My IT experience goes back to the days of thick-wire Ethernet. I’ve always felt that wired is always “better” than wireless. I’ve got wired connections in every room of my house.
But I’m trying to get with the times. Most TVs I have run just fine on wireless. I’m typing on my laptop now, no wires. I can’t even remember any kind of throughput or reliability problems.
So, when I set up my new HA hardware, I didn’t even bother stringing a wire to it. I did, however, set up a graph showing network throughput from System Monitor:
I’m finding it really hard to justify my long-held belief that a wired connection is necessary, or even better, for HA. I feel like maybe it’s time for me to join the 21st century and just leave it wireless. Or can someone talk me out of it?
A friend made an analogy: it’s the difference between a mobile phone and a land-line (remember thoses?) wireless mostly works most of the time; wired always works most of the time
I believe that wired will always out perform wireless because it is less prone to interference and more deterministic. But, wireless is typically “good enough” for all practical purposes.
So, I use wired for all switch connections, access point connections, and device connections where I want the best reliability and performance. I use wireless for the “good enough” cases or where wired is not an option (mobile devices, etc.).
Old Bloke tuning in here:) , and as both of you i know that, the fundamental parts of hardware etc are still the same, bits/bytes are still bits/bytes, a disks sector likewise, a Processor, NIC etc, is still following roughly the same fundamental rules
But to test your idea, and want “another” input, Put your i.e bigscreen TV on a Power-measure plug, Your Router Aswell,
Connect TV throuh Ethernet:
Stream a film from internet same Resolution , 1 hour every day, for a week , And leave/use your TV as usual
Connect you TV through WIFI:
Do the same as above !
Monitor Your Routers temperature, and the Power-consumption of both Devices , and collect the result and Compare
Im sure your TV will consume alot more Power, connected through WIFI
I Believe your Router also will consume more Power Handling all the WIFI requests/responses
Sensor
Switch
Basically non video or non streaming
For camera and streaming wired is preferred but really it don’t matter much anymore
This holds true for zwave and other wireless tech
From security perspective wired is best as it cannot be block or manipulated but unless comnercial use, critical use or you being stalked by Local IT pro it is not much of concern
Wired if convenient, easy or just in mood
Wireless if difficult, inconvenient, or just too cheap to buy wire.
Some very good points. Let me throw out my first thoughts on them…
Good analogy. It took me a while to dig through some old records, but I think the last time I had a land-line phone was March of 2012. And IIRC, the cellular network was already more reliable than the land line, even back then. But of course my home wired network is a lot more robust, and better maintained, than what’s left of the old wired phone network.
I do follow your approach: Wired where it’s needed or easy to do, wireless where it meets the need and is more practical.
I’m sure you’re correct, and it is certainly a factor to consider. But to be honest, power consumption of these devices is such a small part of my overall power budget that it doesn’t really factor in to these kinds of decisions.
Exactly. Back when I was doing information security we were dealing with banks, military installations and nuke plants. Sometimes I have to remind myself I might not need the same level of security for my home.
For the 1 hour maybe, thou i would think more, and im sure he’s not only uses his TV 1 hour a day, and while Ethernet is “resting”, wifi is “waiting/listening” for signals, on the router-side the ethernet signals could also just be pass-through for high-consumers(if the router supports it
But if you believe so, just test , Your big screen TV is most likely the costly (in average +80Wh), while in use
Anyways as he don’t find his electricity bill as part of his HA investment, subject is closed
The only real difference I can think of is that the 2.4GHz wireless space is getting more crowded all the time with tens/hundreds of devices even in my own household. With every interaction of every device that’s going to produce a little but ever slightly so much more potential for interference between the devices.
We even see the standard recommendation on these forums for people having trouble with their Zigbee network to make sure there’s proper clearance between higher power wifi devices to minimize interference. Have you ever tried using a bluetooth headset within a couple of feet of a running microwave oven? Iffy at best.
And there’s endless talk about making sure that your wireless network channel separation is adequate to minimize interference. And that’s for regular higher power devices. Lower power devices are likely to be even more impacted.
That said it’s usually fine for low bandwidth devices that have a good wireless connection to the other device but as HA itself needs reliable connections to those other devices via different radio’s then I believe that not adding that one more potential source of interference resulting in a strange little packet loss and now suddenly you can’t figure why that zigbee/BT devices is acting squirrely.
it’s just one less possible point of failure to eliminate. and if you have the availability then there’s literally no downside that comes to mind.
Love the thread drift! It got me thinking that the parasitic load of all the TVs in the house is probably significant. There is a TV in the room I’m in now, and it’s plugged in to a power strip with an on/off button. Just the TV and a charging transformer are plugged into that strip. Neither is being used. The idea was to leave it off except for those rare times one of those things is needed. What position do you think I just found the switch in? Yup. OK, I admit it. I need to do better.
But before anyone jumps on me for not being environmentally conscious, it was you lot who talked me into getting HA off my old, energy-efficient RPi and migrating to a repurposed laptop. Cut me some slack. At least I keep the lid closed so the display isn’t wasting power.
