[SOLVED] How can I get lowest latency possible (with shitty illustration)

[Aurosis]

Hello:

 

I am setting up my new setup and I want to get the lowest ping possible. 

My room does not have an internet connection, and when I ask people what I should do, they say: "jUsT bUy A wLaN rEpEaTeR", but WLAN Repeaters are inconsistent and their connection fluctuates too often.

 

So what should I do to get the best connection possible (sub 10 ping)... Access Point? Powerline? Switch? WLAN Repeater? 20 meter ethernet cable?

 

See my (shitty) illustration to understand everything better,

 

very nice,

 

yrs,

Aurosis

 

 

 

[Guest]

Well the lowest latency possible will always be an ethernet cable. Powerline also works if the electricity cable circuit is short enough

[minibois]

3 minutes ago, Aurosis said:

So what should I do to get the best connection possible (sub 10 ping)... Access Point? Powerline? Switch? WLAN Repeater? 20 meter ethernet cable?

Definitely an Ethernet cable. Most consistent and cheapest of the bunch.

 

Access point needs to be wired and can only transmit wifi, wlan repeater adds a bunch of latency, switch just splits Ethernet connections and powerline adapters could be good, but also bad.

 

Ethernet cable just works.

[Caennanu]

My geuss is you are asking because there are some limitations to the situation, without you actually saying what they are preventing us from giving you a proper response.

People above me have stated indeed that ethernet is best. If this goes thru a switch or is a direct connection doesn't really matter. Just try to avoid having many connection points, as each of them means a loss of signal quality and thus increased ping.

 

I have drawn some arrows on your illustration which are the most logical ways to implement the cable.

 

[TryHard_Dev]

Ethernet is probably your best bet, plus a wired connection is always better at data transfers than wireless except with mice.

[Aurosis]

24 minutes ago, Caennanu said:

My geuss is you are asking because there are some limitations to the situation, without you actually saying what they are preventing us from giving you a proper response.

People above me have stated indeed that ethernet is best. If this goes thru a switch or is a direct connection doesn't really matter. Just try to avoid having many connection points, as each of them means a loss of signal quality and thus increased ping.

 

I have drawn some arrows on your illustration which are the most logical ways to implement the cable.

 

Thanks for the good message, but doesn't an ethernet cable prevent me from closing my door? I think the cable might not even go through, so the door needs to be open at all times, or...?

[Caennanu]

7 minutes ago, Aurosis said:

Thanks for the good message, but doesn't an ethernet cable prevent me from closing my door? I think the cable might not even go through, so the door needs to be open at all times, or...?

and there we have a limitation

It all depends on your situation really. Most homes have empty tubes running between floors specifically made for this application or more generally for electricity.

If you have empty tubes, i would utilize them, they will be the neatest way to pull the cables to the desired location.

 

If you have no such tubes, running them along the wall can be a good alternative. Maybe drill a small hole in the wall so it doesn't block the door.

The doorway is also an option, depending on how high of a clearance you have to the floor you can just run it under. If you do this, make sure the cable canot move upwards to prevent 'cutting' the cable by closing or opening the door.

[Caennanu]

BitWit 'recently' did some home improvements of his home, you may take some idea's from him?

 

[jj9987]

31 minutes ago, TryHard_Dev said:

a wired connection is always better at data transfers than wireless except with mice.

wat. How is wireless better data transfer than wired with mice?

[Aurosis]

22 minutes ago, Caennanu said:

BitWit 'recently' did some home improvements of his home, you may take some idea's from him?

 

Fuck... that... lol... however i might be able to sneak a ethernet cable under the door and use a cable raceway alongside the wall. What is your opinion on Powerlines? The house I live in was built between 1999-2000, so the wiring might be shitty, but I don't know. I also live in Switzerland, so the wiring might be better than in a third-world-country. What do you think?

[Caennanu]

Just now, Aurosis said:

F... that... lol... however i might be able to sneak a ethernet cable under the door and use a cable raceway alongside the wall. What is your opinion on Powerlines? The house I live in was built between 1999-2000, so the wiring might be shitty, but I don't know. I also live in Switzerland, so the wiring might be better than in a third-world-country. What do you think?

i'm not a fan of powerline adapters in all honesty. In my line of work i have seen them work awesome in the most bizarre situations, but also seen them fail in the most prestine setups, to me they are literally a wild card.

