Does 802.11n Spell the 'End of Ethernet'?

alphadogg writes "Is the advent of the 802.11n wireless standard the 'end of Ethernet'... at least in terms of client access to the LAN? That's the provocative title, and thesis, of a new report in which the author began looking into the question when he heard a growing number of clients asking whether it was time to discontinue wired LAN deployments for connecting clients. Would 11n, the next generation high-throughput Wi-Fi, make the RJ45 connector in the office wall as obsolete as gaslights?"

Comments

Um, no.

[morgan_greywolf]

When the Porcine Aviation Assocation makes WiFi as secure as wired LAN, then we'll see the end of Ethernet. Until then, no.

Re:Um, no.

[Praedon]

I think we will always have wired networks, for the simple fact that as technology progresses, so do the methods of spying and such. It's much easier to eavesdrop on WiFi than it is on a wired network. You would need physical access to the wired network in order to carry out your plans for espionage.

Re:Um, no.

[niceone]

And that's going to happen just after the Porcine Aviation Assocation makes WiFi actually run at the speeds that it says in the headlines.

Re:Um, no.

[cayenne8]

Yep...I was thinking one word when I read this:

SECURITY.

Re:Um, no.

[umdstu]

Exactly, it's way to easy to pick up wireless data with sniffing tools. One doesn't even need to be on the your network to get your data.

Re:Um, no.

[Jaqenn]

I agree that wired LAN is more secure than WiFi. But can't you do some pretty scary signal reconstruction by reading electromagnetic noise coming off your network cable? It's my understanding that this can be done from X yards away, through walls, whatever.

Yeah, that moves your vulnerability away from the hobbyist tier and into the professional tier, but honestly, which one scares you more?

Guess you could always wrap your cable in tin-foil.

Re:Um, no.

[DaPhilistine]

When the Porcine Aviation Assocation makes WiFi as secure as wired LAN, then we'll see the end of Ethernet. Until then, no.

And maybe when many clients in close proximity to each other don't saturate the bandwitdh.

Re:Um, no.

[nine-times]

Right. There are too many reasons to use ethernet, and security is just one of them. Ethernet is also more reliable, and it's still faster. 802.11n is not running as fast as 1Gbps (which is what both my home and work network are running at). Give it a couple years, and we'll probably all be running 10Gbps networks, and though wireless speeds will improve too, I see no reason to believe that they'll ever catch up. Also, wired connections are more reliable, easier to control, etc.

Now, I don't see much reason to string ethernet through people's homes, at least not most of the time. Use WPA, secure each of your computers (password protect them and firewall any services you aren't using, preferably don't use Windows). You'll be fine, and 802.11n is probably way faster than any internet connection you might have.

Re:Um, no.

[arivanov]

Pigs can fly. It is a matter of applying sufficient thrust.

It is a matter of contention ratio.

An average office has a contention ratio of 1:100 for server access and it still works. A WLAN contended to 1:100 will not work. So you have to upgrade your porcine fleet with higher thrust engines. You do that by rolling out a big wireless switch and many small accesspoints under its control each of which has a contention ratio of under 1:10. At that contention ratio deployments for anything more than 10PCs is uneconomical.

This is all of course if we leave the security aside. But that is another story.

Re:Um, no.

[TechnoBunny]

Didnt people say the same when the mobile phone was introduced?

Re:Um, no.

[bleh-of-the-huns]

Yes, its called STP instead of UTP...

Re:Um, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. Just got a new house. CAT6/RJ45 is going into all rooms.

Not a wireless router on the grounds, and the notebooks wireless has its switch turned off.

Once it's secure, I'll use wireless.

So, I'll be using wired for the rest of my life.

Re:Um, no.

[xSauronx]

i was thinking "interference" but i havent kept on top of how super-special-awesome 802.11n is supposed to be. is there something about it that allows it to work magnificiently when everyone in an area is trying to run 10 or 15 APs at once with 802.11n equipment?

Re:Um, no.

[timeOday]

Give it a couple years, and we'll probably all be running 10Gbps networks, and though wireless speeds will improve too, I see no reason to believe that they'll ever catch up.

This is basically what the article is about - not whether wired is faster (it is), but whether that matters to most users? They argue that metrics like ease of moving around to collaborate with different people are more important than technical benchmarks like latency and jitter since 802.11n is "good enough" in those respects.

Re:Um, no.

[Kortalh]

I realize this is only anecdotal evidence, but aside from my grandmother and one of my aunts, I don't personally know anyone that relies on their landline phone as their primary source of communication. In fact, the only person who still even *has* a landline is my mother, and she's mostly just retaining it because it would "feel weird" not to have one. She rarely uses it.

Re:Um, no.

[jimstapleton]

it uses a hyperdimensional tracever, which sends the signal through its own alternate reality, where no signal is being sent to interfere with it, and not only that but there is no pesky weather to bother it either!

No, those space ships popping into existance in the sky aren't angry-transdimensional aliens coming to ravage our world because we were dropping harmful EM radiaition onto their pleantes, honestly!

Re:Um, no.

[nine-times]

Whether it's RAM, processor speeds, or bandwidth, the history of computers has shown the same pattern. As our capabilities increase, we find ways to use the "extra".

Maybe we'll hit a ceiling when we can stream multiple uncompressed full-length movies in real time without bottlenecks. I'm of the opinion, though, that computers (and networks) can never be too fast, too small, or too energy efficient.

Re:Um, no.

[BosstonesOwn]

If I am not mistaken, to help drive your point home a little more, when a wnic has to process all those packets not coming from its own network it slows to an awful halt.

Case in point I leave my wifi AP segmented off my network and leave it open for folks to check email and the likes. As of late the amount of people with Iphones and wifi using pdas is becoming quite a burden on my AP. Now when I talk with my neighbor even when he tries loading a page during the day it's staggeringly slow even when the usage of the AP's bandwidth is low. At night it's fine.

I check the dhcp tables and there is close to 40 dhcp addresses in the table. And at least 30 are pingable. Thanks to the high school they built here having wifi almost all the channels are covered. And the kids are jumping on my open AP instead of the school and leaving them connected. The heart beats are eating up the airwaves bandwidth and not my internet bandwidth.

Re:Um, no.

[fbjon]

Not to mention: until someone figures out a way of turning radio from shared to switched medium for cheap, it ain't replacing anything.

Re:Um, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Cooking something in my microwave oven is enough to knock out my wireless.

Maybe that means I have a leaky oven, although it is a respectable brand and fairly new. Perhaps I should check to see if it was made in China.

No matter what though, I still prefer wired over wireless, at least for the computers that don't move around

Re:Um, no.

[hedwards]

Phones use a lot less bandwidth than computers do.

People more or less decided that security wasn't important with the cell phones. The analog phones were quite susceptible to eavesdropping with a scanner, from what I gather the digital ones are better, but they came a ways later.

Phones also use a lower frequency signal than any of the current wireless networking standards do. If I was as constrained by my cell phone as I am with my wifi card, I wouldn't even bother owning one. It would make no sense because I would rarely be far enough away from a phone to need one. And worse, I wouldn't be able to rely on it being useful when I do leave my house on a given trip.

I really don't think that wifi of any sort is going to replace a wired connection until it is of similar speed to wired and can solve the other problems like range. The bandwidth needs of users will always rise to fill the extra bandwidth that a new technology will provide. Well perhaps not always, but we aren't anywhere near the point where the consumption will slow.

Security wise, all it really means is that rather than having a more or less safe network which is wired, you don't have a safe network at all. If you're routing everything through a vpn or similar, you're already safer than just posting to the WWW. Granted this would make it an imperative to have a firewall on each machine plus one on the wireless equipment, but one would be wise to be doing that anyway.

Re:Um, no.

[DurendalMac]

Not just that, but show me wireless running at gigabit speeds, or even coming close to it's rated speed if you're not right next to the base station. I could be using 802.11n on my home network, but I prefer a wired Gigabit one.

Re:Um, no.

[Tiger4]

I agree that wired LAN is more secure than WiFi. But can't you do some pretty scary signal reconstruction by reading electromagnetic noise coming off your network cable? It's my understanding that this can be done from X yards away, through walls, whatever.
Where X is 1 - 3 meters. If you are running a Must Be Secure network in a single cubicle of a hostile cubicle farm, or up against the wall of an apartment, you might have trouble. The vast majority of people are inherently secure, at least against this particular threat.

Guess you could always wrap your cable in tin-foil.
Shielded Twisted Pair will deal with this for you. It has been on the market for the past 2 or 3 decades. Maybe more.

Re:Um, no.

[networkBoy]

I mostly agree with you, but two points of correction:
802.11b/g is 2.5GHz, most PCS cells are 2.2/2.3GHz.
TDMA and the ilk phones are equally eavesdroppable as analog phones, except the need to include a DSP. Obviously a barrier to a wannabie "Private-Eye" but to a upper end signal geek this is approaching trivial. The data is encoded, but not encrypted. This is why police tactical radios employ scrambling and frequency hopping.
-nB

Re:Um, no.

[somersault]

Although once you have physical access to any ethernet ports, it's a lot easier to get onto an ethernet than it is to get onto secured wireless. Just plug in and away you go..

Re:Um, no.

[swillden]

Now, I don't see much reason to string ethernet through people's homes, at least not most of the time.

I do. Media servers. Although the theoretical data rate of 802.11n is high enough for several HD video streams, in practice you only get a third of the theoretical data rate reliably, making it barely adequate for 1-2 streams. Start actually moving those files around to store, say, on a laptop drive for watching later, and you'll really find wireless inadequate.

You'll be fine, and 802.11n is probably way faster than any internet connection you might have.

There are places in the world where that is not true today, where 100Mbps Internet connections are common. I expect we'll see that even in the US, as fiber-to-the-home initiatives are rolled out. There's one in my neck of the woods, called UTOPIA. Right now they're only providing 10Mbps (symmetric), but the plan is to ramp that up to 100Mbps in the future.

Re:Um, no.

[hauntingthunder]

well 802.11n is ethernet just uses a diferent layer 1 and bits of layer 2.

Slight problem in capacity as you need one ap per 10-15 Stations(hosts/pc's) imagine trying to kit out a 1200 seat building just using wifi you looking at 120-150 ap's just to get basic service.

Your backbone, servers and the DS (Distribution system) are going to still need a wired infrastructure plus the extra security kit needed for wifi access.

Re:Um, no.

[MorderVonAllem]

If someone has access to a physical port then your security isn't worth a damn anyway.

Re:Um, no.

[minkie]

I agree that it seems unlikely for wireless to ever take over inside server farms or data centers. As long as CPUs are talking to disks over the network, there will be a need for as much bandwidth as you can get, and it seems likely that at any point in time, copper will give you more than air.

On the other hand, most desktop machines can get along just fine with even 802.11b speeds. It's very expensive to run cable to every single cube/desk/workstation in a large office environment, and move/add/changes are expensive and time-consuming too. IT departments could save a ton of money if they could do away with all that.

Yes, there are security issues with wireless, but WPA, perhaps in combination with 2-factor authentication, makes it pretty secure. If you want more, run a VPN layer on top of the wireless. In any case, IT departments already have to deal with these security issues because evolutionary pressures have forced even the most conservative companies to roll out wireless access to conference rooms and other shared spaces. At some point, IT departments are going to start looking at provisioning data access in new construction and say, "We just can't justify the cost of wire any more".

Re:Um, no.

[DaveCar]

Yeah, that moves your vulnerability away from the hobbyist tier and into the professional tier, but honestly, which one scares you more?

Er, hobbyist. Because there's lots of them. Unless you are *really* paranoid or *really* radical then you really don't need to worry about professionals. They will probably be a lot better off breaking in and planting on your wires or a keylogger anyway.

Absenting a keylogger, ssh/SSL should see you right in any event.

Re:Um, no.

[somersault]

If they really want in, they're going to get in. Most people's houses are going to be pretty easily accessible compared to trying to crack WPA wireless encryption.

Re:Um, no.

[NeilTheStupidHead]

In my apt building, someone just moved in and brought an 802.11n supported router with them. All of a sudden the 10 or so 802.11g routers in the building have all but stopped working. I used to be able to pick up my wireless connection anywhere in the building, but now I can't see it at all if I'm more than two rooms away and the connection constantly drops. I've talked to some of my neighbours and they have been having the same difficulties.

Re:Um, no.

[debrain]

A la Van Eck Phreaking

Re:Um, no.

[Megane]

Exactly. When I wire up at home (and I wired my home with almost 50 ports), its to get gigabit speeds for transferring giant .AVI video and other files. Otherwise plain old 802.11b serves me just fine.

Actually, that's not entirely true. I have 6 megabit DSL, and I can't download at full speed over 802.11b. (Yes, even with a full 4 bars.) So that's another reason to jack in.

Re:Um, no.

[NeilTheStupidHead]

Actually, twisted pair does a pretty good job of shielding itself. It's far easier to detect and reconstruct the video output to a computer monitor (CRT) and can be done from quite a distance (tens of metres). We did this in school once as a demonstration, using perhaps $50 of components from a supplier, $50 of common household items from Walmart and an old B&W television that was in scavanged from a storage locker. We made a simple directional antenna using a steel collander and were able to read a message displayed on the instructor's monitor: "This wouldn't work on an LCD screen"

Re:Um, no.

[NeilTheStupidHead]

Ballistic trajectories are different from flight. Regardless how much thrust is applied/generated, a pig is simply the wrong shape. An unmodified pig can not fly or glide.

Re:Um, no.

[modecx]

Yeah, trouble is, it's a little more obvious when you trip over a foreign CAT 5 cable at 2:00 AM, just to find it leading over to your neighbor's house. It's also a lot easier to wire said cable up to a 110v plug...

Re:Um, no.

[somersault]

Yep, but you could also plug some kind of wireless device into a local switch (if it's not in plain site. Wireless in this case is allowed for the attackers. I was thinking of a one off raid on data anyway rather than a long term sneaky monitoring basis, which is obviously more difficult.

IA(obviously)NABH

Re:Um, no.

[JCSoRocks]

Rofl, is network security the issue at that point? Once they're in your house they'll just jack your nifty computer, NAS, media center, etc. The security of your network doesn't matter. They can just pick up your box, take it home, and run a simple brute force cracker against it.

Now you could say that that argument doesn't apply to businesses but I'd say that the computers that were stolen from Wells Fargo a few years back would beg to differ. At the time I was a Wells Fargo client and I received a nice letter about how my personal information may be among the thousands of records on the stolen machines... I obviously left Wells Fargo. What kind of bank lets someone walk out the door with a computer!?

Re:Um, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeaaaah, because there's a readily-accessible, easily-distributable script for breaking into someone's home/office and splicing into their Ethernet cables without leaving a trace.

Re:Um, no.

[zdzichu]

Uh? Don't you know that 802.1x, used to secure wifi, was developed for wired networks? That's where notion of "ports" came from. Algorithmically, wired and wireless have identical security.

Re:Um, no.

[tooslickvan]

This UTOPIA you speak of sounds ideal. Does it come with fluffy white bunnies?

Re:Um, no.

[sam0vi]

I was thinking about something else: Gigabit Ethernet

Re:Um, no.

[mulvane]

Not true. I could drive up in a surveillance van parked a couple doors away with extremely sensitive gear and actually tap into your electrical system and read what is going on with your system. Not to mention EM transmissions. Wired networks decrease this ability, and fiber all but eliminates it without some very sophisticated splicing tools. All in all, a wired network as far as security goes does improve it. The only way wireless will be secure if the wireless link itself is secured via encryption, and the data passed to the transmitting wireless point is already encrypted via vpn or some other link level encryption. That way even if the wireless link itself is broken, the data itself still has to be cracked. Another thing with wireless is that if someone is sniffing your traffic, you have no way to know. With cat5/6, you could if required do weekly/monthly checks on the wire to find if anything is suspicious. With fiber, you could know usually on the spot that it was spliced and someone had patched in for snooping purposes.

Re:Um, no.

[sam0vi]

The answer to your situation is to tinfoil your house. Leave your outside windows alone to get some cell phone signal, and you are good to go. You're welcome!

Re:Um, no.

[somersault]

1) Wait till they leave

2) Drill a hole in their wall or go into the foundations, possibly after digging a half mile long tunnel using a toothbrush and a teaspoon (part of this can be done before 1 if necessary). 3) Drill a hole and find the cable with your handy little fibre-optic camera.

4) Splice the cable with repeater/switch/whatever.

There's a script right there!

Anyway, there's still no simple method for cracking WPA yet..

Re:Um, no.

[somersault]

I wouldn't say it doesn't apply to businesses at all. The workers over in our fabrication shop are all computer illiterate, and I reckon anyone could plug in some monitoring equipment into their computer and they'd be none the wiser.

Anyone know some good network monitoring software for monitoring new devices that show up on the network etc? I've never really looked seriously into network security, I think our biggest problem here would be social engineering or people just leaving their machines unattended/unlocked and someone walking in off the street or in the evenings (we've had people walk into the fabrication shop before in the evenings with nobody trying to stop them at all).

Re:Um, no.

[keraneuology]

I agree that wired LAN is more secure than WiFi. But can't you do some pretty scary signal reconstruction by reading electromagnetic noise coming off your network cable?

Yes, and that's not all. The technology exists for somebody outside your house to capture the exact image on your screen by the EMR emitted. (I'm not sure if LCDs are as vulnerable as CRTs). They have the technology to read the EM noise from your CPU. Given enough money and motivation everything is at risk.

This is where the concept of threat model comes in. WHO is after your data? FSB? MI6? Then you'd better get STP, apply metallic paint to every wall and line your ceiling with a Faraday cage. That drunk next door who once saw sneakers and now considers himself to be the world's top master hacker spy? Then encrypt your wireless network with a 1 bit key and a WEP key of "1".

If you are worried about the "professional tier" of data thieves, the kind who will try to spy on you by capturing stray EM from your cat 5 cables then you are either paranoid or asking the wrong people for help.

Re:Um, no.

[The -e**(i*pi)]

ever hear of managed switches
they not only can require registration before turning on a port, but allow only one specific mac per port and either notify you, record all the data, and or shut off any port that is doing anything funy with mac addresses.

they also have a VLAN capacility that makes virtual switches connecting any ports in your whole building so noone but those on those specific ports can listen in.

and hacking a CISCO switch is no easy task.

Re:Um, no.

[EvilRyry]

Could just encrypt all your LAN traffic if you're really paranoid.

Re:Um, no.

[The -e**(i*pi)]

Perfect Faraday cages only protect you from interference, they still let all EM waves out.
With a aluminum wrap, it will dampen some of the signal, but it will still be readable assuming the wrap is properly grounded on both ends and a solid tube length and round wise otherwise its not even going to protect your cables from interference.

Re:Um, no.

[swillden]

This UTOPIA you speak of sounds ideal. Does it come with fluffy white bunnies?

Hehe. The downside of UTOPIA is that it isn't nearly as widely available as I'd like. For example, homes about three miles from me can get it, but I can't.

Re:Um, no.

[swillden]

It's much easier to eavesdrop on WiFi than it is on a wired network.

Not if the WiFi network is configured for reasonable security. Physical access is typically much easier to get than the AES keys.

Re:Um, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, I don't see much reason to string ethernet through people's homes

Then you have very little imagination.
Telephone networks.
Video networks.
Computer networks.
Security/Surveillance networks.
Intercom networks.

You can't see a reason to have RJ45 jacks all over your house with homeruns going back to your wiring closet?
I consider it a no-brainer for any new residential construction.

Re:Um, no.

[soccerisgod]

Maybe if by WPA you really mean WPA2. WPA is not much more secure than WEP :)

Re:Um, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

So get a wireless-N card, hack their network and use their connection. Seriously, that's what I'd do. cracking WPA video

Re:Um, no.

[nacturation]

Regardless how much thrust is applied/generated, a pig is simply the wrong shape. An unmodified pig can not fly or glide. But what if the pig were suspended via twine attached to the dorsal feathers of a flock of swallows?

Re:Um, no.

[cayenne8]

"If they really want in, they're going to get in. Most people's houses are going to be pretty easily accessible compared to trying to crack WPA wireless encryption."

I dunno about that....at least in the Southeastern part of the US. Once you get past the locked doors, you run the risk of dogs and the inhabitants with their guns drawn and ready to fire.

