With the vast majority of internet-connected devices supporting wireless internet access now, many people find wired networking in the home to be obsolete. However, is this really true? While wireless networking has improved substantially since its first debut, wired networks still have an advantage in speed and reliability, which makes a wired network an incredibly useful addition for your home. If your home isn't wired for internet networking, read on for three reasons to add it to your home. 

1. You Avoid Overloading Your Wireless Router

Wireless routers are limited in their capacity to serve devices in two ways. The first is that the processors in most wireless routers aren't very fast. The more devices they have connected, the more processing power they need to use in order to route network traffic to them all. When too many devices are connected to a wireless router, the entire network begins to slow down, since the router's processor has difficulty trying to keep up with the increased traffic.

The second limitation is the router's own ability to transmit wireless data. Streaming high-definition video takes a significant amount of bandwidth, and a wireless router can struggle to transmit data when many devices are streaming video at once because its wireless transmission capacity is simply not large enough.

When you install network cabling in your home, you move as many devices as possible off of your wireless router. After all, some devices, such as smart phones and tablets, can't be wired—this helps them obtain faster internet speeds by reducing congestion in your wireless router as much as possible.

2. Reliability Isn't Based on Distance

One of the main pitfalls of wireless internet is that you need to receive a strong signal. If your signal is weak, your internet connection may periodically drop, and a weak signal also reduces in poor internet speeds. Devices that are far away from your internet router may perform poorly. Wired internet is not affected by this limitation—modern internet cables are capable of transmitting data over very long distances at very fast speeds.

3. Wired Connections Offer Faster Speeds

Cat6, Cat6a, and Cat7 internet cables all have a throughput of 10 gigabytes or higher. As mentioned above, this speed isn't affected by distance, either. These speeds are considerably faster than the ones you will experience in the majority of wireless configurations, which makes network cabling perfect for bandwidth-intensive tasks such as videoconferencing in your home office or steaming online videos. You'll experience fewer interruptions due to poor internet speeds.

Overall, the speed and reliability advantages of network cabling mean that it's still very useful for home networking, even if most devices now support wireless internet. It also has the added advantage of increasing speed and reliability for devices that can't connect to your wired home network, so you'll experience benefits across all of your devices. If your home isn't wired for internet and you're not sure how to set up your system, contact a professional network cabling company, such as 1st Key Technology Group, Inc. Installing wired networking in a home is very inexpensive, as installation costs and the cost of internet cables are both low.