2 part topic:
Not long ago I had Frontier Fiber installed. The drop is in the basement and he left me enough CAT6 to run upstairs. I was running fiber and cable concurrently for a bit until…
We had a nearby lightening strike a few weeks ago. That seems to have taken out the Comcast modem, my wifi switch and few other random things and just discovered today - the ethernet port on a Wavlink dock (the laptop ran off that) and the ethernet port of my Mini. I will still troubleshoot those but I think they are gone. Has anyone found a USB ethernet to work reasonably well?
Back to the fiber itself, we ran the cable upstairs and did the ends - it works but I now only get 100mbs instead of 1gb, both on wifi and hardwire. It is a little less laggy than trying to hit wifi all the way in the basement though.
What they installed was a Fiber box (like the cable modem) and an eero wifi unit. I moved the eero upstairs. I did a chat with support and they said it could be that the cable is damaged. I can recrimp the ends, but I’m wondering if the eero is unhappy being so far away from the fiber box. I always kept the cable modem and wifi next to each other.
I think I can get long fiber patch cables and move everything upstairs? Has anyone done this and do you have a recommended supplier?
I would avoid no-name el-cheapo adapters. Some friends of mine have use these and while they usually work, they also seem to overheat and fail under load. If you move a lot of network traffic, then you will need something with good quality.
I don’t have specific experience, but I would definitely take a look at the adapters that Apple sells. The Apple-branded adapter is no longer made (and is slow), but they sell a $30 Belkin adapter which is USB-C and gigabit.
If you’d prefer some other brand, I’d consider those that have a generally good reputation for consumer network equipment, including:
Belkin. Their page shows 10 models with different capabilities ranging from $30-100
I forgot to mention my computers. The dock is for my 2015 MBPr, I think I got it in 2020 and it took a long time to find one that would work with the older machine. It wasn’t cheap. I do appreciate it’s other capabilities (except I could never get a good monitor connection through it) but I will miss the ethernet portion of it. I am not sure a USB-C dock would work with my machine even with an adapter, I remember many of them having machine and OS requirements that I didn’t meet. I don’t remember finding a Thunderbolt one that would work either, but I will look again.