Somehow I think sitting out in a car a distance away trying to hack the wireless is a little safer. It does and the very least, make the 'head shot' a little harder.

:-)

Re:Um, no.

[cayenne8]

"But what if the pig were suspended via twine attached to the dorsal feathers of a flock of swallows?"

African or European?

Re:Um, no.

[kent_eh]

Guess you could always wrap your cable in tin-foil.

Or pull it thru metal conduit, like most commercial installations are done anyway.

Re:Um, no.

[somersault]

I doubt anyone that sits at home all day is going to have a network anyway (unless they telecommute?), or at least have any data worth stealing :p

Re:Um, no.

[Gilmoure]

Am also building a new house. Am thinking about putting in bundled cat 5/Fiber. Anyone used this stuff? Have any opinions on it's use?

Re:Um, no.

[Original Replica]

It looks like you need to repaint your apartment. Try this :http://www.safelivingtechnologies.ca/RF/Products_RF_Shielding_Paint_HSF54.htm Maybe if you just paint the wall that faces that neighbor, you will still get your signal down in the lobby.

Re:Um, no.

[InvalidError]

Security is one reason I prefer wired over wireless... and since most of my networked equipment stays put in one room, extra cables are non-issue.

The other reason is reliability: I can count on my 100BaseTX network delivering 7-9MB/s with very little chance of external influences causing my link to either slow down or die. With wireless, I am at the mercy of nearby interference sources including cordless phones, electrical appliances, various gadgets and other wireless networking equipment, any of which can cause the link to do a number of undesirable things from retraining to going down.

There are two reasons I got WiFi: 1) my previous router was dying and 2) I got a laptop. I only use WiFi with the laptop but whenever I do large transfers, I still hook it up to Ethernet since it is ~5X as fast and never goes down. 802.11g is good enough for internet access and moderate file copying with my two laptops so I most likely won't be bothering with 802.11n until my 802.11g router either dies or becomes a broadband bottleneck.

BTW, it is possible to eavesdrop on Ethernet without touching the cables by capturing EMI from the UTP cables - there was a proof of concept for this some years ago where they managed to reconstruct a B&W image from a VGA cable by placing the receiver antenna ~1m from the cable using commodity components. That's pretty far from monitoring from a van parked a few houses down the road but it certainly proves the feasibility.

Re:Um, no.

[mcmonkey]

It's much easier to eavesdrop on WiFi than it is on a wired network.

Not if the WiFi network is configured for reasonable security. Physical access is typically much easier to get than the AES keys.

It's not just about ease of access, it's also about detection. It's very easy to break a window to get into a building, but it is also very easy to detect that type on intrusion. It may be more difficult to crack a WiFi connection, but it also not as obvious when someone is sniffing your packets.

And in any case any security comes down to the weakest link. If that link is physical access, when it comes to the point that I'm in your house standing in front of your computer, how is your security aided by using 802.11n over ethernet? (Other than one less wire for me to unplig before taking your system?)

It seems to me, wireless networking has all the security issues of ethernet and then some.

Re:Um, no.

[pacman on prozac]

802.11n is not running as fast as 1Gbps.

To get the 300mbit speeds advertised it sounds like you need:
      multiple radios,
      multiple steams of traffic so packet aggregation can work,
      minimal interference across the entire 2.4ghz band, e.g. no other wifi networks close by, such as next door neighbors.

Under normal use it sounds like 54 to 128mbit is a more realistic figure so definately not an ethernet contender in that case.

Also it's a shared medium so that 300mbit is split between all the clients...

Re:Um, no.

[mcmonkey]

]This UTOPIA you speak of sounds ideal. Does it come with fluffy white bunnies?

No, but it does come with OMFG ponies.

Re:Um, no.

[Gilmoure]

Head shot?

Re:Um, no.

[Tofystedeth]

I don't know if my landline is my [i]primary[/i] means of communication, as I use email mostly, but I don't have a cell, so if someone wants to phone me, they call my house.

Re:Um, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

if you want to be ready for the future just use cat7 then when the 10G standard comes in to play you're at least ready cable wise. fiber i couldn't suggest that, its too much hassle.

Re:Um, no.

[matuscak]

It's probably worth pointing out that using WPA-PSK with a key that can be found in a dictionary is, well, dumb. Use a 64 digit random number from (for example):

dd if=/dev/random bs=1 count=32 2>/dev/null |xxd -ps -c 32

That should eliminate the (known) methods for hacking WPA.

Re:Um, no.

[alienw]

I don't think you could do that with a network cable. CRT monitors emit tons of RF, at very low frequencies (which propagate much better through walls). They have practically no shielding. UTP cable behaves as a transmission line (so it doesn't radiate RF all over the place), and uses pretty small signal levels. With very good equipment and a low-EMI environment, you might be able to do it from 1 or 2 meters away, but not much farther.

Contrary to popular belief, Faraday cages do little to stop professional snoopers. Unless you put all your stuff into an RF test chamber with no openings whatsoever, the effectiveness of your shielding will be pretty low. Professional spies can probably overcome the 10-20dB attenuation that you would get, just by using better equipment.

In most cases, it is far easier to gain access by purely physical methods. They can open doors, replace or bribe security guards, install surveillance equipment, and so on. There is no real way for any given individual to prevent any of that, so the whole argument is pretty pointless.

Re:Um, no.

[sumdumass]

It is sort of ridiculous to say that anyone could just break in and steal the computer. They could do that for a wired and a wireless network. That isn't a fact that should be part of the discussion.

Now with a wireless connection, a person could hide their attempts to access the network. They could also do it from far enough away to not impose suspicion. This ability is an extra ability that makes wireless dangerous to some on certain networks. It might not be the same for mom and pop, but when they are doing their accounting and managing banking acounts/passwords and whatever, it might.

It wouldn't be too hard for me to create a proxy server or DNS server on a network and use DHCP in order to issue a new DNS number and intercept log on attempts to their banks, credit cards or health insurance. Then All I would have to do is access those sites from another hacked wireless connection and start taking money. It is more involved when doing this with a wired network.

In the end, it is like the saying that locks only keep honest people out. Well you would be amazed at how many honest people aren't exactly honest when they think no one is watching them. The fear of getting caught doing something bad is enough to stop them from doing it. With a wireless network, you are somewhat allowing these honest people be in a position that no one is watching. But more appropriately, you are somewhat allowing the dishonest people inside your building unmonitored to some extent. Wire a wired network, sure it can still be done, it is just that the possibility of being caught is so much more aware to the honest person.

Re:Um, no.

[Gilmoure]

Damn, hadn't heard of cat 7. Still, looking it up, is cheaper than the combo stuff. A double run to each outlet in the house should be good.

I'm planning on using a Mac server with movies ripped to MPEG-4 files, shared out by iTunes, a gigabit switch and wall mounted iMacs for the players. Much simpler than a whole house a/v system. Will only have home theater set up in living room, with stereo sound from all the iMacs in the rest of the rooms. Might have to get either an Apple TV or a Mac Mini hooked up to home theater receiver.

Re:Um, no.

[nine-times]

On the other hand, most desktop machines can get along just fine with even 802.11b speeds.

Just for a little background information, I've spent some time working for engineering and media companies where quite a lot of data was pushed back and forth from client machines. 802.11b speeds are not "just fine" at that level. 802.11g speeds aren't really good enough. 802.11n might be getting close, but 1Gbps ethernet is better. Also, you have to be careful with your wireless access points to make sure that they can actually handle the load of 20 or 50 clients being attached at the same time. A lot of AP will slow at that point, meaning you don't get the theoretical bandwidth or even the real-life bandwidth of these devices in a real office environment.

And then, on top of all the rest of that, you have to deal with interference.

Re:Um, no.

[keraneuology]

Faraday cages do little to stop professional snoopers

Actually, what I had in mind was encasing the entire house from below grade to the roof's peaks in a wire mesh. The bad guys wouldn't be able to listen, but your cell phones wouldn't work. Paint every wall (interior and exterior) with metallic paint and you've got a pretty sterile environment RF wise.

Re:Um, no.

[gnuman99]

How about SIP phones? Media server? Normal internet not lagged by wireless overhead?

Grandstream BudgeTone SIP phone costs $50. A wireless SIP phone is a few times that. And probably will be obsolete when new wireless encryption will come out. Wired SIP phones will be around for a LONG time.

Also, it is *cheaper* to put in Cat5e in the wall (if you do it yourself) than to buy wireless adapters for your PC. For the cost of 5 wireless adapters, I can get 1000' of Cat5e, a dozen jacks and even more plugs. That's enough to wire few houses. RJ45 jacks are now in every mobo so no extra costs there.

Wireless has its merits, but it is NOT a replacement. Just like a flashlight is NOT a replacement for the ceiling, wired lights.

Re:Um, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Put in proper conduit and make sure you run pull strings through it. Ensure you place the end of the conduit in a sensible location I.e. somewhere you can fit a router, and if required at some point in the future, remove and replace it. Run Cat7 if you want some future-proofing, or if you're trying to keep costs down Cat5e. You could also run some cable/satellite rated coax while you're at it.

Re:Um, no.

[nine-times]

I'm not saying there would never be any reason to string ethernet through people's homes, but it's not necessary for most people. For telephones, most people will use the telephone wiring. Even a lot of VOIP products will use the telephone wires to give a telephone signal throughout the house.

Most of rest of this stuff you mention-- I haven't seen many people so far who really have these things in their house. For "Video networks", most people get the cable guy to string cable to the rooms they want to watch TV. For computer networks, for most people's needs, 802.11n will be enough. People will often string up cables specially for intercom and security systems, if they choose to have those systems at all.

I'm not claiming that no one has those things, but not that many do. I also believe that if we had nationwide 10Gbps internet and 10Gbps networks in people's houses, then people would find ways to use that bandwidth-- maybe even useful, good, non-porn uses. But for the time being, WiFi is fine for general web browsing and checking e-mail (which is what most people use the internet for).

Re:Um, no.

[mercenaryCoder]

That's what I'm screaming. You better not come in my home uninvited and I find you there... But my 30-06 has a lot more range than my my router ;)

Re:Um, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

yes. but they can sniff & take forever without being traced themselves. you don't have that kind of luxury when breaking into someone's house.

Re:Um, no.

[nine-times]

Yeah, but what I'm really pointing out is that a lot of people really only use the internet for web browsing and e-mail. The most intensive it gets for most people is watching a Youtube video or buying something from iTMS.

I understand. You're a computer geek and you see all the variety of things you can do with a good network. I'm a geek too, and I feel the same way. Most people, however, just want an easy way to look at Youtube from their two computers at home, and one of those computers might be a laptop that they want to be able to take into the other room. Even for the stationary computers, they don't want to have to drill holes in the wall and worry about what happens when they want to move their desk against the opposite wall.

For these sorts of people wireless networks are sufficient, and they also make a lot of sense. When you're doing more intensive things with your network, however, ethernet really is the way to go. I think that's what my original post was saying, but maybe I wasn't clear.

Re:Um, no.

[terminal.dk]

All this Mac address crap is no important for a hacker, he just clones the MAC address of a LAN PC. He can then use another IP address to avoid detection by the PC. That is not anything funny, and something the switch will not react to. It is perfectly normal to use an extra IP address. Or he can plug LAN PC Hacker PC network.

We use VLANs, and many of them. Yes, you can only see traffic from your local segment. And hacking the Cisco switch is no more difficult than hacking everything else.

In big places, they are limited so a few adddresses can manage them. Just spoof this on the uplink port if you get access to the box. And if they use an upstream radius server, this is easy to fake as well. Cisco is only secure as long as the infrastructure is physically protected. Same as for a PC.

Re:Um, no.

[alienw]

Mesh and conductive paint might work for killing cell phone reception (which is marginal to begin with), but they won't do much for preventing snooping by a determined attacker. Mesh provides far from perfect attenuation.

Real RF/EMC test chambers are constructed of sheet steel, with special RF gaskets around joints and openings. The doors use pretty hardcore latches. There are special filters on all wires entering and exiting the enclosure. There is a reason for that -- any defect in your shielding acts as an antenna. Here's a company that sells EMC chambers and equipment. Turning your house into one of these would be quite difficult. You would have to install special filters on your power lines, water pipes, vents, and so on. You would probably have to block off all the windows. Any slots, openings, or imperfect connections will still allow signal to leak out.

Re:Um, no.

[gb506]

Agreed. Just got a new house. CAT6/RJ45 is going into all rooms.

Once it's secure, I'll use wireless.

So, I'll be using wired for the rest of my life.

Dude, dispense with the paranoia, will ya? We already know you're surfing gay porn.

Re:Um, no.

[cbiltcliffe]

capacility

Capacility? Is that, like, the capacity for the capability to do something? Is it that you can upgrade to add more features, so you have the capacity for more capabilities? Maybe Windows isn't secure, and it doesn't have the capability to be secure, but it has the capacility to be secure....

Re:Um, no.

[cbiltcliffe]

Anyway, there's still no simple method for cracking WPA yet..

If they're using PSK, (99.9%+ of home and small business users using WPA will be) and their PSK is a dictionary word, phrase, or similar (as a number pulled out of my ass, probably 70%+ will be), then a simple dictionary attack using aircrack will have the encryption cracked in a few minutes, at most.

Re:Um, no.

[JCSoRocks]

It is sort of ridiculous to say that anyone could just break in and steal the computer. They could do that for a wired and a wireless network. That isn't a fact that should be part of the discussion.

That was my point... People were claiming that wired was no more secure than wireless because people could break in / sneak in and hop on your network. My point was that - if they're in your building, you have bigger problems than wireless vs wired.

Re:Um, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Great. Thanks alot.

I was going to offer him 'Specialized' foil wrapped UTP cable at bargain bin prices.

Thanks for ruining my millionaire dream. Oh, well..... Back to my wireless cav, er basement.

Re:Um, no.

[penguinstorm]

Wrap your head in tinfoil instead. Then, no matter what electromagnetic noise you accidentally tap it won't go into your brain.

When I get my wetware implants directly into my skull, you'll be connecting to my by MyFi AND Petabit ethernet...for those secure connections.

Re:Um, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

>Am also building a new house. Am thinking about putting in
> bundled cat 5/Fiber. Anyone used this stuff?
> Have any opinions on it's use?

It might be a better idea to just install conduit to the various rooms to facilitate future runs of what ever the medium of the day is. Cat 5e now, fiber when and where you need it, etc.

Re:Um, no.

[NeilTheStupidHead]

Thanks for the tip, but at $475 per five litres, it would be cheaper to build a faraday cage, or buy a new, more powerful router and start an inevitable arms race that will eventually lead to violations of CPC-2-0-03. (Hint, since I build and repair transceivers for a living, I'll probably win ^>^ )

Re:Um, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

It would no longer be a pig, but a composite object.

Re:Um, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

They have. At least 20 years ago with GSM.

Re:Um, no.

[_Lint_]

What's a SIP phone? Is that anything like a cell phone? Or is it a traditional phone line? I've never heard of a SIP phone before.

Media server? I know a guy here in the office that has one of those. Never have seen one before, though.

I don't know how it could be cheaper to have a wired network in your house than a wireless network. For $150, you can get a wireless router and a few wireless adapters. Then you take about an hour or so to get the whole thing set up. How long would it take to wire 3 bedrooms, the living room, the great room, and the basement of my house (keeping in mind that the wires would have to be in the walls; exposed network cable running through the house would be unacceptable).

As for wireless network lag, my wireless connection seems to keep up with my cable modem just fine.

Re:Um, no.

[OwnedByTwoCats]

I think we're getting to those limits. Five or Ten years ago, a $600 computer system was a joke. Very limited. Now, not nearly so much. You get everything an office-type person needs, and you don't have to upgrade very much to keep a developer happy. It's not the latest gaming rig, true, and it doesn't have the bandwidth for working on big images or video. But that's a far cry from the $6,000 that a solid desktop set one back 15 years ago.

Those $6,000 systems exist; there are just not that many people who can use that "extra".

Re:Um, no.

[fbjon]

They have. At least 20 years ago with GSM. Nope. That's only a hack, by having every device play nice and only use a specific time slot in their channel.

Bottom line: a lot of people transmitting lots of data on the same bunch of frequencies will eventually result in collisions. The only way around it is directional antennas, tiny cells, or more frequencies. Or wires.

Re:Um, no.

[H310iSe]

Reliability - exactly the point, more than security. For example, no matter what I've done (settings, new routers, new wNICs, different PCs, etc.) the wireless @ my house just occasionally drops, as much as 2-3 times a day or as little as 3x a week... I almost always can fix it by 'repairing' the wireless nic but sometimes I have to just connect to another network for a while, then come back to mine.

Now I want to go wireless with our point of sale systems @ nightclubs which require constant, near perfect network transmissions (due to exceedingly bad information architecture and db design of the POS program). When wireless will be able to run with 99.99% uptime while running full encryption regardless of what other wireless devices may come and go in the area, that day is the day I tear all our network cabling out and dance a jig. I think that day is not today though.

Re:Um, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

WHO is after your data? FSB?

The front-side bus better be trying to get my data.

Re:Um, no.

[The -e**(i*pi)]

Cisco is only secure as long as the infrastructure is physically protected.
Well, duh, but so is wireless, or just about any computer stuff.

All this Mac address crap is no important for a hacker, he just clones the MAC address of a LAN PC. He can then use another IP address to avoid detection by the PC. That is not anything funny, and something the switch will not react to. It is perfectly normal to use an extra IP address. Or he can plug LAN PC Hacker PC network.
Isn't that what an IDS is for? and i'm pretty sure If u wanted to you could tie the IDS into turning off that port. Layer 2/3 switches may already be able to detect this and act accordingly, but then again I don't have my CCNA yet.

Re:Um, no.

[Thuktun]

"But what if the pig were suspended via twine attached to the dorsal feathers of a flock of swallows?"

African or European? Much like Godwin's Law, if a conversation includes sufficiently geeky participants, the probability over time of a Monty Python quote appearing also approaches 1.

Re:Um, no.

[mrsteveman1]

TDM is at least a reasonable solution to the problem.

Re:Um, no.

[Have Brain Will Rent]

You would need physical access to the wired network in order to carry out your plans for espionage.

Ummmm, no you don't. There is almost always rf leakage from cables and these can be picked up and decoded - intelligence agencies have known how to do this for a long time.

Re:Um, no.

[operagost]

Well, now that's totally incorrect. WAP eliminates the two biggest problems with WEP: the fixed key (via TKIP) and the exploitable authentication code (via MIC). Even without an authentication server, it's way better.

Re:Um, no.

[dkf]

Give it a couple years, and we'll probably all be running 10Gbps networks You mean you aren't already? Time to get with the program, man! Anyone would think you're stuck in 2006 or something like that...

Re:Um, no.

[InvalidError]

Running cat5 through existing walls, floors, ceiling, etc. might be annoying but it is (usually and thankfully) a one-time job. For fixed appliances like sales terminals, being wired should be a non-issue since said appliances are usually also wired for power... unless the clubs you do business with get remodeled every couple of weeks - in which case I would expect the behavior to subside as funds dry up.

Also, even if most of the business is carried out wirelessly with mobile terminals, the wireless access points are usually wired together anyway to provide redundancy, improved bandwidth, cover dead spots and avoid consuming what little spectrum is available with uplink traffic.

Indeed, even the most hardcore wireless enthusiasts are going to remain at least partly wired for several more years to come - no wireless link can beat wired on availability and reliability.

Re:Um, no.

[sumdumass]

Now wait a minute. I can sit along the street and with some antennas, you wouldn't even be able to see me from your building. In that case wired is safer. When you look at all the pros and cons verses security, and weed out what would effect both types of network, Wired beats wireless hands down.

Saying that someone could break in and steal the computers doesn't mean throwing any other thought of securing the network away. It could mean that you might be hacked by someone who would never break into anything or steal a physical object. I mean why even lock the house if they could break in anyways?

Your neighbor might never think of breaking into your house and stealing something from you. But he might not think twice about hacking into a wireless network that he can pick up from the safety of his own home. A lot of times, to the criminal, it is how likely they would get caught and how easy it would be to get away with it. How likely is it that you or I would be caught in the privacy of our own home with a wireless signal? How hard would it be compared to breaking into a house and stealing the computers?

Re:Um, no.

[PitaBred]

Ever heard of "Vonage"? Then guess what, you have heard of an SIP phone.

