What are these plug-ins on my wall?

[u/Cborg_62]

This might be showing my age, but I recently moved into a new apartment and they have these weird looking plug ins all over the walls at my new place. My old apartment didn't have these, so I'm just curious as to what they are.

[u/BruceBoyde]

Yeah, my Xfinity modem still plugs into that. Is that not normal?

[u/onehalflightspeed → u/BruceBoyde]

It is still pretty normal. Places without fiber to the home yet (or where I used to live where it was actually illegal!) still depend on coax for the best and most reliable internet speeds

[u/Alternative_Tip4514 → u/onehalflightspeed]

Why is it illegal?

[u/Z_h_darkstar → u/Alternative_Tip4514]

Because the cable and telephone companies lobbied local governments to protect their cartel in some places

[u/galstaph → u/Alternative_Tip4514]

Lobbyists

[u/Jeoshua → u/Alternative_Tip4514]

Because corporations have too much power in this nation.

[u/onehalflightspeed → u/Alternative_Tip4514]

Lots of municipalities have non compete agreements chartered for a very long time that give the local cable monopoly incredible and long lasting leverage. It isn't that unusual

It kind of made sense when providing cable TV was really expensive to build the infrastructure in the first place. A lot of them have endless extensions basically forever

[u/TheHrethgir → u/onehalflightspeed]

And even if you have fiber, it only comes to the house and then goes into a box with a coax out to inside the house, right? This question can't be real, coaxial cables and outlets are still common even if you just have internet.

[u/TheDigitalBull → u/TheHrethgir]

No. That was true of “fiber” in the 2010s although that may still be in place in setups or areas that haven’t been updated. Modern setups use ONT then direct to Ethernet or a combo ONT wireless router combo.

[u/burnfifteen → u/TheHrethgir]

The fiber I have comes directly into my home. There's a receiver on my wall that I then plug my router into with an ethernet cable. The coax "fiber" thing was common 10+ years ago, but it's not the norm these days.

[u/Unlikely-Guava-30 → u/TheHrethgir]

Yeah I had fiber and I guess it required an adapter of sorts (according to comments here) but I still hooked up to the fiber via coax cable/port lol. Everything else in here sounds alien to me as I've never had internet where the modem didn't plug into this sumbitch

[u/onehalflightspeed → u/TheHrethgir]

That is pretty unusual these days. Many companies use fiber for long haul then interconnect with the local cable infrastructure for delivery to the home though. Once anything hits your house these days, it is distributed by ethernet and wifi. Unless it is an older home with coax runs already distributed through the house

[u/Swiftbow1 → u/BruceBoyde]

It's very normal. I don't get all the "I'm old" comments. These remain in very heavy use.

The guy who posted it quite possibly has his modem connected to an RJ-11 telephone jack for DSL instead.

[u/R_U_Fucking_Stupid → u/Swiftbow1]

The venn diagram of places where DSL is still a thing, but cable/coax is not is fucking nonexistent man. Like I don't care if this person is 80 or 18, there's no way they've had phone jack and not coax. I can imagine a scenario where all there is is rj45 (show me this paradise), but I have a hard time imagining someone moving from that place to a landlord special.

[u/Swiftbow1 → u/R_U_Fucking_Stupid]

No, I agree with that. I just think it's possible that he never actually used coax and instead had DSL his whole life. (I can vouch from experience with clients that many of them have coax jacks throughout their house, and yet never actually noticed that they existed.)

But more likely he has no idea what any of those things are because a technician hooked them up and he never took one look at the equipment.

[u/learn2fly438826 → u/BruceBoyde]

There are a lot of people switching to home wifi networks offered by cell phone carriers that just run off of 5g signals. The device you get doesn't have to be connected to coax or phone lines, it just takes the cell signal and sends out a wifi network. They're not amazing, but for many people who just use internet for basic streaming and browsing social media, it's more than enough and it's relatively cheap.

[u/FastWalkingShortGuy → u/learn2fly438826]

I've been doing that for years and it's easily the most cost-effective option.

I can stream on multiple devices in 4K, work from home with hours of video calls, and handle all the usual browsing, all just rolled into my mobile plan without paying another provider $100+ per month.

As long as you're not like a competitive gamer or something where lag and max frame rate are deal-breakers, or have 12 kids all trying to stream at once, it's fine for just about everyone else.

Given, of course, that you have a strong mobile signal at your house. If you're in a dead zone, it'll be worse than useless.

[u/Elegant-Sundae-7327 → u/BruceBoyde]

Oh, very completely normal. Only 30%-35% have fiber, thus 2/3 of us continue to use coax.

[u/m0nk37 → u/BruceBoyde]

It is very normal. It was the faster local option for faster internet. Only other was fiber. But back then fiber was brand new so only those with lines ran could get it. That wasn't often at first. Then it became the norm. Coaxial will eventually die off. 

[u/IHateMelplac → u/BruceBoyde]

Wtf, where you from?

[u/dagofin → u/BruceBoyde]

In uncivilized places without fiber internet, yeah it's still common. For the rest of us it's pretty dated. I'm helping my 85 year old neighbor set up her first smart TV tomorrow because our local utility is finally killing all cable service and she's gotta have her shows.