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Time To Cut the Ethernet Cable?
coondoggie writes in with a Network World piece that begins "A range of companies with wireless LANs are discovering that 50% to 90% or more of Ethernet ports now go unused, because Wi-Fi has become so prevalent. They look at racks of unused switches, ports, Ethernet wall jacks, the cabling that connects them all, the yearly maintenance charges for unused switches, electrical charges, and cooling costs. So why not formally drop what many end users have already discarded — the Ethernet cable? 'There's definitely a right-sizing going on,' says Michael King, research director, mobile and wireless, for Gartner. 'By 2011, 70% of all net new ports will be wireless. People are saying, "we don't need to be spending so much on a wired infrastructure if no one is using it."' ... There is debate over whether WLANs, including the high-throughput 802.11n networks, will be able to deliver enough bandwidth." Cisco, which makes both wireless and wired gear, has a spokesman quoted calling this idea of right-sizing a "shortsighted message from a wireless-only provider. It's penny-wise and pound-foolish."
- security ... etc.
- bandwidth
- interference/reliability
What a pile of marketing crap.
A network is tailored to the site and needs of the customer. Where they say 50% to 90% of a client's network ports are unused, does that mean that they've had users migrating from wired to wireless, or did they overpurchase on projected growth?
Using this logic, oh my gosh, even my company must be going wireless. We have a few hundred unused 10baseT connections on our Catalyst 5500. Know why? Because we original projected them to be used for VoIP. When they finally settled on the VoIP provider, they insisted that we use their switches. We simply haven't pulled the extra cards, because we don't have blanks to fill the holes, and we can't find anyone in the office who would prefer to be on an 10Mb/s line, rather than a 100Mb/s line.
WiFi is great and all. I'm on it right now as I write this. But, that doesn't mean it's the end all of networking. When I want true reliable speeds, I go to where there's a network jack, and plug in.
At work, every desk is wired. There are AP's, but people use the wired jacks. Why? Because they appreciate the reliability. There's no random interference. No cell phone, microwave over, or transient event on another floor is going to disturb their connection. I appreciate that they use the wired connections. At any given point, I may have 4 or 5 users on wireless, and a few hundred devices on wired. I can wonder "are those wireless connections legitimate?" If a user has a problem, I'm looking at physical facts (is their cable plugged in. Did they damage the cable) rather than random environmental facts (Is there a thunderstorm? Did someone fire up a new yet not well shielded microwave two floors down?). I had to trace a wireless problem once, and it turned out to be a small portable radio in the corner of someone's office. It was turned off, but it was effectively blocking all RF for about 10 feet. Once I found it, I unplugged it, and the wireless problems there went away.
Right now, I'm sitting at home, away from the office. There are a number of devices that are connected wirelessly. Why? Because I haven't run wires to the places that we may use it. The back porch, where I'm sitting right now, smoking and writing, doesn't have an ethernet drop. The PS3 doesn't have a drop, so it gets it's updates wirelessly. But every machine I depend on for work has an ethernet cable going to a Cisco Catalyst switch. Ask me why a connection goes weird on a wired port, and I can find the problem (it happens rarely, but ...) Ask me why my connection drops on the back porch and it's a little harder to find the answer.
We had a problem on the back porch a while back. As it turned out, a neighbor just got DSL, and their AP was on the same channel as ours. Since I was closer to theirs, it interfered with the signal. I spend 20 minutes listening to channels to find the least used spectrum, and changed over. What happens when someone else comes up on that channel? I'll run out of channels eventually. But hey, it's ok, I can set up more AP's with more power, and drown them out. Then it's their problem, right?
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Until I can get 1G bps that cannot be easily hacked into - wire has a future.
'There's definitely a right-sizing going on,' says Michael King, research director, mobile and wireless, for Gartner.
Unfortunately, his idiotic terminology renders his words inaudible to me. :-/
OMG!!! Ponies!!!
That's what I've got now and I'm sure more is coming...
...in bed
Yes, I'll give them that wifi is a great convenience, especially if you have multiple teenagers living in the house with their assorted laptops. It's perfect for web browsing and browsing the iTunes music store, but anyone who plays a lot of online games, or is simply a power user can tell you, nothing beats a wired connection to the matrix in terms of latency and data throughput. 802.11g (that's 90% of the market right) is still spotty with most consumer grade hardware beyond 20 feet. My netbook may never use it's eithernet port, but you can be damn sure my desktop is going to stay wired for the foreseeable future.
moox. for a new generation.
And as they say, people who know radio use wires.
todo - The developer's equivalent of confession: "Forgive me Father, for I have sinned..."
And you know what ? Even if the wireless is availbale everywhere nobody use it as a standard. Firstly because you can't work 8h with a laptop without recharging it, so all coworker have a docking station. And instead of overusing the wireless, everybody from their docking station use a LAN port. Seeing how the room are open floor with 8 to 12 people, and wireless is a shared bandwidth it would also not be a good trade off. But if you are going to a meeting then it is OK for 1h or 2h. Even with desktop since that bandwidth is shared it would make no sense to go wireless only, especially if you already have the infrastructure and a FIX desktop. Just run a cable : not much cost.