Re:Um, no.

[vertinox]

SECURITY One of the things, I never understood was why not develop a one time pad system for wireless security?

Say you and your router contain a text file of one time pads in a 100mb text file that you generate by physically syncing over regular Ethernet during the initial setup of wireless.

Then all your wireless connections can do is ask what time the router thinks it is. Then every 10 seconds you change the one time pad. Over a day you would run through about 8640 one time pad sequences over the given day.

Which gives the eaves dropper about 10 seconds before they can crack the one time pad before you move on. In theory, an eavesdropper could record the entire days worth of communication and dechiper what was transmitted but could not fool the router into communicating with him because they will never know in advance what the one time pads are except the two parties communicating based on time intervals.

You may want to up the time intervals to prevent any communication but you would need to copy a real large one time pad on both the computer and the router, unless your willing to physically sync once a month or something.

Re:Um, no.

[swillden]

It may be more difficult to crack a WiFi connection, but it also not as obvious when someone is sniffing your packets.

I disagree. It's not hard to get inside once, find an unused RJ-45 socket behind a desk and plug a sniffer in.

And in any case any security comes down to the weakest link. If that link is physical access, when it comes to the point that I'm in your house standing in front of your computer, how is your security aided by using 802.11n over ethernet?

Because 802.11n is easy to encrypt, and ethernet is not.

Re:Um, no.

[bombshelter13]

Hey, I'm what they call a nerd. You may have heard of us. One popular nerdish past time (among some nerds, at least) is sitting at home all day, stealing data.

Re:Um, no.

[RedHelix]

Typical cost of a 802.11n card:
$80-110

Typical cost of a 10/100 NIC:
$10-20

QED

Re:Um, no.

[Propaganda13]

Since my computers are inches away from my router, I don't really see the need to "upgrade" from RJ-45 to 802.11n.

Re:Um, no.

[Dan541]

Now wait a minute. I can sit along the street and with some antennas, you wouldn't even be able to see me from your building. In that case wired is safer. When you look at all the pros and cons verses security, and weed out what would effect both types of network, Wired beats wireless hands down. I'm surprised I haven't see anyone mention DoS attacks yet if you wanted to just mess a network up their are wifi jammers readily avalible for consumer purchase and with more surveillance cameras using wifi I can see an upcoming security problem in the future.

~Dan

Re:Um, no.

[MojoStan]

Have you asked the new neighbor to update his/her firmware? I'm not sure if this will help, but the new 802.11n Draft 2.0 certification is supposed to prevent interference problems with legacy 802.11b/g gear. Some, but not all, "draft" 802.11n routers can be upgraded to Draft 2.0 with a firmware update.

From the Wi-Fi Alliance's Draft 2.0 FAQ (PDF file):

• I heard 802.11n can cause interference problems with other Wi-Fi networks. Is this true?

  In some configurations, 802.11n products can interfere with other Wi-Fi networks when they are trying to achieve the best performance. However, all products that are Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 802.11n draft 2.0 are required to implement a good neighbor protocol that helps ensure that interference is not a problem. Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 802.11n draft 2.0 products will operate in a manner designed to cause the least interference.

Specifically, Draft 2.0 access points are supposed to switch from 40 MHz to 20 MHz when it detects an 802.11b/g neighbor. However, according to a SmallNetBuilder blog entry, some early Draft 2.0 certified gear don't implement this protocol correctly.

Re:Um, no.

[timpaton]

Although the theoretical data rate of 802.11n is high enough for several HD video streams, in practice you only get a third of the theoretical data rate reliably

Whatever data rate they manange to push through the air, they'll always manage to push higher rates through wires.

Whatever data rate we have available to us, we'll work out a way to use.

I can't imagine what we might "need" that will require faster communication than multiple HD video streams, but I'm sure nobody ever imagined "needing" faster communication than the telegraph either.

However fast it's possible to send data, that's (not quite) as fast as we want it to be. Wireless will always be a bit slower again.

Re:Um, no.

[Kadin2048]

TDM is at least a reasonable solution to the problem. That's really not any better a solution to the problem than collision-avoidance algorithms on shared-media wired networks were, in their time.

Thankfully, wired networks moved beyond shared media to switched topologies, and thus the need for such hacks was obviated (at least on the client level, it's still a concern for switches and routers). But with RF, except perhaps with some highly directional form of UWB, it's always going to be a consideration.

It's a solution, sure, but so is just going with wires and having a dedicated circuit all to yourself, and not having to worry about playing nice with (or shouting over top of) others.

Re:Um, no.

[modecx]

Oh yeah, I get your point, and of course I thought of that. Most any such device would go unnoticed in most people's places, even if it were in plain sight. I was going more for the funny point than the informative point. Seriously, whoever modded me informative needs to be smacked.

Re:Um, no.

[Raideen]

If there are identical MAC addresses on the network, there are going to be connectivity problems. ARP resolves the IP address to the MAC address. With duplicate MACs, a commercial grade switch will either pick one to transmit to (meaning either your device or the LAN PC loses connectivity) or will stop both if security is setup that way, send SNMP traps, etc. Also, port security means that you'd need to use that specific MAC address on that specific port, which means that you can't connect at another location so that you won't be detected. If you disconnect a computer and replace it with your nefarious network device®, someone will notice.

Hacking a switch (Cisco or otherwise) is tougher when you don't have access to anything. Chances are, if port security is in use, the management VLAN is separated so that you can't even remote into the switch unless you're coming from a set of physical ports set aside for switch management--not just protected by IP (if you're serious about your security). The GP was talking about physical security.

Re:Um, no.

[suggsjc]

That is until some type of technology comes out that allows you to "see inside" the wires. I don't know how it would work, but who's to say that it can't be done? Anyway, your probably right for the foreseeable future, but "always" is a word that I try to not use especially concerning technology.

Re:Um, no.

[sigipickl]

"is there something about it that allows it to work magnificiently when everyone in an area is trying to run 10 or 15 APs at once with 802.11n equipment?"

My thoughts exactly- Isn't the technology still using unlicensed air space?

A simple wireless DoS involves firing up a few AP's near a building from a public street. Nothing illegal about that... (unlike plugging in to a wired LAN without permission to do so).

Re:Um, no.

[somersault]

Ah I get defensive too easily. I also somehow spelled sight wrong. Stupid autofingers.

Re:Um, no.

[somersault]

Still, I doubt you steal anything worth stealing.. mwuhahaha

Re:Um, no.

[jacksonj04]

Dunno though, some switches refuse to talk to devices without a known MAC address, and they have to be on a specific physical port. Universities do this a lot in accommodation - it's only one registered MAC per physical port.

Of course MAC faking is easy enough, providing you know a valid MAC for that port.

Re:Um, no.

[JoelKatz]

In many cases, you can secure your endpoints a lot better than the wires between them. In that case, properly configured wireless provides higher security than wired. For some reason, wired device don't seem to offer an encryption -- and I have no idea why.

Re:Um, no.

[JoelKatz]

Um, no.

Where's the "-1 Wrong" modifier?! Actually, this one is wrong for so many reasons I don't know where to start.

The simplest thing to point out if that if you use a one-time pad more than once (and you're going to send more than one packet in 10 seconds, I assure you), you lose the security properties of the one-time pad. So all your syncing (which is obviously going to be a huge pain in the butt) is wasted since you didn't get the thing that it was supposed to get you.

OTP are essentially useless in practice. 99% of practical systems that claim to use OTPs actually don't. Worse, OTPs actually *don't* provide many critically-needed security properties and they magnify some vulnerabilities. (It's easier for a MITM to flip a specific bit of a packet protected by an OTP than for a packet protected by DES.)

Re:Um, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

why CAT6, not CAT5e?

besides, i still use BNC, you insensitive clod!

Re:Um, no.

[Jesus_666]

There's a very good reason to run Ethernet through your house - wireless coverage. Things might be different in the States (your walls tend to be quite thin), but in Germany one AP usually isn't enough for a decently sized house. Between me and our main router/AP there's ~15 meters and several layers of concrete and foam concrete, completely killing the signal. Running CAT5 and connecting a second AP solved the problem and leaves me with decent coverage anywhere in the house.

Now if WLAN roaming actually worked...

Re:Um, no.

[angus_rg]

A big problem you also face is congestion. Think of your wireless router as a hub. If everyone is sending messages, to everyone who gets it, everyone receives it whether it was ment for them. N only has 25 independent channels, if using 20mhz(40mhz = 12 I believe), which is much greater then 11g, with on 3 non-overlapping channels(I know there are 14, but most overlap), however, at the rate people are moving to wireless and using factory default settings, the more garbage a router receives that is not meant for its network.

Switches were not only used for security, but also efficiency. Wired networks will be used for this as well.

Re:Um, no.

[An0maly]

try changing the channel. i had this happen last week - couldn't hit my AP from 10 feet away. changed the channel and voila.

Re:Um, no.

[donpeyote]

well, security is a good reason, but i believe in another, probably im going to be flamed at... HEALTH a teacher of a friend of mine, does some consulting for phone companies, he's a specialist in radio waves, wifi transmission etc, and the fact is that he doesn't use cellphone and no wifi at home of course wifi is pretty cool, when you have a laptop at the office or at home, but i always turn it off at night when not using it. i don't know the characteristics of this hn version but probably are even more powerful so, not good the humans i guess. I thk this is something important and shouldn't be neglected.

wait

[wwmedia]

didnt they say the same about 802.11g not too long ago?

and what do we have now? both systems coexisting with each other

same gonna happen again

Re:wait

[myth24601]

didnt they say the same about 802.11g not too long ago?

and what do we have now? both systems coexisting with each other

same gonna happen again

The bigger question is will it coexist with my cordless phone or will I have to upgrade to 5GHz?

Re:wait

[Jugalator]

Since it was "not too long ago", maybe the transition has just yet to take place. ;-)

Re:wait

[Slightly Askew]

802.11n runs at 2.4GHz and/or 5GHz. Legacy support for your G hardware and 5GHz for your newer N hardware and your legacy A (if you have it). Should coexist just fine.

Re:wait

[neoform]

I'm not going to even so much as touch wireless until a better security model is found. Even WPA isn't that hard to crack..

Re:wait

[squiggleslash]

Two other options:

1. Get a DECT cordless phone. DECT frequencies are reserved for DECT, there's no chance any variant of Wifi will ever run on them (except in some form that co-exists, ie DECT does actually have a data mode, but nobody ever uses it.
2. Get Wifi phones, so your cordless phone system is part of your Wifi network rather than competing with it. This is somewhat expensive, and complex if you're not already using VoIP: you'll need to set up an Asterisk server and get something to hook that up to your POTS or ISDN line if you're not a current VoIP user.
3. Switch to a GSM operator that offers UMA and offers landline like rates over it. UMA is a system that treats your Wifi network and Internet connection as a virtual GSM tower (complete with handover from GSM to Wifi and vice versa while you're on a call and moving in and out of range.) T-Mobile USA does this right now, if you're in the US. Downside? Lack of phones right now, but that should improve over time.

The fourth alternative, as you say, is 5.8GHz but range and wall penetration make that option somewhat unappealing

Re:wait

[Vancorps]

Is there some new exploit I haven't heard of that lets people break WPA2? If they're cracking AES encryption along with private certificates then I'm impressed. Honest question though given that I manage a wireless network which is of course on its own VLAN.

Re:wait

[DrSkwid]

I'm certainly no expert in real world signal processing but I'd expect harmonics of 2.4ghz and 5ghz to interfere with each other's bandwidth.

All radio signals interefere.

Re:wait

[Trigun]

And don't forget to throw out your microwave.

Re:wait

[Slightly Askew]

I'm right there with you in not being an expert, but, using this logic, wouldn't wireless network simply cease to function in a large city where radio/television/police band/cellular/etc. is blanketing the area with radio signals. Frequency does matter in interference.

Re:wait

[Anonymous Coward]

WPA/WPA2 is vulnerable to offline dictionary attacks. If the person setting up the access point was a gibbering idiot and didn't use strong passwords, it can be brute-forced. As far as I know, that's its only weakness.

Re:wait

[Bluesman]

If that were true, radio signals wouldn't work. Different carrier frequencies are trivially filtered from each other. You only see problems like you describe in the digital domain when the sampling rate isn't high enough to disambiguate one frequency from another that's a multiple of it.

And you're not considering the bandwidth of the signal, which is important. AM signals have two sidebands based on the percent modulation of the carrier. There will be no interference after that.

FM signals have a theoretical infinite number of sidebands, but practically speaking the power degrades so sharply as you get further from the carrier that only the first few are powerful enough to produce any interference worth worrying about, while the rest are lost in the noise.

Re:wait

[Anonymous Coward]

Does Pork spell the 'End of Chicken'? News at 11.

Re:wait

[TooMuchToDo]

And don't forget to shield your microwave.

Fixed that for ya.

Re:wait

[DrSkwid]

I meant more in the same building than same city.

Re:wait

[koolman2]

I'd love to see you crack my WPA AES 256-bit encryption. Go ahead, give it a try. I'll give you $1,000 if you can do it. I'll give you a hint: the first character is "7". There are 63 more to go.

Re:wait

[PitaBred]

And don't forget to shield your microwave.

Fixed that for ya. Fixed that for ya.

Maybe not.

[PresidentEnder]

Well, it might very well mean a decline in the number of cabled set-ups in the future, but it won't immediately kill the infrastructure that's already in place. People are loath to change their way of doing things when what they have is good enough.

Re:Maybe not.

[tomstdenis]

Not only that but there are cases were wireless just doesn't work. For example, if my file server is in the basement and my media device in the upstairs living room, wireless may be hit or miss. However, a $30 cat-5 run will work just fine all the time. Even when you're in the same room, when everyone else is running wifi it might get bogged down. Especially if you live in a younger neighbourhood.

I think wifi has *already* replaced quite a few cat-5 networks [or network attachments]. the 'n' revision just makes things sweeter.

Re:Maybe not.

[Znork]

"when what they have is good enough."

What I have is gigabit, and it's just barely good enough. Once you move to gigabit, it's perfectly workable to set up diskless clients booting over the network off iSCSI disks. No more disk noise in the workstations or the media PC, much easier backups, no more hundreds of gigabytes wasted distributed around where you need maybe 4 for the OS. Etc.

And if 1 gigabit made moving disks out of the local machines useful, going to 10 gigabit will make moving even more things out of the local computer possible. It could make network based graphics accelerators possible, where any computer on your LAN could use the 3d accelerator. Etc.

Yes, wireless is good enough. For what we did fifteen years ago; it's perfectly capable of replacing 10mbit coax networks.

But it's nowhere near, nor is it likely to ever get near, replacing anything that actually uses modern networking technology.

Re:Maybe not.

[Vancorps]

I submit to you that a RGU is a better option for the home than a complicated iSCSI PXE boot process where you have to construct a new image for every new machine.

Naturally Matrox has this one covered. RGU Link Fanless, no moving parts, you have all your USB and firewire and you're free to have a noisy PC in the basement with all the power you want. Much easier to setup and use.

I do agree though, in the work environment I barely get by with gigabit and 10gigabit isn't cost effective yet. I'm looking at upgrading the links between two of my switches but some of them don't even have the option yet.

Of course the thing I'm wondering is when fiber channel is going to catch up. 8gigabit throughput to the SAN is tight so you end up multi-linking and load balancing to get more throughput which is harder on the server so you end up adding more servers and distributing the load with a proper Linux load balancer. The SAN has plenty of more throughput available given that there are over 200 spindles so it's a shame the bottleneck is the network.

Re:Maybe not.

[misleb]

Wired ethernet isn't just "good enough." It is objectively better/faster. Even good ol' fashioned 100Mbit ethernet. If you have a server on GigE, and all your clients on a 100Mbit switch, you're going to get MUCH better overall throughput. The only reason NOT to go/stay wired is if laying the wire is prohibitively expensive or just plain inconvenient. But if you have a bunch of desktop computers, wired is the way to go.

-matthew

No

[DJ Jones]

RJ45 jacks will never be obsolete for one reason... Security.

And I don't know what you're talking about, I still use gaslights.

Re:No

[samkass]

RJ45 jacks tend to be a lot less secure than wireless. WPA2 is very strong encryption, while most RJ45 connections are completely open an unencrypted. Heck, many wired networks are even configured to automatically give unknown clients an internal IP address in response to a request! It doesn't get much less secure than that.

Re:No

[DrSkwid]

> RJ45 jacks will never be obsolete for one reason... Security.

Just like BNC

Re:No

[Ajehals]

Hmm, so what you are saying is that a badly configured wired solution is more secure than a perfectly configured wireless solution. Well that is fairly obvious. But is a perfectly configured wired solution less secure than a perfectly configured wireless solution? No its not.

If I have decently configured switches / AP's and correctly configured network services (DHCP, Cryto, IDS etc..) then which is more secure? Well the wired solution is. Why? because I am not making my network available for anyone to try and break into, or simply to monitor and carry out analysis against. Not to mention that the wired network will be faster, easier to troubleshoot (generally), generally cheaper (especially for big implementations) and easily managed. Wired networks have their place, as do wireless networks, the only people pushing for wireless everywhere are those with a stake in selling or providing wireless networking, sadly the idea appeals to a fair number of people (its very "high tech"), and 99% of Wireless networks I have stumbled across (pun intended) where not even close to being secure.

Re:No

[Slightly Askew]

This is compounded by the fact that the N standard uses MIMO and occupies all three available non-interfering channels in the 2.4 GHz spectrum meaning that you can't install very many access points in the same area without causing allot of interference to the other access points.

I feel like a broken record. 802.11n uses 5GHz or 2.4GHz & 5GHz. The number of non-interfering channels in 2.4GHz is indeed three. However, the total number is closer to 25 (or 12 if you choose to run 40MHz channels instead of 20MHz for increased speed).

Re:No

[edraven]

You sell wireless network equipment for a living, I assume?

Basically you're comparing apples to oranges here: an encrypted wireless connection to an unencrypted wired connection. Still the fact remains that an intruder has the opportunity to infiltrate a wireless network without entering the building. At the end of the day, I'd still prefer a strong dead-bolt on my front door to a safe with an elaborate combination sitting in the vacant lot next door.

Re:No

[swillden]

Basically you're comparing apples to oranges here: an encrypted wireless connection to an unencrypted wired connection

Which is a very reasonable comparison, because there really isn't any widely-available way to encrypt everything on the wires. How many places do you know that encrypt all data on their internal ethernet networks? Any? At all? I don't.

Re:No

[swillden]

If I have decently configured switches / AP's and correctly configured network services (DHCP, Cryto, IDS etc..) then which is more secure?

The wireless solution is. Physical access is typically very easy to obtain. Much easier than cracking AES or finding a way to get a copy of the WPA PSK or an account in the EAP server.

Not to mention that the wired network will be faster, easier to troubleshoot (generally), generally cheaper (especially for big implementations) and easily managed.

Yes, these are the reasons to prefer wires. Security is not only a red herring, it's an argument in favor of wireless.

Re:No

[AK Marc]

The wireless solution is. Physical access is typically very easy to obtain. Much easier than cracking AES or finding a way to get a copy of the WPA PSK or an account in the EAP server.

Physical access is useless in a properly configured wired network. Have you ever heard of 802.1x? It's still considered a part of the best that wireless has to offer for security. Do you know what 802.1x was created for? Wired networks. If you properly configure 802.1x on a wired network, you not only need physical access, but you need to authenticate to be able to reach anything except the authentication server. You will get no broadcasts forwarded to your port for sniffing. You will not be able to send anything out of the network. You don't need encryption if you don't forward a single packet to that port other than the deny messages from the authentication server. Of course, you can encrypt over ethernet as well, but it isn't necessary with a properly configured network, even without physical security to the ports.

Wireless took Ethernet's leftovers and did the best they could, and it is still less than Ethernet. Equally secure networks *always* leave the wired network more secure. Anyone that thinks otherwise doesn't know how to configure a wired network.

Re:No

[samkass]

No, I'm a software guy not in the network business at all.

My company, though, actually restricts access on the wired network without a registered MAC address or two-factor authentication with a checked-out RSA badge. It's still unencrypted, though, so it's ALMOST as secure as our wireless network, and our level of security is unusual.

The typical low-cost wired switch, also, tends to offer no encryption or authentication, while every wireless router these days supports WPA2.

