Which internet connection type would be best for me?

Question

My router is downstairs, and my room where I'm going to put my computer is upstairs and on the opposite side of the house from my router. I get decent wifi connection in my room (3-4 bars) and a wifi adapter would cost ~$10. I also have a cable coming up to my room for television (my internet also comes through cable) so I could buy a cheap cable modem and run an ethernet cable to my computer, modem would cost about $25. Or I could get a powerline device, which would cost about $35. I have a 20 mbps isp plan (I think) and I plan to watch online videos (hulu/youtube) and do some light gaming. Do you think wireless would be good enough or should I spend more to go with a modem or powerline?

Update:

And also, the cable wire coming up to my room is quite long, so I'm sure it loses quite a bit of signal. Any answers are appreciated :)

Update 2:

The only wifi signal my laptop sees is the one from my router. Only one of my neighbors' houses is fairly close to mine, and i'm not sure if they even have wifi, so I hope that won't be too big of an issue.

L.N. · Accepted Answer

Depending on how many of your neighbors also have WiFi and what channels they are using, streaming video over WiFi may not work very well. I had to go to one of the high end dual band 802.11n routers to get the 5Ghz WiFi band to get HD video to stream well in my own home, and it does work well. There was pretty much nobody else using the 5Ghz band, but the 2.4Ghz band was really crowded and the videos were jerky before the switch. 

Powerline adapters are pretty iffy. Going the cable modem route would probably require you to pay for the extra connection. The ethernet cable is the best choice for stability and throughput.

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Which internet connection type would be best for me?

1 Answer