite end of the room. It actually goes through the walls into the attic area so you're not looking at it in the room. It is an uninterrupted single cable running from the modem/router to an EtherRegen. The "optimized" output of the Regen goes to my Roon server and the optical output to my streamer. The other outputs go to other parts of the system. Then I ran another long cable to a standard TP-Link switch and the outputs of that feed items that only need ethernet for data and updates and so forth.
There are a few folks here that feel like having optical in your path reduces musical immersion. I'm not going to tell anyone what sounds best in their own system but as for me, in my system, I cannot detect anything being lost when using optical (I tried it both ways).
Some people don't have the option of using ethernet and this thread has shown that folks are getting very satisfactory performance from wifi setups. I am firmly in the camp of using ethernet whenever possible and wifi if not.
I will say this in support of wifi though. All but one of the TV's in my house get their signal exclusively through wifi and I get an absolutely fantastic picture on all of them. There's a lot more data involved in a video signal vs a purely audio one, so I think obvious conclusions can be drawn.