 

In theory 2000+ build should have proper wiring, and it should work if the plug connections are on the same breaker. When you have to transfer breakers you may already run into issues, and thats not everything. Basically anything connected to the same powergrid can and will cause disturbance to the signal. Dimmers are the worst, but things like flikkering lights (think about a christmas tree) are very bad too.

 

And to be honest, i think powerline adapters might be working better in third world country's, simply because they don't carry as many electrical devices on the grids

[porina]

If you own the place I'd put in fixed wiring somehow. The details will depend on the house itself, how well you can hide the cabling or if you even don't care. I literally got a 30m cat5e cable (because it was cheaper than the 15m I actually needed) to replace powerline adapters as it was just too unreliable. It would randomly stop working and I'd have to go around now and then power cycling them in the hopes it comes back. However I only tried one product and it may not be representative of all of them.

 

As a 2nd choice, I'd use wifi but get your own separate AP, find an unused channel and don't let any other devices on it other than the performance sensitive ones.

[Aurosis]

44 minutes ago, Caennanu said:

i'm not a fan of powerline adapters in all honesty. In my line of work i have seen them work awesome in the most bizarre situations, but also seen them fail in the most prestine setups, to me they are literally a wild card.

 

In theory 2000+ build should have proper wiring, and it should work if the plug connections are on the same breaker. When you have to transfer breakers you may already run into issues, and thats not everything. Basically anything connected to the same powergrid can and will cause disturbance to the signal. Dimmers are the worst, but things like flikkering lights (think about a christmas tree) are very bad too.

 

And to be honest, i think powerline adapters might be working better in third world country's, simply because they don't carry as many electrical devices on the grids

So... if I want the best ping for my given location, I should stick with "Router --> Ethernet Cable --> PC"?

 

And... is a 1 meter ethernet cable faster, than an 25 meter ethernet cable? Are there real-world differences?

[Aurosis]

39 minutes ago, porina said:

If you own the place I'd put in fixed wiring somehow. The details will depend on the house itself, how well you can hide the cabling or if you even don't care. I literally got a 30m cat5e cable (because it was cheaper than the 15m I actually needed) to replace powerline adapters as it was just too unreliable. It would randomly stop working and I'd have to go around now and then power cycling them in the hopes it comes back. However I only tried one product and it may not be representative of all of them.

 

As a 2nd choice, I'd use wifi but get your own separate AP, find an unused channel and don't let any other devices on it other than the performance sensitive ones.

I was thinking of getting a 20 - 25 meter cat 8.1 cable... the good old cat 8.1... can never go wrong with that, right?

[Aurosis]

2 hours ago, Medicate said:

Well the lowest latency possible will always be an ethernet cable. Powerline also works if the electricity cable circuit is short enough

How do you figure if the electricity circuit is short enough? Tough one, eh?

[Caennanu]

10 minutes ago, Aurosis said:

I was thinking of getting a 20 - 25 meter cat 8.1 cable... the good old cat 8.1... can never go wrong with that, right?

thats one way, but honestly, cat5e will do just fine. Unless you plan on routing it alongside a 380v 'wire'?

 

But yes, best is an ethernet point to point connection from router to device.

There is real life world differences between a 1m and 25m cable, but it all depends on quality of the cable. A new cable could have been handled wrong causing quality degradation or malfunction all together. 

Theoretically 100m cable of Cat5e supports 1gbit connections. Have yet to see this amount of cable for a single run in a household tho.

Anything higher than Cat5e is better, but as you go up in numbers, the cable tends to become less and less manageable.

If you're doing this, why not go straight for a fiber connection?

[Aurosis]

11 minutes ago, Caennanu said:

thats one way, but honestly, cat5e will do just fine. Unless you plan on routing it alongside a 380v 'wire'?

 

But yes, best is an ethernet point to point connection from router to device.

There is real life world differences between a 1m and 25m cable, but it all depends on quality of the cable. A new cable could have been handled wrong causing quality degradation or malfunction all together. 

Theoretically 100m cable of Cat5e supports 1gbit connections. Have yet to see this amount of cable for a single run in a household tho.

Anything higher than Cat5e is better, but as you go up in numbers, the cable tends to become less and less manageable.

If you're doing this, why not go straight for a fiber connection?

Any idea how much a fiber installation costs?

[Kilrah]

23 minutes ago, Aurosis said:

And... is a 1 meter ethernet cable faster, than an 25 meter ethernet cable? Are there real-world differences?

No

[Aurosis]

11 minutes ago, Caennanu said:

thats one way, but honestly, cat5e will do just fine. Unless you plan on routing it alongside a 380v 'wire'?