My own anecdote, everytime I'm doing heavy transfer with 802.11, my wireless keyboard and mouse get wonky. Mind you, this is with my HTPC and the keyboard and mouse(pad) is a bit far away, but they both work flawlessly as soon as I throw in good ol' ethernet cable to the HTPC. So yeah, wired ethernet will be here for a while.
Try doing a firmware update on your router over wifi and you'll see why this proposal is a bad idea.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I'm guessing the bandwidth of wired connections will always be one step ahead of wireless. Since I regularly have to transfer multi-gigabyte files from network storage, I'll be sticking with whatever makes this process as fast as possible, thanks, even if that does disagree with the prognosis of these moronic "future trend" people.
At home, I have 2 desktop computers. I have a wireless router that came with my ISP, but I shut the wireless functionality down, and connect directly to the ethernet ports.
If I had a laptop, I might want to sit on the couch and compute, but I wonder what the bandwidth difference between wireless and cabled? I've used wireless and it seems zippy, but I've never done any serious downloading with it.
Also, I'm on the fence about whether it's better security wise to close off your wireless router entirely as I have done, or open it up entirely so that any activity traceable to your ISP account will be attributable to anybody who happened to warjam the signal. I don't do anything much that's illegal, but if I did, I'd definately want plausable deniability. Would have to get a laptop and warjam my own signal, or better yet someone elses.
...
802.11N is awesome. It's faster than 100Mb ethernet even in real world tests. But does it scale well even in dense office buildings? In a cube-farm scenario, where there are computers every five meters in every direction in 3D space, is it really possible to get 100Mb speed?
Security isn't there yet, either. Someone in the parking lot could still put up an access point which advertises itself as being part of your company network, and your users will connect to it. Doing it right is possible in theory (configure computers such that they will only connect to APs which have certificates issued by your company's PKI) but Windows doesn't allow you to lock down wireless in such a way.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
I may be mistaken, but doesn't a system use less power on a wired network than on a wifi? That could make a good argument for keeping the wired networks around (along with the usual of course).
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
As has already been said: Security, Bandwidth, and of course the obvious advantages of CSMS/CD over CSMA/CA.
I've already.#¼#éÃdj $Ã{sdNO CARRIER
Even if you have an unbreakable wireless network, I could still kill it by disrupting it. Wouldn't take much either.
and replace them all with a mesh point-to-point selfguiding laser network.
I agree, i'm cutting mine n
'There's definitely a right-sizing going on,' says Michael King, research director, mobile and wireless, for Gartner.
Why must we endure advertising on here ?
There are so many reasons for Wireless to be a "Convenience" over a
practical default it boggles the mind. I miss the good old days before the hype
got the better or preogress....
End of Line.
I work for a company that has a fully integrated VoIP infrastructure, providing PoE enabled phones that jump to the desktop. We have no wireless to speak of either with no plans for a widespread implementation. I know you can go wireless with your phones, but do I really want to worry about a bunch of cordless phones?
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
One of the best uses of a wireless router is to have it set up without a password in such a way that 1) it doesn't have actual internet access, and 2) every URL that's loaded via all possible domains leads to an offensive image hosted on your old box that was about to go to the dumpster.
Other than that, I'm not really sure what other people are using it for.
Ok, when some vendor has a wireless router that can give each one of my workstations 1Gb/s, then we'll talk. But there's something to be said about having an INDIVIDUAL connection to each workstation, so we dont have to divide the total available bandwidth among our workstations. Also, even if we divided our workstations into the available wireless channels, we'd still have problems with bandwidth and interference. Oh, and interference? Turns out, the workplace I manage has cordless phones, microwaves, steel walls, concrete walls. I'd be really stoked to see a router that could reliably get through all of that for enterprise use.
Sure! Get rid of Ethernet already and good riddance! Also don't waste money on any infrastructure that does anything more than WEP. Anything above WEP is just an over-priced feature. Especially since all of your employee's with laptops know the WPA2 Password anyways, and they are GREAT at keeping secrets! Oh and your controller simply relies on the registration of the MAC address and only people with no life know how to spoof those...
Once you are totally wireless your network will be more advanced than the Pentagon! They are so old-school that they are still using physical cabling! Fiber optics yes but that is so 2005! Plus it is still such a hassle to have to plug in every single time! They wasted all of that tax-payer money when they couldve stuck with ethernet or just went WPA2 Wireless... Instead they keep muttering something about ethernet EMF emmissions or some such nonesense. Maybe they will finally become technologically savvy and switch to wireless too now that the stupid redneck Bush is out of office!
Think about it, most people tend to build large when building their networks to start. Or "Let's see we have a 4 port router for $x or an 8 port router for $x + $50, why don't we just buy the 8 port router and not have to come back later for another one as my network has only been growing?" I don't think WiFi changed this to any large extend as WiFi really has only liberated the laptops which never used many network jacks in the pre-wifi days to begin with...
In conclusion I don't think that the advent of WiFi has anything to do with the loss of Network Jacks. If the jacks are looking emptier than before I'd think along the lines of:
And besides, who really cares how many jacks are open in your network....maybe you can disconnect a router or 2 and consolidate, save a watt or 2 of power at best.