Re:No

[null-sRc]

One word: WEP!

Do your homework. I am an expert technician and have years in training.

Re:No

[edraven]

A strong case can probably be made for the argument that the reason wired switches don't typically come with encryption or authentication built in is that there isn't a demand for it. And the reason there isn't a demand for it is that a wired network doesn't suffer from the inherent security concerns that you get from broadcasting your data, encrypted or unencrypted.

Regardless of what type of encryption is wrapped around the data, it's still hanging in the air for anyone with a receiver to gather and analyse. And they have all the time in the world to break your encryption, because you have no way of knowing they're there. To accomplish the same thing on a wired network, the intruder has to have physical access to the building.

Re:No

[edraven]

Oh, and I apologize for the salesman comment, that was snarky.

I use a wireless network at home. But I keep a firewall between it and the file servers, which are on a wired network. And I do what I can within reason to secure it. I'm not trying to say wireless networks can't be secured enough for any use at all. All I'm saying is that the day my bank switches to a wireless network is the day I switch banks.

Re:No

[bennomatic]

I find that gaslights work best in my farraday cage...

Re:No

[swillden]

Wireless took Ethernet's leftovers and did the best they could, and it is still less than Ethernet. Equally secure networks *always* leave the wired network more secure. Anyone that thinks otherwise doesn't know how to configure a wired network.

I am familiar with the 802.1x theory. What I've never seen, anywhere, even in companies that are very security-sensitive, is a real-world implementation of 802.1x. As a consultant, I see a lot of corporate networks. On the other hand, I know lots of companies, and even homes, that have implemented LEAP, TKIP, WPA PSK, WPA w/some EAP, or even WPA2.

My previous statements were a little overstated, mainly to counter the apparently almost universal assumption that wireless is inherently less secure than wired. So I'll back down a little. However, I'll stand by the statement that the average corporate WiFi network is far more secure than the average corporate wired network.

Re:No

[AK Marc]

I am familiar with the 802.1x theory. What I've never seen, anywhere, even in companies that are very security-sensitive, is a real-world implementation of 802.1x.

So you are comparing the best wireless with the most common Ethernet and declaring wireless more secure. You do realize that a switched network will not have packets exit an interface that it isn't destined for? So that means that if you plug into a port on a completely unsecured network, you can't sniff someone else's password. You would have to administer the switch to set up some manner of forwarding packets to ports they aren't destined for. So, even then, wireless shares your information with everyone, who you hope aren't able to decode it. Wired transfers it to the port it is supposed to go to and no other, so no one can sniff it. And wired can be set up with greater security than any wireless network, though that is rarely implemented. And because wired is more secure than wireless in every equal comparison, you declare wireless to be the winner because you've set up plenty of wireless security and no wired security. Have you thought that it's because wired security with no security features enabled is actually better than wireless with some security enabled? If I have a sniffer and a WEP cracker, I can listen to my neighbor's traffic if he has some bad wireless security enabled. If he's on a DSL modem, most cable modem systems (yes, some are broadcast, but almost all have the MAC filters built into the hardware and require you use their modem so you can't sniff neighbor traffic as much as you could when they were new), or an Ethernet LAN, you will be unable to intercept a single non-broadcast packet of his.

Re:No

[swillden]

So you are comparing the best wireless with the most common Ethernet and declaring wireless more secure.

Nope, I'm comparing the average corporate wireless with the average corporate ethernet. I was very clear about that; I'm not sure how you missed it.

Shared medium.

[saintlupus]

I can't wait for wireless to take over everything. Collisions and shared bandwidth are awesome. I miss hubs so much.

--saint

You can have my wired ethernet...

[Bin_jammin]

when you pry it out of my cold, dead hands. The day wireless can beat wired not just in theory but also in practice is the day I see how much copper I can get out of the building.

Re:You can have my wired ethernet...

[dintech]

It would also be a fine day to get a nice cocktail, fill it with icicle fragments from hell, kick back and watch the little piggies zooming about the sky. You could even catch one or two and have a barbeque.

Interference? Security?

[svendsen]

What about situations where something is causing inference (material in building/other signals/etc?). At home I have 2 laptops, each one will get different speeds in different rooms (I'm talking about sometimes a 10 - 15 mbps difference).

Then there is the security issue. Yes you can lock down your wireless but since it is wireless someone can sit outside and keep trying over and over vs. if you don;t have it they need physical access.
This isn't saying wireless is bad, just they are factors which will never go away which will always make the decision of wi-fi vs. wired never cut and dry.

Re:Interference? Security?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is precisely the issue. While security is a critical
element, so is the fact that the available spectrum/spectra
is fixed and limited. You can always make more wire, and
faster cables, but there is only just so much RF spectrum
space available. That concept seems to elude everyone. The
available bandwidth is *SHARED*, and when some people go
beyond the limited range capabilities in the original
architecture of wireless nets by adding "Pringles" antennas
and other falderol, they make it harder on the other users.
And, it will only get worse. The increased wireless LAN
activity will raise the noise floor, requiring the normal
(i.e., licensed) users (remember that wireless LANs are
unlicensed secondary users which aren't allowed to interfere
with the primary users) to raise their ERP (effective radiated power =
transmitter output power times the gain of the antenna) to
compensate, further exacerbating the problem.

Point is, if people really thought about it and used their
heads, they'd use wireless only when absolutely needed as a
short-range Local Area Network connection, not as a Metropolitan
Area Network or a long-range point-to-point link.

Re:Interference? Security?

[Anonymous Coward]

Microwave ovens FTW!

End of ?

[midwestnets]

They call it an "application" for a reason. There are a multitude of reasons for having wires which I wont go into. However, I would agree that the move in the future toward "Endpoint Nuetral" security suggests that the applications for wires will continue to drop.

Nah

[thrashee]

As much as I love the convenience of wireless, there's no way it's as reliable as a good old-fashioned hardline. (Online gaming comes to mind:) )

It's still wi-fi

[Atilla]

Can 802.11n get 10Gbps? When you get those kind of speeds, we'll talk :-]

Re:It's still wi-fi

[ZachPruckowski]

The point is that most current installations support 10/100. When considering upgrading to GbE (10 Gbps isn't available in desktops at reasonable prices), you can get half the speed without switching from Cat 5 to Cat 5e or Cat 6 at the end-user end. One router can cover two dozen cubicles, and at draft-N speeds, that's not much of a problem for email/web.

Re:It's still wi-fi

[ReaperEB-Moo]

exactly... 10Gbps or the new 100Gbps that they're working on at the moment.

Re:It's still wi-fi

[Morgor]

Well, neither can an electric RJ45. When running at those speed, optical connection (fiber) is necessary. GbE is still available as electric (and point-to-point wireless), but when running at higher speeds like 10GbE, you can't continue using your RJ45 cable, not that it's a problem anyway, it's mostly carriers/ISPs who use 10GbE and for those, optical cables aren't an issue at all.

Re:It's still wi-fi

[poot_rootbeer]

When considering upgrading to GbE (10 Gbps isn't available in desktops at reasonable prices), you can get half the speed without switching from Cat 5 to Cat 5e or Cat 6 at the end-user end.

You may be able to extend the life of your existing Cat5 runs by a few years if you switch to 802.11n wireless now, but it won't meet your needs forever.

Actually, it's not a bad short-term solution; pulling your Cat5 and replacing it with Cat6 might not give you benefits that match the cost, and fiber to the desktop isn't cost-effective yet. But as far as "the end" of wired networks, no. That won't be happening.

Re:It's still wi-fi

[wizden]

Actually, you can. 10GBASE-T does this. 10GBASE-CX4 can also handle it. Although with CX4 you would have to replace your cables, and 15m is not long enough for desktop cable runs. You would have to replace your switches and NIC's in either case. It works for data centers and is much cheaper than fiber. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_gigabit_Ethernet#Cables/
Michael

Not all organizations want wireless

[Anonymous Coward]

My brother, who works in the data cabling field, was telling me how his major client recently gave up on wireless and reverted to the idea of putting data ports in every cube. The reason? They are a financial services company and, rightly or wrongly, they decided wireless simply doesn't offer the security they need.

Yes, of course

[blueZ3]

This is totally a replacement for wired connectivity, because in a building with three or four hundred computer users, there won't be any radio interference between wireless cards. I'm sure that there won't be any issues in high-density deployments. I mean, the four PCs in my house never, ever have any reduction in speed when they're all connected simultaneously.

What do they teach them in schools these days?

Re:Yes, of course

[winkydink]

What do they teach them in schools these days?

Had a look at Myspace or Facebook? Sigh.

Re:Yes, of course

[peacewon]

Hmmm... Makes you wonder about the effects of multiple sequences of ones and zeros traveling through my brain right now in radio frequency form. Also makes me think of the fried egg drug commercial.

Re:Yes, of course

[Slightly Askew]

Not to disagree, as obviously wired connections will, for the foreseeable future, always outperform wireless, but you do realize that 802.11n specs call for up to 4 transmitting and 4 receiving antennas per AP, right? In your home with four PCs, you can reasonably expect that you will not experience the same issue you have today where 4 computers are vying for the attention of a single antenna.

Re:Yes, of course

[Tiger4]

This is totally a replacement for wired connectivity, because in a building with three or four hundred computer users, there won't be any radio interference between wireless cards.
And when someone decides to fire up the microwave oven for coffee break or popcorn, all those other users can take a break with them. "Teaming" at its finest. This is Win-Win for all concerned! Synergize forward to the Wireless Productivity Revolution!!

Re:Yes, of course

[VirtualAdept]

Well, this was an analyst, so he went to Analyst College. Second semester course: Trolling Slashdot for Profit 101.

Re:Yes, of course

[Tiger4]

A single antenna can deal with 200+ computers.
It isn't an issue of numbers per antenna, it is view angles, polarization, signal propagation and blockages. 4 antennas per AP lets you set them at different locations (wired back to the switch) and at various inclination angles to be sure the signal covers the space you care about.

Re:Yes, of course

[andyo]

So far as bandwidth usage goes, it's worth looking at the data exchanged in most office environments. Most office workers are using incredibly bloated formats, sending word processing and spreadsheet documents around in email. As they move to wikis or other light-weight collaborative tools, data transmissions will go down. Ajax is making a lot of application developers think about how to cut down bandwidth requirements. People do love video, but that's still not central to office work.

Re:Yes, of course

[Slightly Askew]

Please tell me where I can purchase one of these fine 5000MHz microwave ovens.

Re:Yes, of course

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, who modded this INSIGHTFUL when it is obviously sarcastic and hence more apt to be FUNNY?

Re:Yes, of course

[Tiger4]

You can't buy one, but you can use one. Simply climb the superstructure of any of our Stalwart Naval vessels and wait until the dish comes around.

Seriously, 11n can run in both bands, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/802.11n#802.11n

Re:Yes, of course

[Slightly Askew]

Thanks, but I've grown rather fond of my reproductive abilities.

Yes, that has been my point to the microwave FUD going around. Just use 5GHz instead of 2.4GHz, and if you're argument is that you have to run 2.4GHz to support legacy hardware, well, you're already dealing with the microwave problem and this isn't a shortcoming of 11n. After all, we're supposed to be arguing the possibilities of replacing ethernet with 11n, not ethernet with wireless in general. (Of course, I would argue that the real discussion is if you can replace ethernet to the desktop, not wires in general. Nobody is going to pull their GB cards out of their servers and stick an 802.11n card in there, or try to connect their cluster to a SAN with 802.11n.)

Re:Yes, of course

[Anonymous Coward]

Bandwidth usage in offices will go down? Gasp, well I guess I should go short my Cisco stock.

Spreadsheets and text documents take up a trivial amount of bandwidth, it won't matter whether they are emailed around or manipulated on a web server. Rich media usage in offices, however, has and will continue to increase. That is nontrivial and will continue to increase.

Ask yourself, how have the IT patterns in offices changed over the last ten years? Wouldn't you say many more offices use the network to deliver video, store photo collections, archive paper documents, etc than ten years ago?

Re:Yes, of course

[Anonymous Coward]

The schools are one of the first palces that won't to become wireless only...

Re:Yes, of course

[kent_eh]

What do they teach them in schools these days?

Marketing?

Doubt it.

[ynososiduts]

Unless buildings are made of less concrete and brick. My school has a wireless network, but it's spotty due to the big maze of concrete and brick buildings. You only get a connection when the room you're in has a wireless bridge, but every room has a RJ45 port. There really is no question of signal strength when talking about wired networks.

Re:Doubt it.

[Anonymous Coward]

"There really is no question of signal strength when talking about wired networks."

Yes there is. Wires have a max range too beyond which you'll need a switch or some other powered node.
Fiber optics are the real nearly rangeless choice.

Re:Doubt it.

[ynososiduts]

I was really only considering the confines of a small urban campus. I understand there is a cable length limit, but between the user and the switch the distance usually doesn't exceed the max.

They will coexist

[prestomation]

With all the infrastructure already in place, no one is going to put a 'n card in their desktop when their current NIC is more secure and more reliable. If I were continually lugging my desktop machine to different locations in my house it would be different, but, uhh, I'm not.

Wireless AP can't hand

[Joe The Dragon]

Wireless AP can handle as mean users per AP as a switch can and you will still need to run wire to each AP anyways as you may have a hard time getting all systems to work off of one AP.
Also RJ45 ports are build in to just all systems now days build in the chipset or running over the pci-e bus that can hit the full gig-e speed. There are a few with build in wireless but most of there are on the slower usb bus that pushes up cpu load. Pci N cards are $50 or more per card.

Re:Wireless AP can't hand

[JCSoRocks]

Hmm good point. Integrated ethernet will always be faster than some add-on card. Not that it'll matter anyway. Your wireless connection will suck because of the other users / distance from AP / crows flying in circles / whatever else makes those things stop working. All I know is when I'm stealing Internet from my neighbor the connection is terrible. He needs to upgrade to n so that I can get a better signal. :P (is joke people, is joke)

Not nearly reliable enough

[Raineer]

The problem I see with wireless is still the constant interference from nearby wireless networks. No matter which of 3 routers I've used, and whether it is Win XP, Ubuntu, or OSX across 3 different machines...if there are many local wireless networks I will see disconnects around every 20-30 minutes no matter what. This can't happen when using (older) business tools like terminal sessions where a hiccup in handshake causes lost work.

On top of that, I have my doubts that any actual wireless throughput will touch Gigabit. Maybe if all we are comparing is 100MB it could be comparable.

Re:Not nearly reliable enough

[walt-sjc]

Maybe if all we are comparing is 100MB it could be comparable.

Except for the shared bandwidth issue, and the fact that wireless theoretical speeds are never achieved in the real world. You could compare it to people on a 100M hub-based network - the kind we used 10+ years ago.

Re:Not nearly reliable enough

[dal20402]

Every 20-30 minutes? Try every few seconds at peak times. The more wireless networks are around, the more I need my wires.

I'm in a building where I can see about 30 802.11g networks. The only way I can get my wireless network to work reliably at high-usage times (the evening) is to be at my desk about 4' from the WAP. When I'm 4' from the WAP (and router), why bother with wireless?

Re:Not nearly reliable enough

[MollyB]

>> whether it is Win XP, Ubuntu, or OSX across 3 different machines...

So far, I've been unable (too lazy, stupid, lethargic) to use my laptop/Ubuntu wireless capability. I've got a long CAT5 cable which works fine, but I knock over upright items when I move around. Could you or anyone describe the procedure? I like the security of ethernet, but I'd like to take the machine outside or upstairs sometimes and stay connected.

I don't think so...

[schnikies79]

The wireless in my home cuts out when the microwave is started, has 802.11n fixed that? How about secure systems? There is much less of a chance of your network being broken into if the thief needs physical assess to the network.

Re:I don't think so...

[Dr. Eggman]

IANAE, but maybe you should think about having the microwave replaced, or atleast inspected for faults. I can't fathom what sort of problem would cause it to interfere with wireless, but I can almost certainly say you should have that checked out...

Re:I don't think so...

[Slightly Askew]

The wireless in my home cuts out when the microwave is started, has 802.11n fixed that?

Yes

I'm surprised at the number of people that don't realized 802.11n can operate at 5GHz, like 802.11a. I thought this was one of the major selling points.

Re:I don't think so...

[schnikies79]

I've wondered about that, but haven't cared enough to do anything about it. My AP is at one end of the house and the microwave is in the middle. Everything on the side opposite the AP cuts out when the microwave is started and won't reconnect as long as it's running. It's a new microwave (>1yr old).

Re:I don't think so...

[Slightly Askew]

I can't fathom what sort of problem would cause it to interfere with wireless

Because microwaves are imperfectly shielded and operate at 2450 MHz.

Re:I don't think so...

[schnikies79]

I have never heard or read that. The only thing I ever hear touted about 802.11n is the increased speed, which doesn't excite me at all. I rarely saturate my 802.11g connections.

Re:I don't think so...

[MachineShedFred]

Back when 802.11b was new, I was working in a QA lab for a card manufacturer. We were getting our initial offering ready to go, and so we were giving it a good performance shakedown in the lab.

We had a spectrum analyzer going, and were monitoring the frequency while we had a box transferring something huge through an AP about 20 feet away, and it was looking good, then *POW* bandwidth drops to the floor and the spectrum analyzer shows frequency spikes all over the place, right in the middle of the channel we're using. Moving out to a wider selection of frequency (the whole 2.4Ghz band) we see these spikes all over the place.

A technical writer was firing up the microwave in the adjacent room, and the thing was flooding the lab. Needless to say, we did all future performance testing in a faraday cage.

Yeah OK

[betterunixthanunix]

Wireless will never beat Ethernet, if for no other reason, simple reliability. I have seen odd things happen with radio waves, like have a very good signal in one spot, and almost no signal just a few feet away. Or getting the signal strength affect by where some random person is standing. Or signals not passing through walls (getting a cable through a wall requires no more than a drill). Or microwave ovens killing the signal.

The strangest was a friend who used a linksys router with the SSID "linksys" and WEP encryption, who lived next door to someone using the same SSID but no encryption. Oh yeah, the wireless network managers on various OS's had a field day with that one. Ethernet just doesn't have those problems, so it will always been needed when mobility is less important than reliability.

Re:Yeah OK

[genzil]

I've seen that as well. The so called 'security export' at work couldn't sort it out and thought that the Belkin AP was giving out 2 signals. Knowing that this was very unlikely I turned the AP off and the unsecured signal was still there. Bingo! I still had to physically unplug it before he would believe me though.

Re:Yeah OK

[UncleTogie]

Don't forget cordless phones that operate in the 2.4GHz range, either. We had a client a few years back who would lose all connection whenever the phone rang...

Re:Yeah OK

[Anonymous Coward]

"Wireless will never beat ethernet"

You do realize wireless _is_ ethernet, right?

Re:Yeah OK

[Akaihiryuu]

Agreed. Wireles also has a lot higher latency than ethernet, and that's not something they go into in these ethernet-is-dying articles. Sure wireless is extremely handy in some situations...I use it for my laptop, my DS, and my Wii right now. It's handy being able to take the laptop anywhere in the apartment without stringing wires. But I'd never use it for a computer that isn't moved around. The ONLY advantage wireless has is portability...so if it's not a portable device of some sort (or a videogame console that doesn't need the connection often enough to warrant stringing cable), then wireless is just not necessary.

Re:Yeah OK

[dogsbestfriend]

isn't that what they said about cellphones too? I expect wireless will beat wired, but not just yet..

Re:Yeah OK

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely. Wired is old technology, and much more expensive than wireless. Cables are inherently more expensive than no cables. Expect wireless to overtake wired lans in the next 5-10 years. If technology demands a new spectrum to make it happen, then we might have to wait for that. 802.11n is not the thing that will make this happen, but it _will_ happen.

Make no mistake. Technology is driving towards a seamless, wireless mesh of computers. Wireless routers, as we know them, may only be necessary to boost density of the signal in low-usage areas -- where there aren't already a sea of laptops ready to propagate other people's requests.

Re:Yeah OK

[Bender0x7D1]

I have seen odd things happen with radio waves, like have a very good signal in one spot, and almost no signal just a few feet away.

Actually, this isn't odd behavior. It's called multi-path interference which results from the signal bouncing off the walls, windows and other things, (even people). Since some of the signal has travelled a different distance to reach you, it begins interfering with, and even cancelling out your signal completely if the differing distance is ~1/2 of the wavelength. If you look at good wireless APs, their antennas are spaced so that a signal that is "cancelled out" at one of the antennas will not be cancelled out at the other.

