I was exhausted yesterday, having spent hours moving and cleaning furniture, all so that I could get a new Cat 6a Ethernet cable installed and get onto the 10Gbps highway.
You see, last week, ViewQwest slashed the price of its 10Gbps home broadband plan for homes to around SGD $40 a month. I’ve been on a 1Gbps plan since 2016 and I’ve been waiting to upgrade to higher speeds. Today (2 Oct), I should be getting my ViewQwest modem, and then I can plug into the future! But wait…
It’s all exciting but there are so many obstacles if you want to achieve 10Gbps speeds in your home. Paul Mah has written extensively about this. My home network is optimised for 1Gbps (with compatible routers and devices) so everything needs to be upgraded to go beyond that speed.
Currently, 10Gbps speeds are currently only possible through Ethernet cables, preferably Cat 6a. That means your house needs to be wired up with new cables. I discussed this with my friend Melvin Heng who runs HomeTechies SG (call him if you want to optimise your home network!) and I figured it was too troublesome to drill through three bedroom walls and add trunking around the home. So, I only replaced the existing Ethernet cable that runs from my living room to my balcony PC area. The installation took an hour but I spent four hours moving and cleaning stuff! I will only wire up the whole apartment with Cat 6a when I renovate my house in the future.
Next, you need to invest in 10Gbps equipment.
For data transmission, there are very few consumer WiFi 7 wireless routers that have 10Gbps ports and they usually cost above $700. They will transmit 10Gbps through cables but not more than 3Gbps wirelessly (and that’s assuming you have a WiFi 7-compatible phone or device).
Finally, your devices need to be able to process 10Gbps of data. I bought a 10Gbps Ethernet card for my balcony PC so it can do so. But my bedroom has no Ethernet port, so I ordered a Wifi 7 add-in card for my PC there, and will cross my fingers for good wireless speeds.
Melvin told me, “Do you really want to do this? For daily usage, you’re not going to notice much difference vs the 1Gbps plan you are on.”
I said, “I can’t help it. It’s FOMO. How can you give me a 10Gbps pipe and I only use 1Gbps of it?”
Melvin: “But how often do you need to download heavy content?”
Me: “Erm, once every few months when I download a new game from Steam…”