...in bed
I know that a bunch of people are going to say "WTF" and all that, and I have to add my $.02 worth.
What a CROCK of shit. While wireless is great for "casual" surfing and such, I sure wouldn't want it for anything other than that. And from experience, Wireless starts to really drop functionality as the number of users on the WAP goes up. More than about 5 or 10 devices being used on a WAP is just about useless (depending on usage). You might as well be on dialup at that point.
I run into this kind of thinking all the time, and it drives me nuts. We have a guy throwing all sorts of wireless out on our campuses, and it sits mostly unused. And the wireless that IS used is almost useless because so many people are trying to use it at once it is slower old 10base hubs.
Don't get me wrong, wireless has its place. My house is wireless, and I also have wired connections. I just wired my in-laws house (two computer household) because wireless was too slow for them and their needs. They now have gig wire network AND wireless in their house.
Don't get me wrong, wireless has its place, as does wired lans. One has to know the needs, and design and engineer a system that suits the needs of those that are using it.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Wireless only runs in half duplex. That's reason enough to use wired.
If you're an apartment dweller such as myself, you can forget about WiFi. The airspace is too crowded on all channels (1-11) which leaves me with dropped packets and a short range. Oh, and I have periods of total disconnect when my neighbor decides to use his/her circa 1980s microwave.
Solution? I just run CAT5 along the floor baseboard from the router to my PC and PS3.
Life is not for the lazy.
Hotels.
I had just bought all the materials I need to wire my house up with cat6 and a gigabit switch, because I'm tired of getting kicked off of xboxlive when my wife decides to stream music over our shared wireless connection...
It is like the brand spanking new Harvard MBA starting to work for a railroad discovering, to his utter horror, that all the rolling stock in the railroad adds up to just 1/100 th of the track owned by the company. He smartly addresses the over inventory problem by tearing up and selling for scrap all the excess track!
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
It works OK, and sometimes a little less than OK.
If you REALLY need wireless, you put up with the limitations.
But wired is always better.
I see absolutely no reason for wireless where a computer sits on one desk all day. In that case, wired is better. If it is constantly on the move, wireless is necessary.
Bandwidth and interference/reliability are good enough reasons for me not to use WIFI when I don't have to.
But, just because "security" is not (or weakly) configured out of the box, and a lot of users don't bother to read and learn how to configure their wifi device, why should security be a one of those reason (assuming WPA and higher) not to use wifi? Is there a new flaw with WPA (and higher? Yes I know about the TKIP weakness.
It's from Gartner, so it's not true.
I don't know if it's always the case, but the score is becoming increasingly worse. That maybe because I just see the "interesting" media releases from Gartner.
But basically if I ever meet someone from Gartner that says I have to move right, you'll probably see me go straight, because I don't even trust them enough to predict I have to change direction.
Until they figure out how to implement Wireless PoE for VoIP Phone Systems...I don't see why anyone could say that wireless will replace copper.
wired gaming = 90ms ping
wireless gaming 400ms ping
wireless has some work to do just yet.
This guy is a moron who's merely attempting to shill his crap.
As others have already said.
Wireless fails in a comparison of throughput.
Wireless fails in a comparison of security.
Wireless fails in a comparison of susceptibility to interference.
If you're just sending e-mail and browsing por^H^H^the web, wireless is fine.
If you're trying to maintain a sustained connection for things like database traffic, or a VPN connection, and being kicked in the balls by someone with electrified spiked boots is preferable.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
... I keep on pushing the powers that be to give me a cable, dammit. High packetloss, low availability is not my idea of a good uplink. And I'm not even in a developing country!
"A range of companies with wireless LANs are discovering that 50% to 90% or more of Ethernet ports now go unused, because Wi-Fi has become so prevalent"
What happens when everyone moves to Wi-Fi and we end up with spectrum congestion
This will only make sense when wireless becomes a standard throw-in option on Desktop PCs, the kind corporations order by the hundred from Dell or HP.
Right now you're getting the on-board ethernet jack for (practically) nothing, and it's got one nice standard interface means plug-and-play is as easy as it gets. Compare DHCP to the wild and unpredictable mix of channels, SSIDs, WPA codes, and connection managers that wireless networking require and you'll see why corporate IT departments just don't want the headache associated with supporting wireless.
If you know what GINA.DLL is and why Netgear sucks, then you'll appreciate why Ethernet will be around for a long time to come.
I question whether author buys batteries. One cable is typically cheaper than 8 AA batteries.
In our business, wired predominates, we use gigabit ethernet for a bunch of reasons. 1) Reliability: We are in a old building, lots of steel and concrete. WiFi is a lot less reliable and a lot slower. I do use WiFi in places where we have mobile carts or where wire is hard to pull but WiFi remains a hassle. I see occasional dropouts, I have to put in and maintain multiple APs to cover poor signal regions. 2)Speed: We send many large files (medical images) during the work day. Gigabit wire handles these well, WiFi tends to choke. 3. Cost: Gigabit ethernet is built into every system/mobo, wireless is not. The concept of installing/maintaining all these APs and wireless cards is daunting in terms of my time and budget. Anyhow, this is just marketing spew from a marketing guy as far as I see. WiFi is complementary to our wired network, certainly not a replacement. I don't really see this changing in the next 2 years (2011) as quoted. Unless an outrageous new wireless tech comes out and is build into all business mobos/systems, in 2011 we will probably continue running predominantly wired ethernet.
