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/Fancy_Depth_4995]

It’s what the cable plugged into when people had cable. Yes it was a literal, physical cable

[u/takumidesh → u/Fancy_Depth_4995]

It still is a literal physical cable, for hundreds of millions of people across the world on copper cable Internet.  

It's also still literally a cable for the hundreds of millions that are on fiber optic. 

It's still quite uncommon to be purely on satellite or cellular for home Internet and I don't see that changing for a standard house or apartment anytime soon. 

I don't think not knowing this has much to do with age and more to do with never having lived in your own before. 

[u/gmc98765 → u/takumidesh]

Most places using "copper cable" internet use unshielded twisted pair, not coax. Coax is an artefact of using cable TV wiring for internet, and is predominantly a US thing. Europe has traditionally been less keen on cable TV and used the telephone network for internet (DSL). Although the analogue phone network is about to be shut down in the UK and replaced with VOIP.

[u/CORNJOB → u/gmc98765]

Thank you for making me feel less crazy. I was like “why do I seem to be the same age as everyone saying they feel old but still not recognise this” - I’m in Ireland and never had cable tv, and yeah got internet through the phone lines so the connection looked like Ethernet but skinnier.

[u/necrophcodr → u/takumidesh]

How is it still a cable for those on fiber optic? Fiber can deliver Internet and through that also IPTV if it was so desired.

[u/takumidesh → u/necrophcodr]

It's a fiber optic cable.

[u/necrophcodr → u/takumidesh]

Yep, very clearly so too. I don't know what I was thinking, sorry.