Re:Yeah OK

[betterunixthanunix]

Yeah? Because there are still plenty of landlines in use, and there are places where cell connections make no sense at all. Cell phones are very popular, but they don't quite beat landlines all the time. Landlines are more reliable, especially during an emergency (911 operators can more easily find your location if you call from a land line than from a cell). I still see credit card machines using X.25 land line connections in a lot of small stores, where a telephone connection is a hell of a lot cheaper than a dedicated internet connection.

Yes, WiFi networking has gained a lot of ground and has a lot of uses, but there are things that wired connections are just better for. Wireless devices are more expensive to produce than wired, and for some embedded devices that can be a problem ($5 for cabling vs. $20 for a wireless adapter is a no-brainer, especially if you are trying to deploy 50 security cameras). For the same reason that you still see X.25 connections in wide use, you will continue to see wired LAN connections in wide use, but not necessarily for PCs. Really, embedded devices shouldn't be discounted when discussing computing, especially infrastructure.

Re:Yeah OK

[AK Marc]

Actually, this isn't odd behavior.

It is odd. Yes, it is understandable and describable, but when dealing with invisible waves and unknown dead spots and good spots, it is still "odd." The common user may think that if coverage is good in two spots that you would expect it to be good directly between those spots. Anything other than the expected behavior is "odd" even if it is understandable and describable by someone more familiar than the user.

Re:Yeah OK

[twitchingbug]

How long did it take your friend to figure out what was happening with the 2 linksys networks? And I'm assuming he's changed the SSID now? :P

many nodes

[Zork the Almighty]

I am skeptical of the ability of any wireless standard to handle a large network with many nodes. Won't the clients interfere ? With switches and routers you can build a tree. I suppose you could do that with 802.11 as well with different parts of a building, etc, but can it handle 500 people in a room all using the connection ?

Re:many nodes

[afidel]

but can it handle 500 people in a room all using the connection ?

A well designed network running on 802.11b can handle that for some measure of traffic. I know both the Microsoft and Intel campuses have wireless networks that can handle hundreds or thousands of people in their larger conference rooms/auditoriums. I know one of the tests at MS when they upgraded to .11g/.11a was to have everyone check out some presentation on their laptops at the same time, there were some hicups initially but they eventually got the network to where they could do it.

I have the answer

[Centurix]

My lead wall says no.

I want my ETHERNET!

[trelayne]

I think wireless is overrated. I'm on a wired connection right now and like it that way. I prefer it to Heroes bittorrents making there way through my cells. Anyway, wireless is a huge security hole. It's too easy to hijack other people's web sessions and snoop on their conversations.

Re:I want my ETHERNET!

[swillden]

Anyway, wireless is a huge security hole. It's too easy to hijack other people's web sessions and snoop on their conversations.

Bah. Wireless is far more secure than wired. To listen on your wired network all I have to do is get access to a cable. To listen on your WPA-secured wireless network I have to get access to a copy of your WPA key (assuming PSK for simplicity, but similar difficulties apply to the other modes). As a consultant who is regularly in other company's business areas, I'll tell you that the latter is vastly harder than the former. Usually, the only thing that stands between me and a wired connection is my respectful obedience to the client's security policies. Oh, and it's really trivial to get into most office areas, even uninvited.

That said, wireless will never compete with wired for bandwidth or reliability. Gig-E is the norm in wired networking these days and 10 Gbps will be inexpensive and common in a couple of years. That bandwidth doesn't matter so much if you're just surfing, but when you start moving large files around internally, it's really valuable. Gig-E and faster networks mean that there is essentially no performance difference between local and remote storage, which creates a lot of flexibility for storage management on wired networks. Wireless is also subject to frequency crowding and other forms of interference that can make it completely unusable from time to time, especially in densely populated areas. Further, wireless security comes at a high price in either convenience (PSK key distribution) or infrastructure (auth server for EAP). Wired networking provides a lower but often acceptable security level with no effort at all.

Wireless is convenient for some uses, but I want my office, and my home, wired.

Re:I want my ETHERNET!

[pla]

Wireless is far more secure than wired. To listen on your wired network all I have to do is get access to a cable. To listen on your WPA-secured wireless network I have to get access to a copy of your WPA key (assuming PSK for simplicity, but similar difficulties apply to the other modes).

One of those you can do from the parking lot (or with a good antenna, quite a good distance away). One you need physical access for.

Thanks, but I'll run encryption over my wires before I'll switch to trusting the same broadcast to everyone in the area.

Re:I want my ETHERNET!

[swillden]

One of those you can do from the parking lot (or with a good antenna, quite a good distance away).

How do you get the WPA key from the parking lot? Please, do tell. You can become quite famous and probably make some good money if you can answer this question.

Re:I want my ETHERNET!

[pla]

How do you get the WPA key from the parking lot? Please, do tell. You can become quite famous and probably make some good money if you can answer this question.

Just as soon as someone finds the answer to that, or more likely, finds a way to get around needing it (let's not insult each other and pretend it will never happen), they can have the fame, I don't want it.

I understand your point, but it doesn't change the fact that, however strong you claim cryptosystem-X, I can still assert with 100% accuracy that running it over wires instead of broadcast RF greatly improves that strength.

Re:I want my ETHERNET!

[rtechie]

You've posted a remarkable number of posts on this topic claiming that WPA is unhackable. You are very wrong.

A hotspot using SERVED WPA keys sent from a RADIUS or WPA server like IAS is extremely difficult to crack for various reasons. Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, actually does this. I've done lots of IT consulting and I've never run into a single site that had 802.1 working.

PRE-SHARED KEYS are completely different. That's just a single key constantly re-transmitted, giving you lots of time to sniff it and lots of time to crack it.

Here's how you do it: Sit outside the target site with a laptop, the right kind of networking card, and probably some sort of booster antenna. Run your software to do packet intercept and sit around for a while recording lots of traffic. That traffic contains all you need to hack the WPA key. Go home. Run the WPA cracking tools on your beefy desktop PC to retrieve the password via dictionary attack or brute force. This will take a while, possibly weeks, but the pre-shared key is likely to stay unchanged.

Now you can go back to that hotspot and access it, assuming they haven't changed the pre-shared key.

Or in a word: Aircrack-ng

So how much cash are you going to give me?

Re:I want my ETHERNET!

[PitaBred]

Dude. What kind of information are you trafficking in? I mean, the NSA might need that level of paranoia, but for surfing Youtube, and even doing online banking? There's no practical way to crack wireless security, and if you also consider that you don't really have anything that anyone really, really, really wants, there's not much to worry about.

Re:I want my ETHERNET!

[swillden]

Run the WPA cracking tools on your beefy desktop PC to retrieve the password via dictionary attack or brute force. This will take a while, possibly weeks, but the pre-shared key is likely to stay unchanged.

You're confusing WEP with WPA. What you say is true of WEP, but not WPA, particularly not WPA2, which uses AES as the cipher rather than RC4 (which isn't weak either, unless you misuse it the way WEP does).

Re:I want my ETHERNET!

[swillden]

let's not insult each other and pretend it will never happen

I'm perfectly willing to posit, and even bet money, that it will never happen, except perhaps through an insanely egregious implementation error on the part of one of the device vendors. An error akin to an automobile manufacture using explosive bolts to attach the wheels to a car.

Unlike WEP, which was never scrutinized by real cryptographers before being published and built into millions of devices, WPA and WPA2 were designed and publicly reviewed by the best we have. Particularly in the case of WPA2, the protocol is not going to fall unless AES is broken. WEP would not have been broken but for a weakness in RC4 (a weakness which was well-known years before the bozos who designed WEP released their first spec). Based on 10 years of experience studying and working in the security and cryptography industry, I predict quite confidently that AES will not suffer a practical break in our lifetime.

If you think I'm insulting you, it's because you don't know me and don't know my background in this area. But you don't have to rely on my opinion. Google a bit to see if you can find any experts predicting any significant probability of AES being broken, ever, and maybe even study some block cipher design and cryptanalysis so you can become enough of an expert to evaluate it yourself. Here is a excellent course. Even working your way through a fraction of that will give you a great understanding of the issues involved. Add to that understanding a review of AES and the AES selection process and I'm quite confident you'll agree with me that AES is not likely to be broken soon, if ever.

I can still assert with 100% accuracy that running it over wires instead of broadcast RF greatly improves that strength.

I'd agree with that. So how do I run WPA2 over wires?

Re:I want my ETHERNET!

[dwye]

> You're confusing WEP with WPA.

Maybe not, since WEP is only good for a couple of hours before it is cracked, when done by professionals. The recommendation that I heard was that using WEP was about as secure as not having a mat that actually said "Welcome" at your front door, and that you were better off running with no encryption on the links, and using VPN software to go to work or some wired proxy. Even without the VPN, you would be better off, since you at least knew that you were totally insecure, rather than being fooled.

Re:I want my ETHERNET!

[swillden]

Maybe not, since WEP is only good for a couple of hours before it is cracked, when done by professionals.

Right. And barring implementation errors, WPA is uncrackable, regardless of who is doing it. The difference is that WEP was designed by people who don't know much about cryptography and made a stupid, newbie design mistake and WPA and WPA2 were designed and reviewed by the world's top cryptographers (precisely because WEP was such a fiasco).

Re:I want my ETHERNET!

[pla]

I'd agree with that. So how do I run WPA2 over wires?

If you look in your Windows networking properties, you'll see an option for 802.1X.

The fact that WPA happens to use the same ideas doesn't prevent you from using the (preexisting!) underlying technology for just about any physically connection you want. Most of this amounts to making an encrypted VPN tunnel between the client machine and either the router or a dedicated server on the target network. Not new, or unique to wireless in any way.

Re:I want my ETHERNET!

[swillden]

If you look in your Windows networking properties, you'll see an option for 802.1X.

Which isn't WPA2. It provides many of the benefits, but not all. It doesn't, for example, provide any protection against sniffing the communications of an authenticated machine. It also requires a RADIUS server, which WPA does not (though it's a good idea for large wireless networks).

Most of this amounts to making an encrypted VPN tunnel between the client machine and either the router or a dedicated server on the target network.

Sure, you can layer security on top of a wired connection. How many networks do this for internal, behind-the-firewalls, communication? Not only have I never seen a real-world implementation of 802.1x, I've never even heard any organization discuss requiring a VPN on their internal LAN. As I said in a previous post, when I go to client sites the only thing standing between me and a network connection is my adherence to their security policy.

I actually VPN most of my wireless traffic at home, because I leave my wireless AP wide open. I don't mind sharing my network connection with whoever happens to need it. The wireless network is firewalled from the wired network, though, so without a VPN connection the only thing you can do is use the Internet via a router that implements traffic shaping to limit the impact of sharing.

Re:I want my ETHERNET!

[rtechie]

No, you didn't read what I wrote. I said "WPA" and I meant it. Only self-destructing keys are proof against brute force attacks, and WPA keys don't self-destruct. So you can lob password attempts at them all day, and that's EXACTLY what I'm talking about. Dictionary and brute force, not vulnerability cracks. There's no passphrase limit, but most passphrases are 8 or less alphanumeric only because those were the WEP limits and most people still use them. How long does it take? It took me 9 minutes to get the passphrase "weak" brute-force on a Athlon64 box.

Re:I want my ETHERNET!

[swillden]

Dictionary and brute force, not vulnerability cracks. There's no passphrase limit, but most passphrases are 8 or less alphanumeric only because those were the WEP limits and most people still use them. One nit: WEP keys were never limited to 8 or less alphanumeric character passphrases, not in any of the widely-used techniques for generating keys from passphrases.

That aside, I'll grant that weak keys are weak keys, if people are foolish enough to use them. I don't know any corporate WiFi network admins that use passphrases at all, though. They use a sixteen-character hexadecimal key, usually generated in a relatively random way. You're not going to guess that. A better approach is to snoop in the office and try to find the piece of paper they pass it around on (we're assuming PSK here, not EAP).

It took me 9 minutes to get the passphrase "weak" brute-force on a Athlon64 box.

And that's only a four-character password, which makes clear that even seven or eight-character passwords are out of range of practical brute force. Dictionary attacks are a more likely approach, for those that use passphrases.

Can you describe exactly what test you did? It's not clear from your description. It seems way too slow for running through 15 million combinations on a modern CPU, but way too fast for actual over-the-air authentication attempts to a WPA-enabled. AP.

No, wired networks aren't going away soon.....

[trailerparkcassanova]

and they can take the gas light from my front yard when they pry my frozen tongue from the lamp post.

I'm waiting for...

[GuyinVA]

802.11X The 'x' makes it sound cooler.

Re:I'm waiting for...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm waiting for 802.11X-TREME Edition.

Reasons not to change.

[GodCandy]

First I will admit. I have an 802.11n setup at my house for my laptop and a desktop on the far side of the house. It works well for this.

The issues are as follows.
Security: There is little or none. All of your transactions are flying through the air and anyone with the proper equipment (which can be obtained at the local electronics store for very little money) can intercept those packets. Even if you bother to use encryption all that has to be done is some processing to "crack" the encryption. Without breaking into my house/office and tying into my physical copper network there is no way to intercept packets on a copper network.

Stability: I cant speak for 802.11n as of yet. My AP has never been rebooted and my clients stay conected. However my prior 802.11x products were somewhat less stable.

Speed: 802.11x is a bus topology much like a hub. True they are running a great deal of bandwidth now. For few users this is great however what happens when you have 20 users on the same access point sharing the same bandwidth.

I do however see uses in business for this. I don't think at this time it is the end all replacement for the simple switch and the complicated wiring closet yet.

We have people...

[YetAnotherProgrammer]

We have people in the office that complain about the gigabit connection that they have now. Make it a tenth of the speed and all hell breaks loose. It will help with internet access for people doing demo, sales reps, etc. that are not here all the time or visiting for whatever reason. Until there is a faster, more secure, easier to setup wireless solution I will go with no.

Transmitter = Takedown

[buzdale]

If ethernet is replaced with wireless, it would be trivial to knock out entire buildings with a single transmitter. I mean all I have to do is broadcast garbage over the used spectrum. Wires have uses.

What about reliability?

[BlueF]

In my experience as a sysadmin for 350 node hospital, wireless networks are far too prone to intermittent failure. In all fairness, I've yet to implement enterprise level wireless routers, for the main reason that most hardware claiming "industrial strength" tends to price itself more than simply running lines.

Re:What about reliability?

[Josh]

I agree that wired is more reliable, in addition to other factors. On a related note, using Linux, when my wireless connection is managed by the dhclient utility I find that it is more likely to immediately reconnect after a failure than when it is managed by plain ifup at bootup. Presumably it wouldn't be too hard to add the algorithms used by dhclient to ifup, and this would improve functional wireless reliability on Linux.

Wireless is a shared medium

[quadshop]

Wireless will NEVER replace wired networks completely. Because wireless is a shared medium (think "hub"), there is finite bandwidth available within a given volume of space (defined by signal strength and other factors). If you have a combination of node density and bandwidth needs that exceed what wireless can provide, you have to go with wired networks. Wired networks go over a non-shared medium (think "switch"), so you can scale the bandwidth in high-density environments. Do I think wired networks will become less and less the norm? Yes. Do I think wired networks will go away completely? No way in hell.

Never...

[sco_robinso]

Sure, maybe the small mom-and-pop ship business might go for it, but larger businesses would be hard pressed to do it. Besides, the costs of having a building wired with Cat5/6 is fairly small, even for retrofit, so I don't see the business case. Not to mention that with even the best Wireless N (or G for that matter) gear, there's always drop outs in connectivity, interference, and the whole nine yards. Yes, a true 'proper' wireless deployment eliminates most of it, but I've worked in places where there was lots of money spent on proper wireless deployments with commercial gear, and I'm just still not sold.

Yes, it will fit the case for some businesses, but not most. It's not to say that a good wireless A/G/N deployment is horrible, for 98% of typical businesses, there's just no point of going wireless over wired.

Wireless is no where near this point yet.

security vs sci-fi

[icepick72]

Well not likely if you want to become PCI compliant or adhere to any number of secure standards. In theory a paper like this sounds good but you only need to dip below the surface of the real world to discover it's more like a sci-fi dream at the moment.

Re:security vs sci-fi

[biftek]

What the fuck does the (draft still?) 802.11n standard have to do with PCI standards?

Re:security vs sci-fi

[icepick72]

You've obviously never gone through the steps which are very broad to say the least, even focusing on your wired vs wireless networks...

Not in my datacentre

[simong]

not in my office, or for that matter not in my house. The office might have a wireless network but it's there for breakout areas (terrible phrase) and places where isn't viable to lay cable. Desktops are still cabled for security and speed.

"Negroponte Inversion"

[sonoronos]

The idea of the "Negroponte Inversion" was that in the majority of the 20th century, broadcast entertainment traveled over the air and personal communication was transmitted through wires. The Inversion happens when broadcast entertainment travels over wires and personal communication is transmitted through the air.

The internet started off for the majority as over-the-wire communication, but the article's premise is that there is a coming inversion where it will be transmitted in the majority through the air.

Of course, the article is bogus because it states a specific technology (802.11N). There may be a "Negroponte Inversion" coming for computer networking, but my opinion is that it will be driven by sociological and business factors, not by an obselete-as-shipped wireless networking standard.

Sounds insane

[jollyreaper]

Won't wired always be faster than wireless, at least for the guessable future? We're running at 54mbit for wireless, 100mbit for wired most places, and 1000mbit with the new hardware. In other words, wireless is only running at half the speed of the old wired standard and the new wired standard is ten times faster. This is setting aside questions of security and the like. Wireless is "good enough" for everyday home use certainly. It's good enough for laptop users in the office. But if people are doing any kind of heavy lifting, wired kicks wireless' metaphorical butt.

Of course, it's still fun to hand the new IT guy a set of crimpers and ask him to make me some wireless cables.

Re:Sounds insane

[skeletor935]

had the title of this /. post been "802.11N The Ethernet Killer?," it probably would have received a much better response

We will never use wireless!

[pablo_max]

Actually, that is true. Where I work it would never be possible. One, we have a ton of shielded rooms which are prone to blocking these sorts of things and two, being that it's a testing environment, it would not be advantageous to overload our test equipment with RF from a source we are not trying to measure.
I am sure there are several others out there who have their own reasons for not using wireless. Security, risk of dropped connections..ext. I know other companies who have client/server apps which can not handle even small drops in connection and I am sure anyhow who is using wireless has seen their connection drop for a few moments.
Perhaps LAN will die someday, but that day is not close.

What kind of home situation is he referring to

[Anonymous Coward]

//7Mbps average throughput," he says. "They don't get that in their homes with DSL and cable modems.

I live in the center of France, "la France profonde" as we jokingly call it (rough translation: the armpit of Europe) and I get 8Mbps on a bad day.

. // "I have a 21-year-old, and an 18-year-old, and they have never plugged into anything in their lives.

Try playing Nexuiz through WIFI with WPA on .) not good

I really dont understand his home situation

In a word, no

[Anonymous Coward]

"I don't think the end is here," says Mayo. "Ask me again in 10 years." Coppin State's Prevatte thinks the same. "I don't see wired Ethernet going anywhere soon," he says.

I guess we agree after all then.

And how about open drivers.

[ahfoo]

The security doesn't bug me at all compared to the issue of open drivers. If all the drivers for 802.11n products were as open as wired ethernet then it would be an almost maybe possibility but as we've seen with regular Wifi, there's no way in hell. Personally, I think pushing yet more closed and fucked up drivers is almost certainly one of the goals of the 802.11n standard.

It's a well known fact that UWB and other existing techniques can push wireless bandwitdth far past what 802.11n offers, but they're not "ready" for the consumer market. The game is to incrementally push the consumer market into a series of screwed up proprietary drivers to push out open standards and ensure that only "enthusiasts" use open source.

Re:And how about open drivers.

[nine-times]

The game is to incrementally push the consumer market into a series of screwed up proprietary drivers to push out open standards and ensure that only "enthusiasts" use open source.

It's possible that you're being paranoid on the drivers issue (sorry, don't mean to be insulting, but it's possible). However, I'm sure that the game is to incrementally push the consumer market to new devices. Many hardware companies do this-- they don't want to release a real solution all at once, but instead constantly release incremental improvements. The game is to get you to keep buying more hardware.