My company got rid of their old analog phone system, and all the physical plant that required, by switching to Cisco IP phones. The network uses power-over-ethernet tech to power the phones, and the cisco switches and routers they use provide Quality of Service that makes sure the phone audio quality is superb. You can do phones over WiFi, but, cell phones are a better solution most of the time, so why bother?
Plus, IP phones often offer a lot of features/services that aren't available (or are more expensive) with analog phone systems (like, for example, on our Cisco phones, I can lookup the phone number of anyone in the company by doing a name search in our Active Directory, right from the phone, then can have the phone dial the number automatically by selecting the name from the list on the LCD). Even if you have a separate digital network for phones, why bother having it separate (ok, well, if you already paid for it, it probably doesn't make sense to rip it out and buy IP phones, but I don't think it probably makes sense, nowadays, to have separate phone and data networks, if you are doing new installs)?
You forgot capacity.
Obviously cube farms can never go wireless due to density. There is no way, no how, you can simultaneously run hundreds of personnel at densities approaching one per square meter. Way too much interference.
So, just wire in more lower powered access points.
You will never run wireless faster than the copper line to its access point. The staggering labor cost of slowing down the LAN cannot be adsorbed. So, the obvious solution is to buy something like micro-access points that only have a range of perhaps 7 feet, you know, like a patch cable, and then install one in every single cube. Then the users can be wireless. Of course it takes exactly the same amount of CAT5 in the walls to run all those APs. And of course once the bean counters figure out you've replaced a $1.50 1000M patch cord with a $150 10 meg access point that only works when its not being interfered with, you'll be unemployed. But, have fun while it lasts!
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Once the solar cycle hits it's next phase.
People make their decisions based on what they see today and over the last few years.
Cycles longer than 20 years tend to blind side them.
Right now activity is so low that radio is breaking down (nothing to bounce off of).
But in the future, activity will be much higher and interfere in the other direction.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
WiFi is a great way to invite people into your systems that you wouldn't let in your front (or back) door! I prefer to use at least as much access control to my network as I do to my home...
A range of companies with wireless LANs are discovering that 50% to 90% or more of Ethernet ports now go unused, because Wi-Fi has become so prevalent.
At this moment, the only wireless device on the WAP at my end of the building is my iPod. There are a whole slew of wired devices, though, from servers to desktops to printers.
They look at racks of unused switches, ports, Ethernet wall jacks, the cabling that connects them all, the yearly maintenance charges for unused switches, electrical charges, and cooling costs.
Uh-huh, because WAPs run on fairy dust and ponies' daydreams.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Hey! I just realized that my office is only using 30% of our electrical outlets. What a waste!
...until we need to rearrange the office.
Have been using Ethernet cable always, using Wireless right now. First thing I notice is how my 1mb/s download speed is now 200kb/s tops, on the same network. Plugging the cable back in speeds are back up.
Most people use wireless out of laziness, not actual need. Just because they opt-in for a worse experience does not make dropping support a proper move. Meh.
They apparently don't see the need for Vista64 drivers for WMP54G wireless cards.
The Ralink driver work for a while. Then, for no apparent reason, get corrupted and begin causing blue screens.
I've moved it to an XP box where it will work. I'll never buy another product from them though.
latency
Why must we endure grammar on here ?
There are so many reasons for grammar to be a "Convenience" over a
practical default it boggles the mind. I miss the good old days before the hype
got the better or preogress or speling....
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
If you have a peice of endpoint equipment that you don't need to move, and you have the ability to run a wire to it, run the wire.
It will be cheaper, it will be faster, and it won't have strange failures. It will require no configuration.
I have had home wifi for a long time, but it has only ever powered laptops. If something doesn't move, it gets a wire.
I run gig-E at home, with one machine running a bt client constantly. I burn DVDs over the network. I am trying to figure out how wireless-only wouldn't be a huge step backwards at my house.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
1) My laptop, running off my network via wireless-g, doesn't get the same performance/bandwidth as when I plug it in via cat5 cable.
2) Security becomes a major issue. It's impossible to hack a computer connected via a cable unless you go through the intarweb or sit at the computer. Wireless? Someone sitting outside your home has another avenue to hack it.
3) Plugging a cable into your computer takes all of 1 second and it works. Setting up your wireless, with appropriate settings, take a bit longer then that - plus it is more prone to failure (e.g. settings aren't saved or get corrupted or you are reformatting, etc"
I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
I am a CISSP, and network administrator for a sizeable government organization, including a law enforcement agency in Texas.
WPA2 Enterprise with AES-CCMP encryption (at least 128 bits) and using a good encrypted authentication protocol like EAP-TTLS/EAP-MSCHAPv2 or PEAPv0/EAP-MSCHAPv2 for your Windows clients is pretty darn secure. It's at least as secure as your wired ethernet connections to your Windows desktop workstations.
and being kicked in the balls by someone with electrified spiked boots is preferable.
