I rent an apartment with double brick walls everywhere. I cannot install cabling in the wall, or really anywhere it's not a severe trip hazard. For the most part, this is fine, because almost every device I own that requires internet access has wifi. (The few that don't, like my NAS, can live next to my networking equipment.)
Your suggestion would have meant that I couldn't connect my Playstation to the Internet, which is a little bit silly, especially given that my scenario is not an uncommon one.
Powerline adapters are pretty cheap nowadays and fast enough. I get synchronous 200mbps over a pair of TP-Link gigabit ones in a place with really poor quality wiring, and they come with power pass-through so I don't even lose a power socket.
I do use a powerline adapter and it works but I'm afraid that there aren't too many eyes looking at them - what if they have a big flaw and it stays dark?
There's no way these adaptors aren't vulnerable, given the nature of them. In my opinion. Extracting the signal from the mains and feeding it into GNU Radio for demodulation, then subsequent attack, would be an interesting exercise.
CAT5 and duct tape are your friend. I have the same problem and it’s quite easy to manipulate it around and behind things without problems. One section of cable I have is 19m to span a 3m floor.
We have to do this because I live in crowded London and WiFi barely works when you have 40 other networks next to you.
It's certainly not aesthetically pleasing, although there is some mileage in that department with printed duct tapes, but it works which is the main thing. To be honest with careful routing it's only taped down in one place in a corner. You wouldn't know there were any cables running around unless you look very carefully.
Try telling your landlord to install cabling everywhere. I'm in the lucky position that I had cabling installed when they wired my apartment, but I'm aware that I'm the exception.
Oh, sure that's not the solution - I don't connect my laptop to cables everywhere I carry it. It's still nice to have wires strung because that allows me to connect all stationary equipment to a cable (IPTV receiver, apple TV, TV, Playstation, VOIP, etc.) and position Wifi APs where they're needed. Cables still provide the best and most stable network, despite all advances in Wifi tech. I can absolutely recommend doing this if you have the opportunity. The cost is negligible if you're about to (re)do the electrical wires.
Not only does it not need it, but the difference between gaming on Wi-Fi and gaming on Ethernet is immense. For any competitive game, Wi-Fi is a no-go to begin with.
There's people that still enjoy a good old-fashioned single player game, but would love to get patches via the internet. Wifi is perfectly fine for that, even sneakernet would be, but the playstation doesn't support that.
My laptop pulls 280 Mbps according to fast.com. Switching to wired gives me 700 Mbps so I guess the difference is between a forty minute wait and a 15 minute wait, but either way it's fast enough that I'll take the convenience of not having to lay cables.
I imagine everyone else feels the same way: mostly limited by the upstream. If I had 100 Mbps Internet, there'd be no difference, for instance.
You fail to account for the shitty wifi chipset in the PS4, no way you're getting 280Mbps over wifi on a PS4. Even wired downloads max out at around 300Mbit, even though I easily get 900+ mbit on e.g. a speed test.
That assumes you get 300Mbps internet. A common max in Germany is 50Mbps, many people are still stuck with 16Mbps. 100Mbps and more are comparatively rare. Wifi speed is not the restricting factor, even with the PS4s chipset.
Sounds like a shitty situation for Germans, but here stateside cable ISPs have been offering 100+Mbps plans for a few years, and Telcos like Verizon ran fiber to quite a bit of their footprint. Gigabit is increasingly available, especially in urban areas.