Re:And how about open drivers.

[philipgar]

You do realize there's a reason drivers are becoming more "closed", it's not that they don't want consumers to tweak their drivers, or that they don't want to be Linux friendly. It's because their drivers are increasingly the companies IP. As the cost of manufacturing custom ASICs has increased tremendously with each new generation of technology, it just isn't practical to build custom ASICs if one exists that does most of what you need it to do. Also when you do make custom ASICs (someone has to) more and more of it is software based, to allow programmers to work around bugs in the hardware (spinning new silicon costs millions more and takes months). This source code is often disclosed under NDAs (it's part of the ASIC, and almost as valuable as the verilog describing the ASIC). This code is then often used in the device drivers (assuming that cost is an issue and the manufacturer chooses to save a dollar or two a card by not integrating flash memory or a ROM on the board).

Now the drivers can't be made completely open due to needing to upload this code to the card. While a driver could be made that's partially open, partially closed, there's really no incentive to. The FOSS community will complain either way, so to the company it seems like a wasted endeavor.

Sure someone could make a better board with flash on board, and sell it for a bit more, but there's very little incentive to. Rabid FOSS fans are not a huge market, and likely never will be.

Phil

Re:And how about open drivers.

[krotkruton]

The game is called "planned obsolescence," or at least it is very similar to it. And it's not just hardware companies, but Microsoft, car manufacturers, bad plumbers or electricians, and just about everything else these days. Why sell a good product when you can convince a customer to keep upgrading (read, buy replacements) or just wait until the old stuff breaks? (-Rhetorical, please don't answer that question)

Re:And how about open drivers.

[PitaBred]

Not so much that, as adherence to FCC (and it's analogs in other countries) mandates. Your wireless card's power levels and frequencies are controlled in software, and the manufacturer could get into big trouble if they didn't match what they were allowed to do. Now, you can do this by either: making a different physical product for each country, or making the same product and just shipping different drivers. Guess what, it's cheaper to just use the drivers to upload a binary blob every time, than even to make a custom firmware for a location. And that way, when the FCC updates it's rules, you can just push a driver update, and your card will work better/worse/still be in compliance.

Gaslight?

[nighty5]

Can anybody explain what a gaslight is? I presume its a term used frequently in the usa.

Re:Gaslight?

[timster]

It's not used frequently anywhere, not anymore. But 100 years ago people lit their houses and streets with gas lamps.

Er, that's "gas" as in methane. You can imagine that gas light was not so great.

Re:Gaslight?

[Anonymous Coward]

its just what it sounds like.

a gas powered light.

before we had electricity alot of cities were piped with gas lines all over hell to run lighting. from the street pole lights to your home lights.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_lighting

Theres still plenty of active gas lights around the world too. They don't burn out. (but might burn your house down) And they look kinda cool.

captcha - seared lol

Re:Gaslight?

[ynososiduts]

It's a lamp that burns natural gas for light. I think some used some coal gas too. Old street lamps used them.

Re:Gaslight?

[Waffle Iron]

that's "gas" as in methane.

What's worse is that in the 19th century people usually used synthetic coal gas, which is mainly a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. This created a big risk of CO poisoning if an unlit light was left on.

Re:Gaslight?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Gaslight was a technology used prior to the introduction of the electric light. The technology was used for street lighting as well as indoor lighting. Today the technology is still used in some historic areas as the old gas lights are still operational and the aesthetic is desired. There are still sources available for new gaslights and parts for old ones.

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_lighting for a good writeup on the technology and photos of gaslight installations.

Re:Gaslight?

[AJWM]

The technology is still used in camping lanterns (eg Coleman lanterns), although of course they have their own portable gas supply (which could also be vaporized gasoline or propane as well as methane (natural gas), depending on the design).

One point that uplevel posters haven't mentioned is the innovation in gas lamp technology introduced about the same time that Edison was developing practical electric lights -- the mantle. This is a little perforated shell of chemicals (typically formed using a chemical-impregnated cloth bag, the cloth burns away leaving a delicate ash shell) that fits over the gas outlet. The chemicals are thermoluminescent, they convert much of the heat energy to light resulting in a much brighter lamp than a gas flame alone.

Not in our enviroment

[ducomputergeek]

The company I still work with, as a part-time consultant instead of full time employee these days as I am in Grad School, will not be going to wireless anytime soon. One reason is security. They are a video production company and post house that sometimes does sub-contracting work on TV and Film. There are some big fines in there if it was ever proven that materials were ever leaked by our people.

Secondly, we run ScreamernetII & Qmaster/Xgrid on every single machine in the building. That is one reason why in 2005 they elected to go 100% Mac. The front office people work on iMacs and when they go home at night, the spare G5 CPU cycles are turned over to rendering Shake, Final Cut, Compressor, or Lightwave projects.

That takes bandwidth. Lots of bandwidth and quite a few of our units are linked via Fiber as gigabit Ethernet isn't fast enough. (Especially when dealing with 400GB HDV files).

Now for the average business, especially small business, going wireless is already the way to go. It's cheap to network up to 50 PC's together without having to have cabling installed. If you grow and expand it's pretty easy to add more access points.

Again I guess it depends on where you are and what you are using it for.

Obvious

[Intron]

This is just the same as the way broadcast television took over and drove the original cable TV out of business. Oh, wait...

absolutly not

[falcon5768]

I could think of a laundry list of things that make ethernet more attractive to a company, but off the top of my head, two are key.

1) Your guaranteed a signal, which you are not with wireless where hotspots and coldspots can be noticed.

2) Intercepting a wired transition is much more difficult, to next to impossible without physical access to the location if set up properly. A wireless signal can be intercepted and possibly decoded by just having someone drive by the place.

Re:absolutly not

[peacewon]

Ahhh with wireless you are also guarenteed coldspots... Remember when they moved you from your office upstairs into storage closet in the basement?

Re:absolutly not

[thsths]

I completely agree, WiFi cannot possibly compete with a proper network infrastructure.

But assume that you have a new office, and I wonder whether you have to spend all the money of network connectors, or whether you can just use wireless. In a technical discipline, the answer is most likely no. But say you consider admin staff, or a group of journalists (that prefer to work from Starbucks anyway). I think a WiFi access point could be a lot cheaper than a switch, 10 wires, patch panels, connectors etc.

Re:absolutly not

[peacewon]

I mean wired

Re:absolutly not

[falcon5768]

Im going to burn your house down.

Re:absolutly not

[mcmonkey]

But assume that you have a new office, and I wonder whether you have to spend all the money of network connectors, or whether you can just use wireless. In a technical discipline, the answer is most likely no. But say you consider admin staff, or a group of journalists (that prefer to work from Starbucks anyway). I think a WiFi access point could be a lot cheaper than a switch, 10 wires, patch panels, connectors etc.

I'm not as quick to make that assumption. WiFi access points aren't cheaper than ethernet switches. You still need wires and all the infrastructure to connect the access points to your larger network--servers, internet, WANs, etc. On top of that, the client hardware for ethernet is going to cost less than for WiFi.

Ubiquity

[Alzheimers]

It will only be truly ubiquitous when it's a common check box feature on every PC sold, built-in to the motherboard and included in the final price.

As long as it's a peripherial, I don't care how cheap or easy to install, it'll never replace what's already there, ie. the Ethernet port. For more reference, see USB vs. Firewire.

2.4GHz Hell

[pcjunky]

I once got a call from a client who said her WiFi wasn't working in her study. When I got their I found she was using a bluetooth mouse, 2.4GHz cordless phone, Wireless video extension (also 2.4GHz), and cooking diner in her microwave (big 2.4GHz transmitter). This piece of spectrum will only take so much. She asked if changing to a 5.8GHz phone would help. I said probably not as most transmit from the base to the phone on 5.8Ghz and the phone transmits 2.4GHz back. (900MHz would be better). As we use more and more 2.4GHz wireless stuff the performance of WiFi will drop.

A 100MBPS wired network with a switch will outperform any wireless network for the foreseeable future.

Don't forget denial-of-service

[coyote-san]

Don't forget that there are multiple aspects to security. You don't want the sleazy competitor sniffing your network, but you don't want them blasting your network out of existence two days before the RFQ is due either. The bad actor could be hard to track down if they're using a highly directional antenna and an illegal amplifier.

Talk about stupidity

[acoustix]

FTA: "If you look at 11n with 150Mbps and 20 users sharing the access point, they get 7Mbps average throughput," he says. "They don't get that in their homes with DSL and cable modems. It's time for people to reset their thinking."

Obviously this idiot doesn't understand the difference between 7mbps Internet access and access to files, printers, databases and other applications.

"Currently I think [150-180Mbps] is plenty," says Ruman. "Most companies are still using 100Mbps switches and have not made the jump to Gigabit past the data center anyway."

Does somebody want to explain to this DB the difference between wireless APs and wired switches? There's no way in hell that a 802.11n AP will come close to providing the bandwidth of a 48 port 100mbps switch. If I put 40 users on a 11n AP they would receive 3.75mbps AT BEST. I can guarantee a lot more bandwidth using a hard line switch and I won't have to worry about interference.

How is it that this guy is involved in networking when he doesn't even understand the most basic concepts?

Nick

Not even mom-and-pop businesses

[DogDude]

No, Ethernet isn't going anywhere, especially for "mom-and-pop" businesses. Why? If you have a small retail store with two cash registers, and your wireless connection acts up, you have -zero- income until it's fixed. That's pretty mission critical. On the other hand, if you're IBM, and some of your wireless goes flaky, IBM isn't going to shut down. A lot of people will be inconvenienced, but very few parts of a giant corporation are mission critical. If anything, I'd expect to see wireless at big businesses, where there's a ton of redundancy already (again, IBM is a prime example). Small businesses' computer systems are much more critical, so I can't imagine any successful small business using wireless anytime in the near future. I know that mine isn't!

Not a snowball's chance in hell it will.

[Ant P.]

As with the other forms of 802.11, it'll only be useful if you use/emulate a toy OS or go hunting for very specific hardware.

UTP vs STP (sheilded twisted pair)

[zerofoo]

Using STP cable eliminates the possibility of reading stray RF signals if you are that paranoid.

-ted

Re:UTP vs STP (sheilded twisted pair)

[afidel]

Only if you use an STP compatible switch (rare) otherwise you have just created a giant aerial. That was just one of the things I routinely found when I was a consultant, people figured the cables were more expensive and said shielded so they MUST be better.

Re:UTP vs STP (sheilded twisted pair)

[brian.gunderson]

Cant you just connect the shield to ground on one end?

Re:UTP vs STP (sheilded twisted pair)

[zerofoo]

You are correct sir.

I think I also remember that only one side of the cable should be grounded. Something about inducing voltages between components that could be at different potentials.

Or, better yet - run fiber.....no RF there.

-ted

Re:UTP vs STP (sheilded twisted pair)

[afidel]

You can, but the cables aren't really made for that, they have a lead from the shield exposed on one end of the cable which is used to complete the ground to earth, either through a grounding bar on the patch panel or through the grounding circuit of the switch.

As a physicist...

[drolli]

i have to make a comment. Let's assume we have amplifiers and signal generators avaiable which have at each time a certain "eqi-cost" line in the "power consumption" vs "noise level" plane in the bandwidth you are interested in. If you couple these by an really good directed radio link, you can get over a few meters up to a few dB if you are good. Hovever lets assume fo the second that having a parabolic antenna on you laptop is less handy than an ethernet cable. Thus, leaving aside obstacles, wou will definitely have less power at the receiver for the same power send. now here comes the problem. Less power means lower signal/noise ratio, which directly reduces your BW. So no matter how the wireless standard looks like, if you take it literally you can always use it on a network cable, and you will get a much higher rate and an ultimately directed transmission. Nowadays etherenet standard does not use the full bandwidth of the cables. WOuld one use the wireless transmission methods on a cable, one could get substentially more troughput.

O did i forget? eqi-cost can also be translated to "cheaper modules" at the same rate.

Re:abortion is the end of a life

[Kortalh]

8 inches on day 1? What kind of super-freak growth hormones is this woman taking?

How is this score 2?

[Anonymous Coward]

That question can be answered by a quick google/wikipedia search.

Will wireless phones replace wired ones?

[Anonymous Coward]

Will "wireless" phones soon entirely eliminate wired ones?

This seems more likely than wireless networking replacing wired ethernet. We should perhaps consider the similarities and differences.

True, consistent, performance, man...

[PhotoGuy]

Besides the security aspect, 802.11 will never replace ethernet until it actually consistently lives up to its specifications and promises.

I consistently get far worse than the promised speeds, and there's multiple nodes doing any kind of traffic, performance drops dramatically further. Half the time, some of the adapters I use won't even be able to join my network, period (probably windows drivers issues? who knows?) And the range is *terrible*. From my living room to my back yard 10 meters away, I can't get a signal unless I put my router almost at the ceiling.

I was experimenting with Torrent speeds the other day (ummm, downloading Linux distrubutions and such, I suppose), and was capping out at a certain level, figured it was my provider. Just by chance, I did a torrent from a machine wired on 100mbps ethernet, and the performance was signifcantly better. I'm tempted to run wires to the bedrooms and office now, whereas I just assumed wireless was giving me something at least in the same class as wired. I don't think it is.

If it can provide at least 1/2 or 1/3 the performance of wired, and not fight with cordless phones, microwaves, and other routers in the neighborhood (I'm in a small, poor town, and I see a half dozen networks), then *maybe* it'll start to replace wired. But it just doesn't seem to live up to the specs nor handle content anywhere near as well as wired. Possibly flawed implementations, possibly impractical promises, I don't know.

Lets see

[AvitarX]

small network (8 computers to a fileserver)* 1GPS/Computers=8GBPS to a fileserver.

Does 802.11n provide that?

I think the answer is no.

idiots

[twitchings]

Hell no!!!!!

Damn idiots, the portable is not going to make to desktop obsolete!!!
Wireless is not going to replace ethernet cables!!!
No, I do not have an iTunes Music Store Account!!!


Fuck off apple-core blowing hipster retarded quasi-techs

Berlin still uses gas lights

[Colin Smith]

So, how does a 250mbps shared, when you're sitting beside it standard make gbit copper obsolete?

Re:Berlin still uses gas lights

[phoenixwade]

So, how does a 250mbps shared, when you're sitting beside it standard make gbit copper obsolete? Such a very good point.
And I'd also add:
    No matter how fast you push wireless, it'll always be faster to use a wired connection.
    FTFA, I saw a comment that 250mbs was "Good enough" this reminds me of the remarks of the past like "640k is enough memory", "Clock speeds of 1 ghz is fast enough for any thing except a server or Super computer", and a personal favorite: "Most users can do everything they want to do on systems designed 5 years ago". All of us know that users want to do more than they can do today. Gaming, interactive web media, streaming video and the like will demand a bigger pipe, not only for WAN access, but for LAN access as well. You will always be able to get that bigger pipe with a wired connection.

Shared bandwidth

[gravis777]

The problem that clients in our building seem to neglect is that, yeah, while we are running G, which is 56Mbps, that does not mean that it will be only half the speed of their 100 Mbps ethernet connection, its generally much slower. The problem is, on ethernet, you have a 100 Mbps connection straight to the switch, dedicated to you. Over the wireless, you are sharing that 54Mbps connection with 50 other people in your area, so you are not getting 54 Mbps, you are getting between 1-5 Mbps. This is why you ge an excellent signal, then almost cannot browse the internet. i think we finally got it through most of our users minds that the wireless was there as a convienince, not at a replacement for the ethernet, and most will now use their ethernet cable.

Re:Shared bandwidth

[tygt]

Not only that, but that 54Mbps is raw (PHY) data rate, not user data rate, which is at best about 25Mbps with 802.11g, and typically considerably less.

100Mbps Ethernet is also a raw (PHY) data rate; however, the user data rate is very close to that as Ethernet's framing and the CSMA/CD protocol used take up very little bandwidth.

You know, calling g 54Mbps (and any of the wireless by their "Mbps") is very misleading. Using that metric, FDDI could've been called 125Mbps FDDI because of the 8b/10b encoding used (it was a 125Mbps PHY rate, while the actual packets were essentially 100Mbps).

Re:Shared bandwidth

[Jeremy Erwin]

Over the wireless, you are sharing that 54Mbps connection with 50 other people in your area, so you are not getting 54 Mbps, you are getting between 1-5 Mbps. This is why you ge an excellent signal, then almost cannot browse the internet.

So, are people at your company so accustomed to browsing wit personal T3 lines, or what? Will they break down in tears if forced to work with 768 kb/s DSL?

Re:Shared bandwidth

[tehcrazybob]

I can't speak for his company, but at mine there's a great deal more to the network than internet access. All of our files are stored on network servers. Since we are all connected via gigabit ethernet, these shares are as responsive as local hard drives. Our work would continue undeterred if we were limited to browsing the internet on 768 kb/s DSL, but if we started connecting to our server with the DSL I think productivity might drop. In fact, you're right, I might even break down in tears.

For reference, gigabit ethernet offers theoretical 128 MB/s transfers, while local hard drives offer between 60 and 90 MB/s. Obviously the latency will be a bit higher on the networked drives, but you'll see no drop in sustained transfer rates. Compare that to a theoretical maximum of 37.5 MB/s for wireless N or 6.75 MB/s for wireless G, and bear in mind that those speeds will be shared with all clients rather than dedicated as with the ethernet connection.

Re:Shared bandwidth

[gravis777]

So, are people at your company so accustomed to browsing wit personal T3 lines, or what? Will they break down in tears if forced to work with 768 kb/s DSL? Sadly, some do. We have a 20 Mbps fiber connection to the internet. Granted, that is shared between 900 users, but even in the worst of times, its generally faster than DSL. Actually had an executive scream last week because her internet was slow. I went and investigated, and yeah, it was slower than normal, when clicking on a link, it took a whole three seconds to resolve! She asked if she could get a dedicated line, and part of me wanted to ask her if she wanted to pay for a 28k dialup connection, or foot for the 56k dialup. :-)

No, actually, I was not refering to the internet, though. I used it to say that sometimes you may have trouble getting a webpage to even load up over wireless in our building as the wireless network is oversatuated. Most network activity is done between the servers.

Re:Shared bandwidth

[Jeremy Erwin]

She asked if she could get a dedicated line, and part of me wanted to ask her if she wanted to pay for a 28k dialup connection, or foot for the 56k dialup. :-)

browsing pages tends to be a low bandwidth activity. It's video, audio, and downloading stuff that necessitates a faster link.

Does Slashdot...

[that IT girl]

...have a history of posting non-news with "sensationalist titles"?
Bleh.

No

[Sniper98G]

All wireless systems operate on the same principal as any other bus type network with only a single medium to use to transfer data there are no device to segment collision domains. Although the N standard allows for up to a 300Mbps connection speed that speed is shared among all clients, as opposed to even 100Mb Ethernet witch allows 100Mbps speed to each individual client. A 48 port 100Mb switch thereby has a theoretical speed of 4.8 Gbps well in excess of an N access point. This is compounded by the fact that the N standard uses MIMO and occupies all three available non-interfering channels in the 2.4 GHz spectrum meaning that you can't install very many access points in the same area without causing allot of interference to the other access points.

My Office Tried it

[Anonymous Coward]

About 50 people in an overlarge building (7,000 square feet on three floors). Coverage was provided by 2 Belkins that covered most of the offices reasonably well e.g. you could at least get a signal.

Within a month though pretty much everyone except the receptionist had insisted on getting a hard ware installed because of issues with the wireless:

1) Throughput was crappy compared with the gigabit ethernet (this probably only impacted developers but it impacted them severly)
2) Reliability was poor. The Belkins had a habit of just "dropping you" from time to time. Likewise many of the macs seemed to insist that our wireless was "compromised" about once a day and drop the connection.
3) Connectivity would just mysteriously drop in some locations. The conference room would have connectivity Monday, but Tuesday it wouldn't, etc.

All in all, our experience with wireless was that it's not ready to replace wired ethernet, even in a small office.

The price of copper

[cybrthng]

If it keeps going up, look for wider wireless adoption rates or migration to fiber once again

In a word...

[scubamage]

No. Nuh-uh. Non. Never. Ethernet has survived many, many other layer 2 protocols coming and going. Its here to stay for the time being.

