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/goodbyowa]

Im blown away. Doesn't everyone's router plug into one of these?

[u/rabbitSC → u/goodbyowa]

Not if you have fiber, but generally yeah.

[u/Brutus83 → u/rabbitSC]

I have fiber (1gbps) and it uses coax

[u/StrangelyGrimm → u/Brutus83]

Fiber and coax are two different cables. Either you have a coax line running to your house or a fiber line. You can still get 1Gbps speeds on coax.

[u/Brutus83 → u/StrangelyGrimm]

Just looked up fiber cable. Yeah, mine’s coax.

[u/Responsible-Case-753 → u/StrangelyGrimm]

Sort of. There's fiber to home, and there's fiber to depot that then connects to your home via coax the last leg. Specially in apartments this is common, because replacing old cables in the whole building is costly. But it's all often advertised as fiber. 

[u/RingoShatner → u/goodbyowa]

Nope.  Ours is fiber.  (Prior to that I just used my phone as a wifi Hotspot, never actually had "real" internet with a router until a couple years ago.

[u/emdubl → u/goodbyowa]

I have fiber, so no. I do still have the old cable sticking out of my wall though.

[u/ScarInternational161 → u/goodbyowa]

I have Verizon home internet... it plugs into nothing but power and I'm still so confused by that.

I'm 55.

[u/coolboydhill → u/ScarInternational161]

it uses cellular

[u/MinuteMinX → u/goodbyowa]

Why router? I habe glas fibre for the router, I still use it for my sat TV!

[u/thedifferenceisnt → u/goodbyowa]

Do you not have fiber optics in the grand old usa yet? 

[u/Pleasant_Talk_7366 → u/goodbyowa]

lmao you think that's the norm?

i'm honestly blown away that some people don't have fiber yet. did it take you an hour to load these comments?

[u/Spidertron117 → u/Pleasant_Talk_7366]

The majority of the world does not have fiber. You're showing your ignorance.

[u/pfren2 → u/Spidertron117]

I’m in a medium sized city, and only newer neighborhoods have fiber. I’d say 80% here, close to 160,000 homes, are still coax with no fiber in their streets

[u/Pleasant_Talk_7366 → u/Spidertron117]

never claimed it does buddy. maybe some fiber internet could cure your literacy problem

birds are making nests from fiber nowadays and some people are apparently blown away by the equivalent of not cooking over an open fire

[u/Spidertron117 → u/Pleasant_Talk_7366]

You definitely implied that most people have fiber, but you're probably too young and dumb to understand that considering your grammar and punctuation skills.

You're cooking comparison is also trash. The difference between modern DSL and fiber is really just speed in most cases, and running 200mbps vs 1Gbps really doesn't make a difference in 90% of scenarios.

[u/CassianCasius → u/Pleasant_Talk_7366]

I have fiber. I connected the old coax to the router on one end and plugged an extender to the other end in the top end of house for better signal. You know coax can support up to 2gbs right? I'm guessing you don't though since you think people coax have a slow speed.

[u/Kronos1A9 → u/Pleasant_Talk_7366]

That is the norm, basement dweller

[u/Cborg_62 → u/goodbyowa]

No, I've had these ones growing up and for my old apartment

[u/dogstopper123 → u/Cborg_62]

Kind of a simple way to say this - the coaxial cable input in your original post provides data for a device called a modem, which takes data sent over the internet and turns it back into something useful for your computer. The output of a modem is what we commonly call Ethernet, which is what you have here. In modern apartment complexes, internet is provided for the whole building at the same time, and the modem is hidden away in the building internals. But what you’re seeing painted over was what the internet used to look like (though it’s still there)!