Is optical mostly a waste of time versus Ethernet?

@sns and others, like I said previously, John and UpTone are not wrong when they say there can be leaks via Ethernet that would interfere with internals of a streamer or other component. This used to a huge issue in the 90s for computers, and it has continued with cheap components that have found themselves into non computer related devices like audio equipment. But most networking cards today don’t have these issues, even the really cheap ones. And I am hoping that streamers and other components that costs thousands of dollars like my NAD M50.2 don’t use really crappy components, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they did, after all, they are audio engineers,  not networking experts. 
 

But, and more troubling for John and UpTone, you can measure this very easily, and UpTone Etherregen does not eliminate any of this at all.

Lots of talk about packet loss which doesn’t sound good. How many packets are we talking about versus the actual volume of packets that arrive every second.

If using Roon none. If using and of the streaming services which are all TCP based with buffering and retry, none. If using something locally like HEOS, DLNA, etc. not sure all would need to be evaluated (on paper). I remember not long ago seeing a test with JRiver (not sure what protocol) and there were lost packets. That’s not a JRiver issue, just what protocol was used for that connection. In my local network, I have done tests wired and lost no packets over 30+ minutes. WiFi you lose packets but I don’t think anyone would use a protocol with WiFi that loses packets.

Optical greatly increased the SQ in my system.  Use two Cisco 2960's or Marika 220s cascaded by fiber w/ startech.com sfp's. You can add a shunt and lc filter to the power supply for even further improvements. 

Read the following on PACKET LOSS, Which can happen even on TCP streaming, contrary to the EXPERT opinion on this thread. This can happen when congestion of the network occurs. Which I said I can demonstrate 100% of the time with a low bandwidth setup of ROON Core.

John Swenson is someone who is an actual streaming audio expert and no one so far on this thread has shown they are an audio streaming EXPERT.

Great thing about Swenson ideas is that it is not very expensive to implement. If you have functioning ears and a decent setup you should easily hear the improvements from Swenson's setup for under $2K.

I personally have not got any expensive networking gear in my streaming chain.