Wifi vs hardwired for streaming

@larseand The T8 has an SFP, use it. A long runs of optical is your best choice. 

Is there any advantage to putting a Wifi mesh point next to my equipment and using ethernet into it over using the streamer's built-in WiFi? I'm getting good signal into everything using the built-in WiFi.

@asahitoro  There are many here who’ve used Mesh or Wi-Fi extenders who’ve experienced significant improvements so I’d say it’s certainly worth trying, and in the scheme of things it needn’t be all that expensive to at least try.  From a common sense perspective when you use Wi-Fi you have the added step of the signal having to go through the streamer’s Wi-Fi receiver (of who knows what quality), and the additional processing that requires almost certainly generates some noise and noise is the enemy of better streaming quality.  So given that, the relatively low cost of entry, and the potential for significant improvements it’s kind of a no brainer in my book.  Plus you’d be less susceptible to Wi-Fi issues/dropouts in the future, which is nice.  Just my $0.02 FWIW. 

@erik_squires if your power is low so that your neighbors will not see your SSID, then they are not clogging up your radio channels.

 

Whether the neighbors are causing channel congestion for me has nothing to do with my own router, or even lack of a router.  That’s on them and their transmit power and the channel that their router is sitting on.   In an ideal situation routers would spread their signals across all available channels, or at least say "oh, look, there's six other SIDs on channel 4, let me use 8 instead."  but even today that doesn't happen very well. 

Turning my router off, or setting it to 10% or 100% doesn’t change my congestion problem. 

A powerful radio signal will interfere with neighboring devices even if they are on different channels (frequencies). I don’t mean to derail this discussion too far off anymore but my last comments regarding Wifi congestion:

1. You cause congestion on your Wifi network by utilizing high Tx power from your wifi device

2. Your neighbors cause congestion on their Wifi network by utilizing high Tx power on their Wifi device

3. To minimize congestion on YOUR Wifi network lower YOUR Tx power

4. Your neighbors minimize their Wifi congestion by lowering their Tx power

All I can say is to try this if your Wifi device offers Tx adjustability, which most all in one router-firewall-WAPs do these days.

A powerful radio signal will interfere with neighboring devices even if they are on different channels (frequencies). I don’t mean to derail this discussion too far off anymore but my last comments regarding Wifi congestion:

I shouldn’t, if they are on completely independent channels.  On 2.4GHz there are only three independent channels, since each channel is 3.5 channel wide.  5GHz has more channels and also penetrates walls poorly shielding you and neighbors.  6GHz is even better (also because in newer).  My MESH uses 6GHz backhauling and connection to my computer.  Airport Express works on 5GHz, but is next to MESH transmitter.  I cannot detect any 5GHz or 6GHz around, but plenty of 2.4GHz - so I switched this band off to be good neighbor.