If you work from home in Aiken, you have probably experienced the moment when your video call freezes, your screen share lags, or your VPN drops right in the middle of something important. You restart the router, move closer to it, maybe curse at it a little. The problem is almost never your internet plan. It is Wi-Fi itself. And the fix is simpler than most people realize: a hardwired Ethernet connection.
Why Wi-Fi Falls Short for Work
Wi-Fi is a shared, wireless medium. That means every device in your home, your kids' tablets, smart TVs, doorbell cameras, thermostats, and your work laptop, is competing for the same radio spectrum. When your teenager starts streaming a game while you are on a Zoom call with a client, your call quality drops because the router is juggling too many connections.
Wi-Fi also suffers from interference. Microwave ovens, baby monitors, cordless phones, and even your neighbor's router all operate on similar frequencies. Distance matters too. The farther your office is from the router, the weaker and slower the connection. In many Aiken homes, the router is in the living room or near the front of the house, while the home office is in a back bedroom or a converted garage. That 40-foot distance through two or three walls can cut your effective Wi-Fi speed in half or more.
Most critically, Wi-Fi introduces latency and jitter. Latency is the delay between sending and receiving data. Jitter is the variation in that delay. Video calls are extremely sensitive to both. Even moderate jitter causes audio dropouts, video freezing, and that awkward "you go ahead, no you go ahead" dance that plagues bad connections. Ethernet virtually eliminates both problems.
What Ethernet Actually Gives You
A hardwired Ethernet connection provides a dedicated, interference-free path between your computer and your router or switch. The differences are measurable:
- Consistent speed. Ethernet delivers the full speed of your internet plan every time. If you pay for 300 Mbps, you get 300 Mbps at your desk. Wi-Fi might give you 150 Mbps on a good day and 40 Mbps when the household is busy.
- Near-zero latency. Ethernet latency is typically under 1 millisecond on a local network. Wi-Fi latency can spike to 20 to 50 milliseconds or more during congestion.
- No interference. A cable does not care about your neighbor's router, your microwave, or how many walls are between you and the access point.
- Reliability. Ethernet connections do not drop. They do not need to reconnect. They do not slow down when someone else in the house starts a large download.
For remote workers handling video conferences, VPN connections, large file transfers, or cloud-based applications, these differences are not theoretical. They are the difference between a professional experience and one that makes you look unprepared.
Cat6 vs. Cat6a: Which Cable Do You Need?
When you hear "Ethernet cable," the question is which category. Here is what matters for a home office installation in 2026:
Cat5e supports up to 1 Gbps at 100 meters. It is the minimum acceptable standard and still works fine for most home use, but it is outdated for new installations. There is no reason to install Cat5e in a new cable run today.
Cat6 supports up to 10 Gbps at distances up to 55 meters and 1 Gbps at up to 100 meters. For the vast majority of Aiken homes, Cat6 is the sweet spot. It handles anything your internet service provider offers today and will comfortably support faster plans for years to come. The cable costs a few cents more per foot than Cat5e and is the current industry standard for residential installations.
Cat6a supports 10 Gbps at the full 100-meter distance with improved shielding against crosstalk. Cat6a is thicker, stiffer, and more expensive. It is worth considering if you transfer very large files between devices on your local network, such as video editing or NAS backups, or if you want maximum future-proofing. For a standard home office used for video calls, email, and cloud applications, Cat6a is more than you need but not unreasonably more expensive.
Our recommendation for most Aiken home offices: Cat6. It costs marginally more than Cat5e, vastly outperforms it, and will not need replacing for a decade or more.
What a Home Office Network Run Looks Like
A typical home office network cabling project involves running one or two Ethernet cables from the room where your router or network switch is located to your home office. The cables run through the attic, crawl space, or walls, terminating in a wall plate with an Ethernet jack at each end.
The installation looks clean and professional. A single Ethernet wall plate next to your desk replaces the long cable running across the hallway or the powerline adapter that works intermittently. If your office also has a network printer, a NAS drive, or a second computer, running two drops gives each device its own dedicated connection.
For homes in the Aiken area, attic runs are the most common approach in single-story homes. Two-story homes may require interior wall runs or drops through closets that are stacked vertically. A licensed electrician who handles low-voltage cabling regularly knows the most efficient route for each home layout.
Future-Proofing Your Home
Even if you only need one Ethernet connection in your office today, consider running cables to other key locations while the work is being done. The labor is the expensive part, not the cable. Common additional locations include:
- Living room: For a smart TV or streaming device that benefits from a wired connection.
- Primary bedroom: For a second work-from-home setup or a streaming device.
- Garage or workshop: For security cameras, a secondary workspace, or a Wi-Fi access point that extends coverage to the yard.
Running three or four cables during a single installation visit costs significantly less than scheduling separate visits later for each location. Think of structured cabling as infrastructure, similar to plumbing or electrical wiring, that adds both functionality and value to your Aiken home.
The Bottom Line for Remote Workers
If your livelihood depends on a reliable internet connection, and for most remote workers in Aiken, North Augusta, and the surrounding CSRA it does, a hardwired Ethernet connection is one of the best investments you can make in your home office. It costs less than a single month of lost productivity from dropped calls and slow transfers, and it works perfectly every single day without any thought or troubleshooting.