What?
Member of the 7 Digit UID Club
It is a question of series vs. parallel. Any sort of wireless connection is going to be shared by multiple people using it in a serial fashion. This means that Ann can't send while Fred is sending. Period.
OK, if you have Ethernet cables running to both Ann and Fred then they can, absolutely both send at the same time. With switches linked by fiber and where everyone isn't banging on the same server you often acheive parallel communications all the way through the system.
If you are posting on Slashdot or reading email it may not make a big deal. Moving large files around, interacting with some remote graphic intensive application or just doing "office work" with lots of transactions can make this seems like a really silly idea.
Sure, wired connections are expensive to run and they shouldn't be run except for productivity or security. In my company, both of these are considerations and it would be unthinkable to rely on wireless.
You forgot capacity.
Obviously cube farms can never go wireless due to density. There is no way, no how, you can simultaneously run hundreds of personnel at densities approaching one per square meter. Way too much interference.
Why not? 5GHz products have dozens of non-overlapping channels, as opposed to the 3 you get with 2.4GHz products.
I've run into people trying to run database apps over wireless networks who've been losing data, corrupting their databases, etc because the connection was bottoming out on them.
Trying to clean up the damage done in this fashion is time consuming, tedious, and usually frustrating. As is dealing with the intellectually stunted individuals (who've spent "tens and hundreds" of dollars" on their *COUGH* "enterprise class" network) trying to claim that it's the fault of the software for not being intelligent enough to compensate for their craptacular setup.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
you can take my ethernet out of my cold dead hands
My USED switches have approximately ZERO maintenance. An unused one could hardly be more. How about the higher costs for wireless equipment? The much lower reliability? The security problems? How about everyone with a desktop PC that has a simple reliable ethernet connection -- why on earth unplug that?
Wireless technologies, as they stand now, can not compete with wired. They are too bandwidth light - too finicky (if I'm behind a particularly dense wall, I loose signal) and are frankly insecure. I work in a very secure location and they wouldn't dream of allowing a wireless signal withing 100 yards of this place. The point is that under a wired connection you can truly produce a closed-loop network. You can't do that with wireless, opening the network to attacks.
It is fine at home with 2 computers, put 20 on and it blows. Speed is half duplex as stated. Security. Not the same speed as wired, if you are on 10meg maybe - try 1gig with jumbo frames and see the difference. Wired is NOT shared, like wireless, big ass hub. Give me a wire and all the speed I can get.
My 802.11b notebook can't go as fast as my 22MB cable, but I'm not about to rip it all out and upgrade just for that.
The speeds are not consistently fast enough to support line of business apps on a daily basis for many cases over wireless.
Besides, who wants to be bathed in that much RF from close sources for 8 hours a day? We get enough from other sources.
I want 10GB ethernet!
-m
http://www.invisik.com
All of you tout security when over half of you have or have had spyware and viruses on your windoze machines. The only thing that your neighbor cares about with your WIFI is if he/she can get online when they didn.t pay their bill or their Internet is down. ok? Oh and two of you want to search your neighbors hard drive for naughty pictures of the chick that lives there.
You can have my ethernet cables when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
Well, my college would surely welcome some donations of these "excess" managed switches. We are out of money, and are short on capacity. And getting shorter.... the things like... FAIL after 7 years in bad temperature environments. :)
Seriously, really could use some managed switch donations.... with fiber uplink ports... single-mode...
http://www.ewc.edu/
leather-dog muksihs
Blog: @muksihs
Clearly an article written by a guy who works in a home office with a Linksys wireless router. As a consultant, I don't have any corporate clients who are even considering ditching the wire! In fact, I've had a few recent build outs where they spec'd out high grade (expensive) cable because they didn't want to have any problems running GigE. Wireless N?... You gotta be kidding. GigE, for high usage feeder cables, imaging, you name it!
Ethernet isnt going away. Seriously, shut up.
A relatively small reason, but until Wake on LAN works over WiFi, I'll be keeping my ethernet cables, TYVM.
Cut the cable, keep the conduit, because even wireless internets runs over a series of tubes.
From TFA "the company's head of enterprise marketing, has been the point person for the effort, which includes a helpful calculator, in glossy cardstock, that lets you spin several wheels to see projected savings"
Cisco's marketing department uses flash animation.
So who's going to up the ante and start mailing out kool-aid and 3D glasses?
I'm not buying anything until I've tried their kool-aid.
"Oh drat, these computers, they're so naughty and so complex." Marvin the Martian
Another masterful troll by Gartner.
who've spent "tens and hundreds" of dollars
Did they by any chance get one of these?
Member of the 7 Digit UID Club
At least upgrade it to DD-WRT. If it's going to suck, you might as well have some fun with it.
Who the fuck keeps tech magazines in business?
Seriously?
With old Cat5 maybe - although most desktops still come with on-board RJ45.
But new offices are better off getting cabled - for 10 GB ethernet, which will probably become mainstream soon for companies working with large files.