 

But yes, best is an ethernet point to point connection from router to device.

There is real life world differences between a 1m and 25m cable, but it all depends on quality of the cable. A new cable could have been handled wrong causing quality degradation or malfunction all together. 

Theoretically 100m cable of Cat5e supports 1gbit connections. Have yet to see this amount of cable for a single run in a household tho.

Anything higher than Cat5e is better, but as you go up in numbers, the cable tends to become less and less manageable.

If you're doing this, why not go straight for a fiber connection?

I live at my mum's house, and I will be staying there for maybe tops 2-4 years... I don't think it's worth it, to call someone in, to rework the entire internet wiring. 

[Caennanu]

1 minute ago, Aurosis said:

Any idea how much a fiber installation costs?

that varies depending on your situation. how much cable do you need, does your current hardware support it? do you want to connect it from router to pc, or router to router and the likes.

fiber optic cables for 25m run roughly 20 - 50 euro. a 2nd hand router / switch with SFP and 8 ports runs between 30 and 50 euro. Assuming your router doens't support this you will need 2. if you want router to pc, you will need a fiber optic card for the pc will run between 40 and 400 euro, depending if you want 1gbps or 10gbps. so as you can see, lots of variables.

[porina]

34 minutes ago, Aurosis said:

And... is a 1 meter ethernet cable faster, than an 25 meter ethernet cable? Are there real-world differences?

No real world differences. Propagation delay is a thing. Light in a vacuum would take of the ball park 100ns to travel 30m. Signals will be slower in copper, but even if we're talking microseconds, that's irrelevant compared to the miliseconds of network traffic itself which is 1000x slower.

 

32 minutes ago, Aurosis said:

I was thinking of getting a 20 - 25 meter cat 8.1 cable... the good old cat 8.1... can never go wrong with that, right?

Is that even a thing? I've not bothered looking beyond cat 6 since that'll do you for 10gig, and this doesn't sound like you will even need that much.

[Aurosis]

13 minutes ago, Caennanu said:

that varies depending on your situation. how much cable do you need, does your current hardware support it? do you want to connect it from router to pc, or router to router and the likes.

fiber optic cables for 25m run roughly 20 - 50 euro. a 2nd hand router / switch with SFP and 8 ports runs between 30 and 50 euro. Assuming your router doens't support this you will need 2. if you want router to pc, you will need a fiber optic card for the pc will run between 40 and 400 euro, depending if you want 1gbps or 10gbps. so as you can see, lots of variables.

I assume fibre optic cables are inside the walls? I think it's not worth it, for my current situation. I also play on a PS4 until the 3000 Series comes out. Maybe a lil 3080 Ti, eh? I think I buy a 25 meter Ethernet cable and a overkill netgear router and call it a day. Thanks for your help, how do I give you a trophy?

[Caennanu]

1 minute ago, Aurosis said:

I assume fibre optic cables are inside the walls? I think it's not worth it, for my current situation. I also play on a PS4 until the 3000 Series comes out. Maybe a lil 3080 Ti, eh? I think I buy a 25 meter Ethernet cable and a overkill netgear router and call it a day. Thanks for your help, how do I give you a trophy?

you're welcome. no idea about trophy's. don't care much.

Treat others as you wish to be treated, right?

[Aurosis]

7 minutes ago, porina said:

No real world differences. Propagation delay is a thing. Light in a vacuum would take of the ball park 100ns to travel 30m. Signals will be slower in copper, but even if we're talking microseconds, that's irrelevant compared to the miliseconds of network traffic itself which is 1000x slower.

 

Is that even a thing? I've not bothered looking beyond cat 6 since that'll do you for 10gig, and this doesn't sound like you will even need that much.

YES ITS A THING. I think it is socrates who said:

 

"When in doubt, buy CAT 8.1."

– Socrates, 375 BC 

[Windows7ge]

41 minutes ago, Aurosis said:

YES ITS A THING. I think it is socrates who said:

 

"When in doubt, buy CAT 8.1."

– Socrates, 375 BC 

If you want to future-proof for a 10Gbit server you can look into Cat6a or Fiber-optics. If you don't plan on it just buy Cat5e you won't see any benefit for the extra expense.

 

Fiber-optics are cool but you won't see a benefit going that route either. Your very basic application does not warrant it. Cat5e or 5.0GHz Wi-Fi would be your best options for the cheapest/easiest/lowest ping.

 

And yes. Normally you would install the cable in the ceiling or walls but if that's something you're not interested in Wi-Fi is a option.