How many devices are connected to your home WiFi network?
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- By the end of 2026, how useful do you think agentic/multi-agent AI systems will actually be in your daily work or personal projects? Posted on March 11th, 2026 | 40 comments
None... (Score:4, Funny)
... I mooch off of CowboyNeal's WiFi.
Note to editors: Please bring back CowboyNeal options on polls.
Re: (Score:2)
Mod parent Funny as long as the Cowboy Neal options are.
26 Devices (Score:2)
Computers, phones, doorbell camera, TVs, DVR, Wifi printer, Android tablets, Roku.
I'm honestly surprised that more people don't have more than 15.
Re: (Score:3)
Some of us consider "smart" device to mean "fundamentally crippled spytech that will stop working when the owner (who is not you) decides to drop support for it, and by the way may be hard to set up". I know there's some good ones but I don't want to spend time researching devices when "does not connect to the internet" is a sufficient guarantee that it will work for as long as the hardware lasts.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, I agree that a lot of "smart" devices are risky bets, you know, like the smart Christmas lights, or no-name smart plugs or thermostats. But this is, like any purchase, a case of going with a name that you trust. A GE-branded smart plug is a lot more likely to work 5 years from now, than one that was sold by a Chinese outfit called SMPRGT.
There are some smart devices that are actually worth connecting to the internet. Video doorbells are one. Also, I hate traditional lamp timers so much that I'm willing
Re: (Score:3)
Smart thermostats are actually one of the few that can save you a bunch of money, while also being environmentally friendly. Most of which can be mostly done by a programmable calculator, but smart ones have the option to let your power grid pay you for load balancing, by modifying when it turns on (even without adjusting the temperature range, just the cycle time). Of course the thermostat is also one of your more important devices.
Re: (Score:2)
For some people, smart thermostats might indeed be a good idea. But for me, I live in the south, where in the summer, if you reduce the cycle time, or allow the temperature to rise more than a degree or two, the unit is unable to restore a comfortable temperature for the rest of the day, even when you want it to. Also, I work remotely, so there's no time of day that I'm not home.
Even if these factors weren't a problem, I fail to see how a "smart" thermostat is better than an ordinary, offline, programmable
Re: (Score:2)
It sounds like your AC BTU capacity is just barely greater than what's required to maintain the temperature.
You need to either get a larger AC with a higher cooling capacity, or improve the insulation on in your home.
Over the summer I had the AC bring it down to 68F to make sleeping more comfortable. Then have it only cool the house to 85F during they day. Even when it was 95F outside and high humidity, the AC didn't kick on during the day. Only turning on at night to bring it back down to 68F in about 2.5-
Re: (Score:2)
You need to either get a larger AC
There goes $7,000, and a larger AC wouldn't exactly help efficiency.
improve the insulation on in your home
There goes another several thousand dollars. There's only so much you can do when your house has single-paned windows (upgrading those would cost >$25,000).
It must be nice to only get up to 95F with humidity. In the south, we deal with 100+ and high humidity. And 85 inside is NOT comfortable.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
If you're feeling like it, you can always use APs that allow you to connect particular SSIDs to VLANs, and to use ACLs at your router/firewall to put hard limits on what devices on those various SSIDs can reach.
Re: 26 Devices (Score:2)
I think people donâ(TM)t realize how many devices they have on WiFi, may think, âoelaptop, phone, times x people plus tvâ and would be surprised to see the list of stuff on their router.
Re: (Score:2)
100% fair, but I would expect slashdot’s readership to encompass a small number of people that have no WiFi (every device is a smartphone and only uses the carrier...or all wired ethernet), as well as the other extreme with multiple dozens of devices.
Toping out at 15? I could see a mid sized non-nerd family hitting that.
My lab/office has more then 15 WiFi devices. My living room has 6 not counting whatever phones and watches and laptops happen to b
Re: (Score:2)
And that, my friend, is why I buy Wi-Fi devices which don't require a cloud connection to set up.
Mind blowing.
Quite a few, really (Score:2)
At last check, my family has:
3 laptops
3 smartphones
4 smart speakers
4 WiFi enabled lights
3 game consoles
2 Android tablets
2 Rokus
1 smart TV
1 VR headset
1 Fire TV
1 One Desktop PC
and 1 Printer connected to my Wi-Fi. That puts me over 25 devices total. And I don't really have a "smart" home with things like cameras or thermostats.
Perhaps there should have been a 20+ device option?
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm alone in the house at the moment (so less phones). From my network gateway:
% nmap -sn 192.168.1.0/24 | grep "Nmap done"
Nmap done: 256 IP addresses (22 hosts up) scanned in 2.75 seconds
Probably need to peek at a few random ones, might restrict some to local only too many "smart" devices. Darned spyware "IoT" devices calling back to their masters...
WiFi? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
For the future (Score:4, Insightful)
OK, I have some background in math, statistics and sociology but darn, didn't it occur to the person who created this poll that households have a different number of people? What's the point of this poll when e.g. I live on my own, but some families have 10 members or even more?