You're saying it's a good idea to do 1GbE nic

[Anonymous Coward]

on the server even if your clients still have 100Mbit cards?
          I've wondered if there was any advantage in a mix and match situation. So far I've figured it wasn't worth it unless I was going to upgrade the whole network.
          So, what are you saying exactly here. Just a 1Gb nic on the file server is enough to see some improvement or the file server needs a GbE switch as well? I've got three 100Mb switches and they all go to one file server and I have wondered if it would help things out to put a GbE switch on the file server but it sounds like you're saying just a 1GbE nic would be enough.

Re:You're saying it's a good idea to do 1GbE nic

[JCSoRocks]

You've gotta have switches with a gigabit port. plug the gigabit port into your server... the 100 Mb ports into your desktops and you'll see better performance.
We run a similar system at my office. The switches are all 100Mb w/ 1Gb ports on them that go to Gigabit switches that go to the servers. The servers are all on gigabit, and the clients are all on 100Mb. This way, theoretically, 10 clients could be getting 100Mb throughput from a given server.

disclaimer: that's not exactly our network topology but it gives you an idea.

Re:You're saying it's a good idea to do 1GbE nic

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, there is an advantage. Even though each client can only pull 100Mb, if you have good managed switches (a desktop switch probably ain't gonna cut it, but it might for all I know), your sever will be able to utilize the extra bandwidth, and the difference will be quite obvious when you have many clients accessing the server at the same time. If your clients do not often fully utilize 100Mb, it's probably not going to be very noticeable. An example of a switch that can do this might be one called 10/100+1000Mbps on the box, that is most of the ports are 10/100s, while only a couple of the physical ports can do 1Gbps, and that port will then be connected to a network and or servers that supports 1Gb. It means higher throughput for the servers.

Re:You're saying it's a good idea to do 1GbE nic

[misleb]

on the server even if your clients still have 100Mbit cards?

Yes. Not only can you get multiple clients pulling 100Mbit at a time (assuming you have a switch, but that is pretty much a given these days), but you can much more easily saturate the 100Mbit link to the client. With everything at 100Mbit (including the server), you often see only 60% utilization. Wireless is even worse with regards to efficiency. 802.11n might SAY 300Mbit, but chances are that you'll never see anything like that in practice. And worse, that 300Mbit is shared amonst all the clients. Switched ethernet isolates traffic.

So, what are you saying exactly here. Just a 1Gb nic on the file server is enough to see some improvement or the file server needs a GbE switch as well? I've got three 100Mb switches and they all go to one file server and I have wondered if it would help things out to put a GbE switch on the file server but it sounds like you're saying just a 1GbE nic would be enough.

You'll see an improvement with just the server on GigE. You also probably want GigE uplinks to your oter 3 switches. A lot of switches will have a GigE uplink port (sometimes in the form of GBIC) with 100Mbit client ports.

-matthew

No, it doesn't...

[Atticka]

There will always be a need for Ethernet and wired connectivity.

I've had this conversation over and over with customers, nothing will beat the reliability of a good ol' wired connection. When connectivity needs to be reliable and fast, go CAT6!

Granted, 802.11N may solve some issue's with wireless in general, but you simply cannot run a medium sized company using wireless (I say medium, because I believe that a small company may get away with it).

gaslights are cool

[rhaig]

they shouldn't be obsolete. They're way too cool.

Porcine droppings

[DJTodd242]

Sure, once 802.11n gives me better than 10-20Mbps between two systems seperated by a wall with the thickness and density of two sheets of gyproc/plasterboard I'll consider using it again. I mean jebus, sometimes it would drop to 5Mb transfer and I'm using high gain antennas on both the client and the router. The antennas were a mere 2' apart!

IMHO wireless is fine for sharing a broadband connection but useless for anything else.

Um, Security?

[newgalactic]

I'd like to comment, but my Subject line says it all.

What about WIFI latency?

[pato101]

The other day I connected via wifi my laptop to my desktop and X11 apps behaviour (ssh -X) was sluggish whereas file transfer was just OK. I then tried to do a xdmcp login and everything went with lags and lags: unusable.

I'm not expert in networking, but I think it was a problem of latency.

Not everyone uses X11 apps across machines, I know, but I guess that remote-desktop services will work just as painful if not more.

Re:What about WIFI latency?

[Big Boss]

On my 11g network I find VNC to be perfectly usable. RDP works alright as well for Windows stuff. I haven't tried X in a while, haven't needed it. I also have one side of the link wired, so that helps. That's the other thing that sucks about wireless, you can't talk to 2 stations at the same time. Switched ethernet can. For now, I use wireless for my laptop which gets used 90% of the time for internet access. With a 3Mbit connection, I don't think I need worry about 11g's bottleneck for a while. :) Everything else is wired. If it doesn't move, there is no need for expensive, high-latency connections. Cheap wired ethernet will get it done easier and faster. If I need to move big files, the laptop gets plugged into the cables as well. Wireless just can't match the speed I can get over ethernet. Note that I care about actual data throughput, not the signaling speed. Wireless gets about 1/3rd of it's rated speed in real life. Throw in more than one station trying to talk and general RF noise, and wireless starts to suck for large volumes of data. For internet it's great though. :)

Re:What about WIFI latency?

[Bluesman]

If you think the network is the bottleneck, try "ssh -XC" to compress the data over that link. It might speed things up for you.

Hell no

[david.given]

Given that I'm currently struggling with a wireless card that every now and again decides to give me 1000+ms ping times to a server ten metres away, I'd have to say...

No.

Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

"is there something about it that allows it to work magnificiently when everyone in an area is trying to run 10 or 15 APs at once with 802.11n equipment?"

Yes.

They tried that at my office....

[Dr_Barnowl]

... despite all the hardwired ports in the building, the central network rack was getting a little claustrophobic and all the ports were taken.

The CEO bought one of those new-fangled 11b wireless cards and thought it was so great that everyone using a laptop should have one, including the development department. The majority of the company were laptop users at the time.

Within a week I had subverted this policy and snuck into the network cabinet to rewire the port under my desk. A the time we were using Visual SourceSafe. VSS sulks and corrupts it's repository at the slightest hint of network dropout. Not to mention the awful sloth of deploying software to, well, anywhere.

People are so used to switched networks that they never notice how chattery Windows boxes are. Move from 100MBit wired switched ports to a 10MBit wireless hub for a whole room of terminal bandwidth addicts (software developers) and you soon notice the difference. Now, there is a lot more wireless bandwidth to go around these days, but it's still a hub.

This was the same CEO who managed to knock our customer support website off the net by getting infected with Code Red and saturating our measly 128Kbit bonded ISDN line with spam and infection traffic.

On a point of pedantry...

[Alioth]

I thought wireless was Ethernet, too. So ethernet is going to make ethernet obsolete? Umm?

Wifi is ethernet, it's just ethernet over wireless instead of ethernet over wires.

Re:On a point of pedantry...

[MSDos-486]

WiFi isn't Ethernet. The have different frame formats. After all its the frame format that makes Ethernet Ethernet. Some people just call it Ethernet because they are the two predominate LAN standards for Layer 1 and 2.

No, it doesn't.

[Todd Knarr]

• Security. Don't underestimate the usefulness of simply requiring physical access to the wiring to get on the network. For most home users that's sufficient security to completely prevent outsiders from getting on their home networks. They can forget about all the headaches of securing a wireless network from outsiders. The same thing goes for corporate networks where there's already good physical security controlling access to the inside of the building.
• Convenience. Not so much an issue for a corporate network, but for a home user it's nice to just plug things in and go without having to worry about all the setup needed on both clients and the access point to get a wireless network operating securely.
• Power. Power-over-Ethernet works for low-draw devices, power-over-airwaves... doesn't.

  Speed. Gamers in particular are picky about ping times and latency, and wireless still has worse latency. It's improving, but it's still not on a par with wired. And in a corporate setting switches and high-capacity backbone segments and VLANs give each port a much bigger chunk of visible bandwidth than you can get with those same systems all sharing a handful of access points.

Wireless has a lot of uses, even situations where it's the best fit as the primary network, but it's no more going to replace wired Ethernet than public transit is going to replace the private car in most of the US.

3 words

[MSDos-486]

Power over Ethernet

Re:3 words

[Thelgar]

Two more words: Video games

No

[blhack]

Ethernet is great because it just ALWAYS WORKS! Not to mention the fact that most regular old telephone run through the walls on Ethernet cables anyway. There are a number of reasons NOT to do this:

1. Ethernet ALWAYS works, any os, just about any card, every single time...it just. always. works.
2. I haven't seen a computer ship for a LONG time that doesn't come with an Ethernet card on it. Most motherboards have them soldered on. I don't think i have seen a motherboard (excluding some laptops/tables/custom applications) that have a wirelesss card built in.
3. Because Ethernet is a physical medium, it makes deploying things like gateway firewalls, or inline traffic sniffers MUCH MUCH easier.
4. Wireless is inherently insecure as a method for transmitting data. Everybody can see every single packet of data that is blasted across the airwaves.
5. There really is not a limit to how many Ethernet cables you can have running through the walls of your building. 802.11x on the other hand can become congested.
6. LEGACY HARDWARE try finding an 802.11n card for some obscure handheld computer that runs an equally obscure stripped-down version of DOS. Both of which are 10+ years old.

So to answer the question:

No. /thread closed.

Health fears lead schools to dismantle wireless

[rosaliepizza]

From The Times http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article642575.ece Parents and teachers are forcing some schools to dismantle wireless computer networks amid fears that they could damage childrens health. Professor Sir William Stewart, chairman of the Health Protection Agency, said that evidence of potentially harmful effects of microwave radiation had become more persuasive over the past five years. His report said that while there was a lack of hard information of damage to health, the approach should be precautionary

Uhm, no .. due to HIPAA

[fallen1]

It has been mentioned multiple times in this discussion already as security, but those of us who have to deal with HIPAA are even more paranoid. Or should be.

I've heard several peers talking about using wireless networks in small medical/dental offices and every time the first thing that springs to mind is "What the fuck? Are you just too lazy to deal with a wired office?" because that is what it seems to boil down to - time. I always respond with the fact that most wireless encryption can be broken by someone with a 486 laptop and a couple of hours* to spare. Someone wanting to break into my wired network either has to a) have some professional equipment to eavesdrop on the lines or the monitors or b) has to gain physical access to my network or c) has to bypass my firewall and intrusion detection/prevention hardware. All of those instances take much more money or time than the laptop breaking wireless encryption does.

*I realize that the time it takes may be longer to break some of the newer encryption schemes but my point is still valid.

Wireless Is A Shared Medium - BUT....

[duplo1]

In a proper deployment, performance-wise, the shared medium should not have a large impact if one's access points aren't oversubscribed. The world is moving towards "thin" APs that are networked over a high speed backbone of so-called "wireless switches" that perform the wireless management, making the AP just that and nothing much more. Assuming one has enough APs and the wired backbone is sufficient, in theory, collisions should be minimal and performance should be at least as good as FastEthernet.

Furthermore, nobody is suggesting that we replace wired Ethernet with wireless as a core distribution, backbone or server farm access technology. We're only talking user desktop/laptop access here.

From a security perspective, there isn't a whole lot one can do to prevent a motivated employee from running tcpdump once authenticated. Tools such as group policy, NAC, etc., can mitigate the risk to the point that it isn't much higher than an employee running ettercap against the workgroup switch. Of course this is theory, and I would advise my clients to let others work out the kinks before implementing a forklift upgrade.

In the office? Never. In the home? Yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

In the office, wired connections will always have a place (which is what this article is about). Going slightly off topic, though, in the home, I'd say wireless replaced wired as the mainstream technology years ago. Very few home users are going to bother stringing up Ethernet unless they already have it, or are reasonably technically savvy.

And I'd say that with 802.11n, the final nail has been hammered into the coffin. 802.11n finally makes wireless networks fast enough that there's almost no conceivable need for your average household to ever need anything more. Now that you're able to stream several channels of HDTV over a wireless network (300 Mbps should be able to carry 15 simultaneous streams at ATSC quality, or half that many at HD disc quality, and your average household isn't going to need anywhere near that number), there's no conceivable home application that won't be possible exclusively over wireless networks.

Sure, more bandwidth is always nice, but 802.11n is passing the point that 100 Mbps Ethernet did--it's Good Enough. The only people who are going to need more bandwidth are those power users who are already the type to string up wired Ethernet. The majority of the home market won't need it, ever--the only benefit they'd get is that their files will copy faster. It won't enable truly innovative applications for them. Sure, that's a pretty bold statement to be making at this juncture, but I stand behind it.

That said, I'd like to comment on some of abundance of bad information about wireless networks on here already.

Properly configured, WPA2 is probably more secure than a wired Ethernet line. By default, all the traffic going over wired Ethernet gets absolutely no encryption, and despite all the tin foil hat conspiracies about government back doors, properly encrypted links are always going to beat unencrypted links in terms of security. Heck, it's possible to walk in and plug into just about any wired Ethernet link and start sniffing. (And no, switches don't completely solve the problem.)

A properly configured enterprise wireless network is also quite capable of supporting large numbers of users, especially since 802.11n equipment will be supporting the many non-overlapping channels in the 5 GHz range. However, there's no way doing that is cost competitive with running jacks to every cubicle.

One of the biggest issues with wireless security isn't because wireless security is worse, but because wireless applications are unique. You can have mobile devices on a wireless network, which makes it a lot simpler for a rogue employee to bring a rogue device into the network. But that's not a problem technology can or should solve.

I'm such a sucker.

[Trojan35]

Every day Slashdot posts some obviously answered question on the front page, and every day I click on "Read More...". Here's tomorrow article: With all the new processors coming out, will 4Ghz be fast enough for everyone?

Let's hope it does!

[CompMD]

im in ur bank parkin lot sniffin ur account numbers

Not on your life! Thesis should be torn to shreds

[Pyramid]

Wireless networking will not replace copper or optical mediums anytime soon and any IT manager worth his salt knows speed is not the only issue.

First, you have security as many have mentioned. Wired ethernet does have a measure of security because of it's phyical, localized nature. Sure, anyone can plug into a port, but if you should have reasonable physical security. Beyond this, you can require authentication to use E-net on a port by port basis. We do this where I work; you don't have the right user credentials and you're stopped at the switch port.

Now for the meat... Why is it that the (unlearned) masses forget nearly all wireless networking solutions rely on unlicensed frequency bands? Even with a perfectly working system today, there's no guarantee someone won't set up a couple wireless video transmitters next door tommorow. Like CB radio before it, WiFi and it's ilk suffers from the good ol' tragedy of the commons (times 3). On the totem-pole, your Wifi system is the bottom feeder. It has to accept any and all interference from microwave ovens, lighting systems, industrial dryers, commercial video uplinks, amateur radio operators and a slew of other interference sources you have no recourse over. Imagine the big box store that puts all of it's cash registers on wireless. What is the recourse when the amateur radio operator a block away sets up a 40 dBm uplink beaming over the store's property or a nearby busisness sets up a 2.4 Ghz analog video system? Nothing at all. All one can do is suck it up.

  Now all the registers are down, tens of thousands of dollars an hour are lost and customers are livid. The manager will be paniced and the IT buffoon who designed the system will be sweating bullets as he has the blinding revelation that the up front cost of running copper or fiber pales in comparison to lost revenue. His job is toast.

Unless your network devices are mobile or low priority, they should NEVER rely on unlicensed wireless infrastructure. PERIOD. If you play the miser and use wireless to avoid the cost of copper (or fiber), you're gonna get bit.

Phreon

Two thoughts

[cybereal]

It will replace ethernet in homes and casual settings, which 802.11b/g/a/n already has in many cases. But now, even geeks have a harder decision to make. When 802.11n on Apples rev 1 "n" supporting router gets 90mbps real throughput in ideal situations, you've lost your argument of speed for 100mbps wired networks. And what about 1000mbps wired networks? Surely they are affordable by now.

The other thought is, 802.11n will never replace Ethernet if it doesn't stop interfering with my wireless devices while under heavy load! Whenever I'm transferring a large file over 802.11n, my bluetooth mouse goes all wonky and slows to a crawl due to interference. Someday I will be able to use 5ghz mode, but until every device supports either a or n, which isn't going to happen to my consoles or my portable devices anytime soon, it will remain an issue.

ROTFLOL

[josepha48]

Yeah, ok, replace my 1Gig lan connection with a 10-20Mbit wifi connection. WTF!

Does it go through walls? Wifi is good for coffee shops, outside, home lans, hotels, and has some use in office, but it wont replace wired any time soon IMHO.

I've stayed in a hotel where to get wifi access I had to stand next to the door. If it was wired, I could have used the desk. My home wifi does not go through my concrete fireplace nor does it go to my living room, so I'm sticking with wired for now.

No way!

[xgr3gx]

Wireless is great and all, but it's also a pain in the ass. If something isn't working it's harder to diagnose than a wired connection. Plus, could you imagine mission critical servers relying on a wireless connection? Yeah right. (quote me on that in 10 years, when the whole word is wireless, haha)

End of Ethernet

[JWSmythe]

Wireless will never take over Ethernet until they resolve one unresolvable issue. Interference.

    I've been asked to look at various people's homes and offices. They'll always have dead spots. There are costly options. Repeaters, bridges, relays, but which is cheaper and more reliable? To have cables run, or to add more and more equipment to accomplish the same thing as cables?

    My own home is a mix. I have some nicely powered wireless equipment, that does a really good job compared to it's low powered cousins. My office, and the pieces of equipment I depend on working are all wired.

    I leave wireless for pieces that I'm too lazy to wire, and don't feel the effort vs result requires it. That is, the kids computer, the TiVos, the... ummm... well, that's about it. :)

    Occasionally various pieces will have service outages, which I've never really been able to explain. Why does one unit fail to connect, while a unit 10 feet farther away does fine, and both were working yesterday? Maybe someone walked through the room with a cell phone, cordless phone, or whatever. Maybe a delivery vehicle happened to call dispatch on the radio, and it bothered that particular unit.

    Until it's 100% reliable and cost effective, wired will never go away.

    I can't imagine a colo facility going all wireless. I've been in some large facilities. Hmmm, 1000 cabinets in a room, up to 40 machines per cabinet, say at 50% utilization, that's 20,000 machines screaming out on wireless connections in a very confined space. Worse than that is the fact that the rooms I've been in like this are usually full, and there may be a dozen or so rooms like this in very close proximity in the building.

Re:End of Ethernet

[superpulpsicle]

Even ethernet is not 100% reliable. A tiny rip in the cable and you have to rewire the whole house. That cannot happen with wireless.

Re:End of Ethernet

[MSDos-486]

No, a tiny rip in a cable and you replace the cable.

The thing I find funny. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

Is that the word "Ether" inclines one to think of sending messages through a mysterious invisible medium which connects all things in space, (ie, not wire so much). It's especially peculiar when something which is much closer to fitting the definition, (microwave) comes along to compete with it under names like Bluetooth and Whyfie.

Why fie, indeed?

Somebody trying to decipher our culture would be hit by numerous versions of this kind of backwards logic and blink lots, I'm sure.

Oh, and of course, anybody who wants to increase the level at which they are being saturated with microwave EM is either ignorant or making some self destructive choices.

-FL

Re:The thing I find funny. . .

[AJWM]

the word "Ether" inclines one to think of sending messages through a mysterious invisible medium which connects all things in space

No, you're thinking of "Aether" (as in "lumineferous Aether"), whose existence was shown unlikely by the Michelson-Morely and follow-on experiments.

Ethernet is talking about "ether", the class of compounds where e.g. two alkyl groups are linked with an oxygen atom in between (eg diethyl ether). The network tubes are filled with this stuff. You might think that the reason is ether's high volatility means signals can go faster, but the real reason is far more subtle than that.

Take a look at the diagram of molecular structures here. The one at the top is ether. Now, what does that remind you of? Right! RFC-1149, A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers. (Not to be confused with Evian carriers -- filling those tubes with water doesn't work at all well.) Being so much smaller (many orders of magnitude) than, say, Columba livia , those little ether molecules can travel a lot faster, with a corresponding increase in bandwidth.

Re:The thing I find funny. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

That was perhaps the most awesome post I've read all year. You rock.

-FL

Re:The thing I find funny. . .