These guys must be mad
I assume an office configuration.
a) 20 Wireless acess points will not be able to deliver the same troughput as a 1Gb switch (especially if your servers have multiple ports), even when polluting the whole band for just conneting a single large office. And before somebody asks: Yes, there are people who use that kind of BW for remote fs. And before another onjection comes: when wireless will be at 1Gb i dont now where cable/fiber will be
b) Identifying problems/costs. Pull the plug and something changes. Then you at least know that your card is working, and if the link led goes on and off you know something about the other side. If maintainace time on 5% of the computers rises twice, putting ethernet ports on all pays of
c) Electricity. I dont think wireless access points and receivers for the same rate take less than cabled ones. This just does not match my current experience. Maybe it changes, but hte cabled one also could go down in power.
d) Security. Yes i know. Relying on the ethernet cable not radiating may be a bad idea, but relying on nobidy beeing able to physically inject packets into you net may be a good one.
e) Unproven technology. You know. Never change a running system. Companies begin to understand how to handle wired Networks (even if i have heavy doubts from time to time). Without a really good reason (and no, "my iphone does not have an ethernet port" is not one of these), one should not move to something new.
Carriage returns added for solely for dramatic effect omitted.
I'm in an 802.11g office space. All the workstations are wired to the walls, strangely through the new VOIP phones we got last year. Nominally, the laptops are supposed to be wired when possible, and wireless for meetings -- in reality, most people don't like dropping active connections when they unplug, so they're just wireless all the time. After we got our VOIP system last year, I lost my ethernet cable and have been wireless the whole time. I VNC to my workstation and do light graphics but mostly text work there -- there's more than enough bandwidth for that. I download from intranet sites at 600+KB/s, and that's fine with me. I actively use e-mail and the like. There's enough VPN encryption to keep corporate happy, so that's not a factor. As far as interference goes, 1) throughput is high enough, so I don't care, and 2) we've had one "wireless outage" in the last 2 years, and it was for an hour.
As long as dedicated personal workstations and VOIP phones are at the desks, we'll have wired infrastructure to support them. But it's clear wireless is up to the task of handling a lot of people's needs.
You've just made a serious breech of Slashdot protocol. You shouldn't post AC, when your comment would be modded funny..
Last time I checked, Funny gave no karma, and Overrated took away karma. So if moderators go into a Funny/Overrated mod war over a comment, the poster loses karma rapidly. Such mod wars have brought users from Excellent (posting at 2) down to Terrible (posting at -1) in one day.
On the wireless Internets, there are no tubes, so there are no tubes to get clogged.
The tube from the antenna to the AP that gets clogged more easily than the tubes on a wired switch. But residential Internet service is even easier to clog than the antenna tube.
It's simple. Take a poll. How many of you are using wireless vs wired RIGHT NOW, to read this article? That's what I thought.
Bow before me, for I am root.
Somebody decided not to run new wiring in the college library and instead put all the computers on wireless, and don't know if it's the implementation or something but the computers are beyond slow (about dial up speeds in some cases). So now nobody ever wants to use the computers in the library for web browsing, making them kind of useless for web research and kinda defeating the purpose of shiny new computers to ease the burden of the other big computer lab.
open source modern art: laser taggi
I'll take that unused fiber stuff of your hands. I'll even haul it away at NO CHARGE TO YOU! :)
WoL over wi-fi is incredibly shady at best and impossible at worst. Want to bring all your machines up during off-hours for maintenance? Have fun walking around and physically powering on every one of them.
My thoughts precisely.
I think the news here is that Cisco actually said something smart.
The first thing that popped into my head is security. That alone is reason enough. Never mind the bandwidth and interference issues. I think interference issues would also increase with the prevalence of wireless as well.
Wo don't need no stinking security either.
Personal SANs seem like a good usage for the ports, rather than Wireless.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
54Mbps should be enough for anybody.
Your right for a cube farm but what about a small business that has 5 or 10 computers? Running wire is a lot harder in most of those places than it is in a cube farm.
I guess it really does depend upon your situation just like Cisco says.
And...don't mod me down for saying that because I also think Cisco's stuff is way overpriced marketing mostly and some of it I have to have because, we'll you know no one ever got fired for buying Cisco because everyone else does it.
That being said I think someone that is going to stay small like a car dealership or you local insurance agent maybe should go with wireless and notebook machines as well. Do you know how much a large desk with enough space for a mid size tower takes up compared to a laptop which already has the wireless built in?
But what about the tumours?
I mean, isn't that the 800 pound gorilla in the rooom?
...at least for corporate and speed hungry users.
Even comparing a pre-standard wireless(802.11N) to a 14 years old 100Mb Ethernet standard shows that it does not have that many benefits.
Most computers and routers nowadays have Gigabit or better Ethernet.
So if you compare 802.11N to Gigabit or even 10Gb, that are the true competition of the N proposal you'll get the picture.
Common household users are... well quite not intelligent beings(I believe they may belong to some primate species that looks like a human being to lure its predators).
I guess I could get most Americans to vote for the replacement of Ethernet with Token Ring if I said that it would help capture Osama.
A majority does not make something right, they just make it look right.
Here is a list of reasons why cutting the cord is bad:
Limited shared bandwidth. Soon your internet connection will be faster than your WiFi connection.
