LAN, WLAN, bandwidths and contents?

Interesting discussion. I was also one of those who spent a lot of time gaming between the ages of about 13-18. We played CS (Counter-Strike) around the clock. First at LAN parties, then of course online in some leagues or tournaments.

Even though many find it ridiculous, during that time I learned a lot both in terms of IT and teamwork.

Yes, something came of me too, even though during school holidays I saw little daylight, except for football training. I spent the rest of my childhood on the soccer field. Eventually, women and alcohol came along and then the interest in gaming was over, like for everyone else. I also don’t remember a single person who messed up their life because of it. On the contrary.

P.S.: Our Kinderzimmer haben LAN

Seriously, is the bandwidth a problem at home?! Currently, there are two of us and we have 250mbits at the router and Wi-Fi with 5 ghz, my iPad theoretically has something like 780 in download speed. That should actually be enough, even though the TV is connected via cable with 1gbits. BTW: We have customers (in rural areas)... they have 10 MBits or for a lot of money 50 symmetric - for up to 100 employees.... Everything else: luxury problems

My bandwidth should be sufficient for now, since real 90/30MBit have been available since yesterday. (I only went with it because Telekom's customer retention department made a good offer!)

Anywhere in the house where a LAN connection could be stationary, there should be a LAN socket for me, and the rest then goes via WLAN.

Speaking of WLAN, I need an access point. The options are the Ubiquiti Unifi Accesspoint AC Lite or the Ubiquiti UniFi Accesspoint AC LR. Does anyone happen to be using one of these two models and want to say something about it?

Neither of the two, take the AC Pro.

No Ubiquiti at all because it's too expensive. Home users don't need it. Otherwise, the Lite without LR. LR doesn't help in Germany anyway because increasing power is not legal and even if you don't care about that, the performance of the clients doesn't magically increase on its own. Wasn't the Pro just being phased out and the Nano the successor?

Yes, but how many people can operate their router like that? Most haven't even changed the password or use abc123 as their Wi-Fi password.

Either you acquire the expertise yourself or you buy it expensively through a service provider (I also first learned my IT experience through gaming and later expanded it during studies/work).

Hours of gaming can sometimes be useful. But I also know people from before who unfortunately never made the leap (35, never had a girlfriend, still living with parents and looking for work). It's a matter of personal type whether intensive consumption is harmful or not.

The same goes for excessive TV consumption: You can also educate yourself through television in general. It doesn’t always have to be Hart4 RTL2 shows; there are many (for me) beautiful/interesting animal/world/physics documentaries on N24 and similar channels. It’s not “how long” that matters but what you watch.

To get back to the topic of bandwidth: Please do not equate bandwidth with "speed." While they are physically related, they have nothing to do with parallel/multiplexed applications. 240 Mbit/s is quite fast if you run a constant application (e.g., a large 4k stream). However, if many parallel devices access the only available internet connection, even the highest bandwidth can become strained. It depends on the equipment used and the related software settings.

An illustrative example: I can drink faster from a Volvic water bottle than from a standard glass bottle (because the Volvic opening is bigger = more bandwidth). But if the whole family wants to drink from the only Volvic bottle at once, a bottleneck occurs because the single bottle has to be passed around. Either you have a second bottle (2 standard glass bottles would be cheaper and the family would quench their thirst faster) for parallel drinking (IT term: trunking) or you have pre-portioned the Volvic into different glasses (priority/QoS).

Regarding router choice: I personally like Asus RT-AC routers. They cost a bit but offer a lot. It’s important that the router supports 802.11ac (standard nowadays) and the more antennas the router has, the better the MIMO = speed. PoE is also a nice gimmick if you want to supply power over the LAN sockets and not supply the end device externally/battery-powered.