[AJWM]

Heh, thanks. What's amazing is that somebody modded it "insightful". Not that I'm complaining, but "funny" was what I was going for.

tcp vs udp

[sgt scrub]

Wireless will displace wired in the same way that UDP displaced TCP.

INTERFERENCE YOU DOLTS!

[MilesNaismith]

Ever time someone kicks the microwave oven in the break room, and you lose your WiFi link, yeah I'll be laughing with my BORING old copper connection. If there weren't umpteen consumer devices already sharing a narrow 2.4 GHz spectrum this MIGHT have some shot. As it is, in a workplace you'd have to ban all other other devices that might interfere with it.

Re:IDG

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry pal... I used to work for IDG, and while it may be true that IDG editors like/are encouraged to submit stories to Slashdot, if you think IDG editorial departments have enough budget to actually pay for the privilege then you're fooling yourself. (And it has to be the editors that are submitting, because nobody in marketing reads any of the stories.)

Nah, wrap your house

[Immerial]

It's called aluminum siding. :)

Like others have said...

[pimpbott]

...uh, no. Not as long as radio sprays wider signal than single point to point. Anybody who can actually accomplish this earns a Nobel Prize in physics. Think Light Saber. Let's face it. We have yet to see uncrackable encryption in a data path, given enough time to crack it. Yeah, wire is messy, expensive, harder to physically install, and we are kinda running low on copper these days, but there is always going to be a place for it in moving data around.

Re:abortion is the end of a life

[Anonymous Coward]

it's a miracle!

And speed

[Sycraft-fu]

802.11n, according to Wikipedia which is the only source I can find with numbers (the rest like Broadcom just say fast) is 74 Mbit/s typical, 248 Mbit/s maximum. Ok well that means its typical speeds are less than 100mb wired net, which is dirt cheap, and it's max speeds are maybe a quarter of GigE, which isn't much more expensive. Also, as with all wireless, that's shared bandwidth. Everyone on a given access point is chatting on the same frequencies and thus sharing the same bandwidth, at least as I understand it (and the way WiFi sniffers work would imply that's the case). Wired networks with good switches are dedicated bandwidth per node. That is to say on a gig switch with a sufficient backplane I can send a file to you at full speed, while at the same time someone else sends a file to another person at full speed. Even though we are on the same switch, we are talking to different people and thus the traffic never mingles.

So 802.11n is, at best 25% of GigE and a 10 gig over copper standard is already in the works to extend that. Thus while 802.11 is a major step up for wireless, it still isn't touching wired.

Also, wired networks are simpler to use. They require more work to install in a building, but after they are there, it's really simple. No need for encryption, no need for authentication (in most cases), computers can just be plugged in and they go. With WiFi, unless you are willing to let anyone who drives by see what everyone is doing, you need to setup a system with encryption on it, and that means that every client has to get the relevant info before connecting and so on.

So far I'm paranoid and rabid.

[ahfoo]

Wow, you guys must be right. Since I'm paranoid and rabid, I must be delirious as well and therefore my desires to actually be able to use the hardware I pay for is invalid. It's all clear now. Thanks for your help.

No

[slapout]

No, it spells "802.11n"

Reliability issues

[Captain Spam]

Why... yes. 802.11n will, undoubtedly, kill off wired networking. Because I know I'd simply love to switch my network over to an all-wireless setup that can easily be disrupted by radio or electromagnetic interference*, is all but trivial to sniff unless you have clever hacks in play on commercial-grade routers, has a nasty overhead translating the physical layer to raw data, and is terribly slower than gigabit ethernet**. Ooo, sign me up for that!

Wireless networking has its use. Wired networking has its use. It's as simple as that.

*: Yes, technically, wired networks can be, too, just not to the same extent.
**: Fine, I only have 100BaseT, not gigabit, but the point stands.

I want an 802.11n solution for Linux

[renehollan]

802.11n USB dongles and ndiswrapper just aren't working for me -- constant lockups.

I want to serve 1080i and possibly 1080p video to a MythTV client box hooked up to my HDTV and would like to avoid an ethernet cable (which is what I'm using now).

The client actually has a 500 GB disk drive (in a Silverstone LC08 case), with all my static content (ripped DVDs and CDs, and I own all the original media), so I can just pick it up and take it from one place to another (I keep homes in California and Washington), but recordings stay on the server.

never

[Anonymous Coward]

First off, it would never work in large corporations. Hundreds of users on each floor sharing the bandwidth of a few access points would be a massive bottleneck. Secondly, security. Third, you'd just be reducing the number of cables run, maybe by half, because you'd be running all those cables for the access points. There isn't much benefit.

Obsolete?

[edrobinson]

Gaslights are obsolete?

Not until the signal doesn't deteriorate b/c wall

[r_jensen11]

Hell no. There are many problems associated with wireless. One is that there are only so many channels. When you live in a densely populated area and each residence has its own wireless network, you just know there are going to be channel conflicts. Also, there's also that small problem with walls hampering the signals....

No, here's why...

[Orig_Club_Soda]

Although the clients maybe "n" the source needs to be "n" as well. For corporate America this is an expensive upgrade - new boards and computers. It might be the end in 20 years. However, I prefer to have wired stationary computers. It seems more stable.

Internet Gambling axiom...

[jwiegley]

Do not bet against Ethernet.

No.

[ACMENEWSLLC]

I have a dedicated 1Gb/s connection to a core capable of 85Gb/s in it's fabric.

That means I can hit my various servers as fast as Windows can get the data from the disk to the network.

Wireless is a SHARED connection, right? I don't get full speed. Plus, 1Gb/s wired 1Gb/s wireless due to overhead such as encryption.

Wired will exist until the bandwidth of wireless becomes so great that I can not ever over utilize it. I'd never say never, as I no longer have a wired phone.

Lets not forget....

[notclevernickname]

802.11n has all of the limitations that any wireless network do in regards to range and interference. Furthermore, if everyone were to use 802.11n for their home/business networks, this proliferation would cause many of the interference issues. None of these problems exist with standard wired ethernet connections.

Never bet against Ethernet

[Mustang]

Since the beginning of time, everyone has always predicted that something or other will replace Ethernet. I remember on the cover of networking magazine in 1996, "ATM" is this the end of Ethernet? Well, let us just say that Gig E killed LANE. Anyway, until something comes along that is as cheap and reliable as Ethernet, then just like rock n roll Ethernet is here to stay.

Ethernet = Easy

[OrangeTide]

Ethernet has less to configure and setup, you don't have to distribute a WPA key to every client when you use Ethernet. Cabling issues can be diagnosed much more quickly than antenna and interference issues. Cost-wise a 5 port switch is cheaper than an access point. And sometimes even a 16 port switch is cheaper than an access point! Ethernet has every advantage over wireless except that it is not wireless. OTOH: I don't like tripping over the cables running all over my apartment.

Enterpise Management

[johnediii]

Speaking as a consultant for Altiris. I don't think that Wireless will replace wired until you can use Wake On Lan . When an enterprise wants to deliver software or patches or anything over night and they use WOL to turn on or wake up client computers in the environment, they are not going to want their people connected wirelessly. Altiris sells it's products with a major selling point being WOL and probably so do any other large management packages. So, until large enterprises stop wanting that centralized management capability, there will be wires.

No, but laptops do

[bgspence]

Wired connections make sense for desktops and wireless for laptops.

Speed is not the issue for most laptop users, but mobility is critical.

If I am using a wired connection on my laptop, my wired ethernet speed drops to zero as soon as I walk far enough away to pull out the plug. I just don't have that catastrophic speed drop with wireless :)

OK, who wants to know? Is it Dvorak?

[WheelDweller]

Real simple:

1. Microsoft and it's 1,000,000 virus problems.

2. Very breakable WEP encryption.

3. Compromise means downtime, money and time lost.

HELL NO, it's not the end of the Ethernet!

How is it all the people asking such stupid questions always have the airtime? Obviously he didn't bother to check with his sysadmin...

Re:Yes, of course[OT]

[nascarguy27]

Was that "sigh" because you know Myspace and Facebook suck because of word of mouth or is it because you yourself have looked?

Look at transmission speeds

[phoenix_rizzen]

While 802.11n gives wireless a giant speed boost (theoretically 400+ Mbps), it's nowhere near the speeds of copper ethernet (1 Gbps, 10 Gbps for short runs) or fibre ethernet (10 Gbps+). And the transmission distances are much shorter (100m outside line-of-site for wireless vs. 70+ km for fibre).

Add on the inherent security weaknesses in wireless broadcast transmissions versus wired transmission between two end-points, and wireless cannot "replace" wired ethernet.

Is there a place for wireless? Sure. Should you rip out all the wiring in the building and start adding wireless antennae to all your servers? Definitely not.

Re:Look at transmission speeds

[phoenix_rizzen]

Forgot to mention that wireless is also a half-duplex medium where only a single station can be transmitting data at time. Put 10+ computers onto the same access point, and you are looking at serious contention on that 300+ Mbps of bandwidth. Think back to the good ol' days of 10 Mbps ethernet using unmanaged hubs. Of 100 Mbps ethernet using unmanaged hubs.

Ethernet dead?

[bradray]

For residential, most likely. It's already dying with G. For business, I don't think we'll move away from wires for quite some time. It's just too reliable, secure, etc.

Beyond Security - Breaks some applications

[Punchinello]

The other issue with wireless networking protocols that we have found is it works very poorly with certain applications with a database backend. For anyone that uses Sage Timeslips, try running a large report over wireless. It can hang for up to 15 minutes where it will only take seconds over a wired network. The difference in network speed cannot explain this anamoly.

I do not know the technical reason for this, but I have seen it happen with numerous applications that attach to a server based database.

Wired networks will still have their place

[DaMattster]

You always want servers wired because they need guarranteed good quality transport methods. Additionally, you would want your SAN or NAS to be wired . . . . a wireless SAN would be really bad. Also, as other slashdotters have noticed, some databases don't play well over a wireless connection. That said, Web Apps will play well wirelessly wherein persistent connections aren't absolutely necessary. Security isn't even that much of an issue anymore as you can use IPSEC to protect traffic very reliably. I am not naive enough to believe that it is bulletproof but it is highly secure.

Security - reality check

[Paul DeBeasi]

I am the author of the report "802.11n - The End of Ethernet?" Many of the security comments regarding this report are circa 2003 - when WEP was all we had for security. Now, we have WPA2 (WiFi Protected Access 2) - based on 802.11i. To my knowledge, NO ONE has broken the AES encryption standard. If you use WPA2 then you can be assured that no one is going to eavesdrop on your wireless communication. In addition, 802.1X will provide reliable access control. Paul DeBeasi Senior Analyst Burton Group pdebeasi@burtongroup.com

Where do you get your facts?

[Paul DeBeasi]

I am the author of the report "802.11n: The End of Ethernet?" You comment "Security: There is little or none" is simply not true. The WiF Protected Access 2 (WPA2) technology (Based upon IEEE 802.11i) has not been cracked. You are probably thinking of the much older WEP protocol that was brain-dead at birth. WEP is broken, has been discussed ad nauseum, and should not be used. On the other hand, the combination of WPA2 + 8021.X provide rock solid authentication, encryption and message integrity. The fact is that wireless IS secure (contrary to popular opinion). Paul DeBeasi Senior Analyst Burton Group pdebeasi@burtongroup.com

Comments from the author

[Paul DeBeasi]

I am the author of the report "802.11n: The End of Ethernet?". There many good comments but some mis-information. Here are a couple of points:

Security: This is a broad topic so let's break it down. 802.11 networks provide authentication, data privacy, and data integrity. If you use best practice wireless security (802.1X + WPA2 + AES encryption) you can deploy a wireless network with authentication/privacy/data-integrity that is just as good as a wired network. Sure, WEP was broken (and lots of companies still have WEP) but WEP is not a best practice. If you want strong wireless security, you have to use WPA2. It is true that wireless denial of service is a vulnerability but the real question is what level of risk can you live with and how much are you willing to pay for RF monitoring/mitigation? Also, don't forget that a wired network is not perfectly secure. Eavesdropping can occur on a WIRED network too (see http://www.governmentsecurity.org/articles/articles2/AC...ble-Security.pdf_fl/

Stability: By "stability" I mean wireless connection reliability. It is certainly true that 802.11b/g/a APs can exhibit instability. 802.11n and best practice network design can alleviate a lot of the problems. Much of the instability with 802.11b/g/a networks is caused by multipath and co-channel interference. 802.11n makes use of MIMO (multi-input / multi-output) radio design that takes advantage of multipath to actually boost throughput and reliability. In addition, dense deployment of lightweight APs & controllers will improve stability through load balancing and dynamic radio management. Co-channel interference can be reduced (but not eliminated) by using 5 GHz spectrum and modern Wireless LAN systems (controller + lightweight APs). In addition, 802.11k (radio resource management) and 802.11v (station control) will be ratified by the IEEE in the next 12 - 24 months. Taken together these two new standards will make a WLAN more like the cellular network (where the network controls roaming - rather than the station) and will greatly increase wireless stability.

From the previous postings, it is clear that a lot of you have had pretty painful wireless experiences. But the technology and products are changing pretty rapidly. The state of wireless technology over the next 2 - 3 years will be very different from where it was over the last couple of years.

Paul DeBeasi, Senior Analyst, Burton Group, pdebeasi@burtongroup.com

Let's try to spell it anyway.

[Chabil Ha']

Nope.

security/speed/reliability!!

[itzdandy]

first of all, even WPA2 is crackable!, no current wireless security model is crack proof or even especially crack resistant. i have worked around this on my wireless network by using it as the interconnect only and using VPN for all traffic. I have a VPN server that has only the appropriate ports open to the 802.11g interface(ethernet to a wireless router) and MAC address filtering on the router. the router also runs WPA2 just to keep a baseline security for machines that might connect that have file sharing enabled. I still feel that i run a risk that if a compromised laptop connects up that it can penetrate the network via the VPN so i also lock down the machines via group policy limiting users.

even 802.11n is slow when compared to modern networking. many networks still run at 100 or even 10 speed but modern tech is 1000, wireless is not ready to deliver gigabit or even comparable.

a micowave oven and a number of other things can accidentally distrupt the wireless network much more easily than it can wired, and wireless runs a higher risk of a intentional disruptions.

What about health risks?

[lougarou]

I agree with the security argument.

I did not see it mentioned, but it is still doubtful that Wifi is health-clean. We do not know for sure, and it might be discovered one day, that too much electomagnetic noise (and especially the one generated by wifi) is nocive. This day would be the day the wired internet will be the only one allowed in public areas (esp. since it looks like a small quantity of EM waves is not dangerous).

comes with a free walnut sized brain tumor

[Anonymous Coward]

I get enough crap all day long. I swear if I stand between my power feed and one of my symmetras I feel tingly. That cannot be a good sign.

Does anyone remember Johnny Mnemonic?

Don't trust Radio or TV either!

[aqk]

I don't trust ANY of this wireless shit- Radio or TV or cellphones for that matter.

If God didn't want us to use the telephone,he wouldn't
have laid all those cables down!
Don't trust this aether stuff! COPPER is the future! Ask IBM.

One Time Pad is just One Time still, right?

[DanLake]

You are right that a "One Time Pad" provides provably perfect secrecy. It is however just a "One Time" pad. This means that if you use sneaker-net to install a 100 MB pad into your wireless router (via USB perhaps), you can only transmit 100 MB of data before your pad has been used "One Time". Also, using a OTP to XOR your data would be devastating to the security of something like a network packet. For any message with predictable field placement and size, a OTP with XOR does nothing for integrity or authenticity of your data. It becomes trivial to XOR out expected value fields (like MAC) and XOR in the desired value with no need whatsoever to know the OTP key material.

Wireless vs Cables

[codingmasters]

Wireless network standards will never fully replace cables. Simple as that. It's like Audio CDs. It is now simply far too hard to get rid of them because they have been available for far too long, and trying to replace them will mean making billions of objects obsolete on the spot. People won't stand for it.

Only if you like really slow networks.

[pstorry]

The problem with a wireless network is a scalability one.

You only get so many frequency bands. On each frequency band for the wireless network, every machine using it has to share that frequency. Therefore there is a limit - a fairly low limit - to how many machines you can sensibly use.

Wireless networks are fine for low numbers of machines, provided that there are also no other wireless networks on that same band nearby.

My current employer got smacked, hard, by this contention issue. They had a sudden expansion in an office, and coped with it by putting the 50 machines onto a wireless network at first. They saved on cabling costs, which was significant, even if the wireless APs were more expensive than switches and the wireless cards were also an expense, as this was the newer 802.11g.

But then we had an interesting problem. At about nine in the morning, everyone comes in and logs on. And Windows pulls their profiles from the network...
And due to contention, nobody got to finish logging on until at least quarter to ten.
And that was AFTER we'd sped it up by manually forcing access points and groups of PCs onto different bands, to limit contention issues.

Let's be honest - a switched 10Mbps network would have been faster under that load. That's no exaggeration either - we timed it.

In the end, the only way we could make it usable was to have everyone never log off - just lock their machines at night. Not ideal, really. Also, if anyone was going to do certain operations that are network intensive, we had to get them to schedule them so that they didn't clash - and alert users that their networking would be slower. That was inconvenient, and sometimes caused acrimony on the floor - "my network's slow because Bob's doing stats again..."

The lack of an ability to switch means that wireless networks don't scale at all, especially for businesses. They're fine for home use, for public access points, for small ad-hoc offices and so forth. But if you're looking at a floor in an office block, or even half a floor, then they're useless except for visitors...

Why?

[sjames]

What would be the point of replacing the wired network with wireless? The big benefit to wireless is mobility within a space, connecting visitor's laptops, and such. Most employees are using desktops or towers under the desk that will never be moved. In exchange for runn ing a wire in an office that's generally constructed to make that easy you get to have contention free bandwidth, no freeloaders from next door, no mysterious dropouts, etc.

Just because it's the new networking buzzword doesn't mean everything has to switch to it. I'm waiting for the inevitable ingenious solution to the problems of wireless deployment: flexible point to point waveguides with the antenna built in to each end. We can have something called a "switch" that has 24-48 antenna connections on the front ready to receive the antenna wires from the ends of the waveguides. Just wait, someone will come out with it and id10t PHBs will order them by the gross.

Meanwhile, with a 40MHz channel width (necessary for full speed), 802.11n is the highlander of wireless networks, there can be only one. Perhaps the FCC should consider giving the people more spectrum for ad-hoc use rather than selling it all off and tossing us crumbs from our corporate lord's table. That and an optomistic indoor range of a glorious 200 feet means it's not really there yet.

One word: Physics

[CTachyon]

The physics of transmitting information aren't changed in the least by 802.11N. Balanced electrical signals over twisted pairs of wires (Ethernet, USB, Firewire, ...) will always offer superior speeds and better power efficiency versus transmitting and receiving radio waves. There are two simple reasons: (1) wires are directional, so no signal power is wasted by heating steel beams, electrical wiring, doorknobs, etc.; and (2) a balanced electrical signal is nearly immune to outside interference, because unless the interference is physically nearby it will affect both wires the same way.

The new MIMO stuff in 802.11N is an attempt to make wi-fi more directional, and thus improve the S/N ratio and the power-bandwidth tradeoff, but it's nowhere near what an actual directional antenna or phased array can do, much less a simple twisted pair.

Let's not even get into the security issues of wireless versus wired.

Latency anyone?

[termineite]

Everyones talking about bandwidth... ... what about latency?

Cost

[bandmassa]

50 metres of wire costs a lot less than 50 metres of WiFi. As for security, you have to be inside the building to get a network connection when it's all wires, with WiFi you only need to be _near_ the building. Advantage/disadvantage, crisis/opportunity - they're energy polarities, not fixed points in space and time. Therefore, even when WiFi costs no more than a twisted pair, there will always be a need for the twisted pair, just as there's still a use for gas lighting.

Celebrating early

[Atilla]

In corporate environments, (better quality) ethernet switches typically have fabric that meets or exceeds the bandwidth requirements for all of the ports together. In other words, if you have 24 100Mbps ports, the switch has a backplane that is capable of at least 2.4Gbps. On a 802.11 (a/b/g/n/whatever) access point, your aggregate bandwidth can be chewed up by 1 subscriber. Doesn't matter for a small network, but mostly sucks for someone that really needs the bandwidth.

just my 2c.