The poll should have taken this into account by asking:
How many WiFi devices per person are connected to your home WiFi network?
* Under 1
* 1-1.5
* 1.6-2
* 2.1 and higher
Re: (Score:2)
Was that a log scale with a small base? Why not the natural log?
But what I disliked about the question was the confusion about "on average" or "potentially".
Re: (Score:1)
Prefer dedicated channels (Score:2)
As least as possible ... (Score:1)
... because wired is safer.
Re: (Score:1)
As least as possible
Phew! (sic)
safer? (Score:2)
... because wired is safer.
Are you worried about the wifi causing brain cancer? Why are cables safer? At least in terms of not tripping over cords, I would think wifi is safer.
Dishwasher Is Connected (Score:2)
We have two WiFi services. One for house usage and Starlink specifically for work laptops.
The house one goes through the server farm.
External WiFi to Server Farm/PFSense VM to House WiFi plus a WiFi booster on the main floor.
Three phones, three tablets, one laptop, music mixer, and dishwasher.
For the Starlink, two laptops (mine and my wife’s).
We have the one TV and 4k player for watching movies, but neither are connected to the WiFi device.
[John]
Three or four (Score:2)
The house is wired for gigabit, except for the tablet, a laptop, and a phone everything else has a cable.
Simple (Score:1)
I have the following on WiFi (Score:2)
Home computer
iPad Pro
iPhone
Apple TV 4K
TiVo DVR
Insignia brand TV
Xfinity X1 set top box.
Amazon Echo (2nd Gen)
Amazon Echo Dot
My work laptop computer is connected to the cable modem router by CAT 6 Ethernet cable whenever I work from home.
15+ ?! (Score:2)
Re:15+ ?! (Score:5, Interesting)
And most people that have smart lights don't have just one, they have a whole bunch of them, each connecting separately to wifi.
Pretty much every single thing that plugs in or uses a battery will come in a wifi-enabled version these days, whether it makes sense or not. You can even get a wifi-enabled toothbrush for crying out loud, which can track your (or your kids') brushing habits.
Re: (Score:1)
Only The ones that need to ... (Score:2)
..and not the ones that whine if they are not, but give no reason to be connected
15+ because of IoT (Score:2)
Does phones count as devices? (Score:2)
Otherwise 1, and only because I forgot to plug the NVidia TV Shield back onto the wired ethernet.
Would have made 15+ (Score:2)
I would have made the top category, but my own PC is hardwired to the router via CAT6. No way am I slumming it on WiFi. That's for the rest of my family.
No option for me. (Score:2)
I was a bit surprised at the results of the poll. I have 0 which isn't even an option in the poll. I knew I'd be a bit of an outlier, but I'm surprised that so many people have 15+, even with more people in their household. My home wifi is normally off except for rare occasions. Then again my phone is a feature / flip phone and my tablet only gets used when I'm away.
It's kind of funny -- I grew up with computers and technology in the 80s and 90s and made a career out of it, but the older I get the les
Hardwired for the win (Score:1)
.. but not all of them (Score:2)
My Anova convection oven and my HP inkjet (since recycled) both begged to connect to the Internet, and I firmly declined. I didn't want some nerd in Omaha or Beijing decide to brick my device because of some clever lucky magic rules that I didn't read in the 3 page User Agreement.
"But the app will let you know when the oven's ready to cook, or when the timer's done!" Yeah, that's not really a big deal for me. I do have other timers, like .. right there on my phone. And I have one on the stove and on the mic
What about neighbours? (Score:2)
Too much WiFi already (Score:2)
If you live in any dense part of a city, everyone and their cat is an access point.
You might argue that there is still band capacity, but if you care about signal, wired is the way.
I use wired where possible. (Score:2)
Wifi - Did you mean LAN ? (Score:1)
Yeah, have to say I have a lot of ethernet connected devices, but wifi, not so much.
16 ports on the 10gbps router are full, and an 8-port switch has a couple devices on it. The only thing on wifi are the things that need to be handheld / travel - like phones and laptops. And only the laptop when it's physically in a lap, not when it's connected over ethernet like it usually is.
I do have a few wireless IoT smart plugs, and those are wireless (2.4Ghz), but I wish they were not. My stance is anything that i
Need more options (Score:2)
People will typically let their phone or tablet connect to their home internet, though that's a transitory connection. Then there are printers and smart TVs and BluRay players that want a WiFi connection. Do we count IoT devices?
In that sense - and presuming you mean "whatever WiFi network you use at home" and don't limit it to devices the respondent him/herself personally has control of, I'm surprised anyone could choose an option besides 15+. If you exclude phones/tablets and portable gaming devices since
Re: (Score:2)
This. I've been working on reconfiguring my home network for the last week. There are several goals, but primarily I'm trying to segregate my IoT devices from my computers, tablets, phones, etc.
The end result is five different VLANs, and five different SSIDs, three of which don't advertise, attached to three of those VLANs. I realize this is probably over complicated for a home network, but it's working for me.
Spread out over those five SSIDs, at last count, I had in excess of 70 individual devices attached