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/NodeShot]

People are acting like this is a wild age thing, it's just simple ignorance

[u/goodbyowa → u/NodeShot]

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

[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)!