Security - WEP is hopelessly broken. WPA-PSK is not foolproof. Proprietary solutions suck and are expensive.
Interference with nearby WLANs. There are only three unshared channels; the rest of the channels overlap. It's going to be very difficult to not overlap someone else's nearby WLAN and when you do, the performance of everyone's (on that frequency) will decrease
Reliability - There are often "holes" in RF transmission, even close to the antenna. I found a spot at our conference table where my notebook drops the connection. A few inches either way and the connection is perfect. This is just 25' from the WAP.
Driver load order: Are you on a Windows network and do you need to log on to a domain/active directory? If your wifi driver won't load before the workstation stack you may not be able to authenticate properly.
Connection tracking - this is related to the limited bandwidth and limited memory in most WAPs.
Once you get more than 15 or so workstations on a WLAN performance can really start to suck, especially if you have network drives that see heavy use, or source control with heavy use. or if you try to do anything with a thin client.
Abandoning ethernet for WiFi is another nail in the second(?)third(?) death of the thin client, because bandwidth limitations and reliability will become a real concern.
On the other hand, I hate thin clients, and I hate Software as a Service (WHY would you trust another company to store all of your data under a restrictive license AND where obtaining your data if the provider goes belly up will be damn near impossible?), so bring on the WLANs!
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Please send me several unused, but working, gigabit switches. Thanks.
In my mid-rise apartment complex, there are ~30 WAPs all fighting for 2.4 and 5.0 GHz spectrum. My connection is frequently getting dropped, or more often, I can't connect because of all the interference. In my dad's house, the wireless can't reach the basement or upstairs. The 2.4 GHz makes all the wifi connections dump.
In both places, we are pursuing a common remedy: we are running cat6 and dropping in switches in key areas. The upside? I can stream HD videos off my server now, instead of having to transfer them first. I'm way happier with a wired connection than a wireless one - IJFW.
Last summer I upgraded the network at Corp HQ to 802.11n. I decommisioned every 10/100 Ethernet switche and disconnected all ports. For the backbone of the new network, I installed new Gigabit Switches connected by fiber. On each floor I connected Apple Airport Extreme Base Stations running 802.11n @ 5Ghz and an Apple 1GB Time Capsule. Each plugged into the Gigabit backbone. Everyone in the company got either a MacBook, 15" MacBook Pro, or 24" iMac depending on their needs and our 7 year old Linux servers were replaced with 2 Apple Xserves. Every system connects to the 802.11n network. Network authentication is handled through RADIUS on the Xserve and encryption is handled by a Fortress Technology appliance with 256bit AES encryption. We replaced the 15/2 Business Cable connection with a 50/20 Business FIOS. I've had no issues except stupid users, everyone is connecting at 300Mbps, and everyone loves the speediness of all the LAN services and the Internet. I'm glad to be rid of the Ethernet.
People have already said this, but I would just like to put in my two cents.
This is a F***ing STUPID idea. Security is nowhere NEAR as good on a wireless network as compared to a wired one. If a large company even HAS a wireless network, it is not connected to their internal network due to the inherent security weakness of wireless. It is just there for getting information off of the internet.
Hell, for my network security class we where tasked with breaking into a wireless network and leaving information on the intruded network as to how we did it so as to inform them of their weakness. Guess what? Cake. These guys are only suggesting this because they would benefit from it, and anyone who follows them deserve whatever happens to their sensitive information.
This is such a troll post. /. quality is staggeringly low lately...
I have my house fully wired with ethernet. Security and speed is the big reasons.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
This is the sort of nonsense that makes me never take Gardner seriously. These are the same people that years ago publicly advised Apple to drop their software line and to have Dell build their hardware. The advantages of wired LANs are obvious to us; why is it that they are not obvious to these supposed IT analysts?
I think wireless sucks! I get more reliability out of Ethernet than I do wireless. I have a wirelss hub in the house and it at best gets 49% reception and it drops connectivity constantly. I even added high gain antenna's. Wired ethernet is far more reliable - I don't get dropped connections with it.
The Truth is a Virus!!!
and No - I think that sums up whether wireless should take over or be used instead of a wired connection.
There is no way, no how, you can simultaneously run hundreds of personnel at densities approaching one per square meter.
One per square meter? And I thought my cube was small.
Another day, another update to a Google android app.
Wireless networks are amazingly, insanely easy to crack into with scripts widely available. It takes no more than a few minutes to gain access to ANY current wireless (802.11x) network whether it's using WEP,WPA, WPA2 etc.. etc.. etc.. If you want someone to be able to park outside your building & track every single thing that happens on your network, or you just don't care about your data, then fine.. switch to 100% wireless. BUT.. if your company, or you personally, have ANY data that you want to remain private (a cracker could get your user/password combos easily and rainbow-table the crap out of them in minutes if they have ANY access to your network.. including cracked wifi) then you should not be using WiFi AT ALL. Keep the wires.. keep your data! (not to mention networking performance.)
Ethernet is cheaply at 1 gigabit now right? 802.11n need not be bridged to 100 mbit anymore, and probably isn't.
Now, to the pure BS mode, where I will completely pull stuff out of my ass without data.
