Slashdot Mirror
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?"
When the Porcine Aviation Assocation makes WiFi as secure as wired LAN, then we'll see the end of Ethernet. Until then, no.
My blog
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
And I don't know what you're talking about, I still use gaslights.
I can't wait for wireless to take over everything. Collisions and shared bandwidth are awesome. I miss hubs so much.
--saint
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?
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
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.
622677120
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.
Palm trees and 8
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.
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.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
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.
Power over Ethernet
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.