802.11n purports to be ~450 mbit in theory. If a shared media, than you could have two wireless peers near each other, each sucking up 200 mbit of the throughput to acheive equivalence to 100 mbit.
In summary, at extremely small scale I could see 802.11n beating out 100mbit.
I concur though that an 802.11n access point has 450 mbit total in theory, while an equivalent 24-port gigabit switch would likely have 48 gigabit/s throughput to accomodate roughly the same number of users.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Wires are infinite, spectrum is not...
Artix
Your Linux, your init.
I'll echo the security & bandwidth concerns, and add in the hassles of supporting every person whose quirky WLAN card causes them to drop & renegotiate DHCP too frequently. This is not at all like land-line vs. cel phone, and treating it as if it were and ethernet was somehow inevitably going to fade into obsolescence is ridiculous.
So, even retards like this can get a job at Gartner.
Guess he never saw anything else than his home laptop.
Sorry, wireless is nice for wireless devices, but it won't be replacing ethernet on workstations anytime soon. Ever try running Solidworks on a laptop with its minimal GPU and small screen? Many of them just choke and die.
...and just to piss everyone off, I still have a 3.5" floppy drive. I'd better get back to my CAD work now or I won't get paid.
Ever try loading a large assembly over a wireless connection? I'll take 1Gbps ethernet over 54 Mbps wireless any day.
So yeah, ethernet not only always works, but you can transmit data over it faster. It might get replaced by wireless at Starbucks or those trendy businesses with fake hardwood floors and a manager name "Tristan", but not at any real business transferring real data any time soon.
Wireless use will increase and is growing, but it is being used to fill a hole that ethernet can't conveniently fill; connecting laptops and other wireless devices. It's perfectly adequate for twittering and viewing porn, but it just doesn't have the reliability and speed of ethernet.
There are many of us who need full blown bolted-to-the-floor workstations to get our work done and ethernet is the best choice for us. My wirelessly connected laptop is on my other desk getting a battery charge. The computer I'm using to waste time on Slashdot weighs 10 pounds and is connected via ethernet.
not everybody has jewish money to buy your stinking wireless gayness
Not gonna happen for any big companies. Too big of a security risk. I know that some companies don't support phones that allow wifi use due to security risk.
I do not trust either one, and push all traffic over SSH with port forwarding for all protocols on my network with preshared keys both internally in physical offices and between physical offices over the internet. I don't have to worry about the latest vulnerability or misconfiguration in some application dumping passwords in the clear, or some web app being sniffed (other than ssh itself).
Yes, I still use all the other security measures, but it sure makes it hell of complicated for your average guy sitting in the parking lot to make use of anything they might find. Never say never, but I do say unlikely.
Living in Chile
Steps to break a wireless network:
#1 - Pull up to parking lot. ...
#2 - Sniff advertised name of network
#3 - Put up your AP, set name to clone network's name
#4 - Record authentication attempts
#5
#6 - Profit!
1. Find out the name of someone who works in the building. If there's a directory, great.
2. Dress profesionally.
3. In the morning, smile at the receptionist. If challenged, tell him you're coming to see the person from step 1
4. Take the elevator to a random floor
5. Find an unguarded network drop
6. Profit
Did no one learn ANYTHING from Battlestar Galactica? If we all go wireless, the Cylons will surely nuke us all!
"I will not allow a networked computer aboard my ship!" - Cmdr Adama
Never bathe in hot oil and Bisquick.
If you're just sending e-mail and browsing por^H^H^the web, wireless is fine.
Porn doesn't even stream properly over wireless.
COLLISION DOMAIN.
What pickle-brain thinks these kinds of things up?
Regards;
>>it sits mostly unused. And the wireless that IS used is almost useless because so
>>many people are trying to use it at once
"Nobody uses that access point anymore- it's too crowded."
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
It's a regional usage.
5-10 computers for a small business? I have 9 computers and 3 consoles that need network connectivity and that's just in my home! OK so when I had the opportunity I also wired the house with Gigabit ethernet, so in this argument I'm with wired all the way!
The big drivers I've seen for new wired deployment (other than just expansion/rearrangement of offices) have been Gigabit Ethernet for people who want faster bandwidth (so even Wireless-N isn't a replacement), or Power over Ethernet for VOIP phones (either for people who want to make Cisco/Avaya/etc. happy by selling two boxes or who think it's cheaper/easier to manage PoE than wall-warts.)
But generally the people installing those things aren't going to be disposing of old equipment that you actually want to install at home - they're replacing big clunky 24-48-more-port equipment, and you can get 8-port GigE switches for $50 (if they don't come free with your breakfast serial these days). Throw in a UPS and it's still cheaper than paying the shipping for that used commercial-quality switch you bought on eBay. If you need more ports than that they're probably in different rooms so it's easier to wire small switches than multiple home-runs anyway. If you really need VLANs you could spend $100 instead of stacking cheap switches.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
There are two reasons you don't want strangers on your Wireless LAN - they can leach bandwidth, and they can crack or eavesdrop into your servers and users.
That doesn't mean that you don't get some free peace of mind by using wireless authentication if you want, but if you've designed things adequately it's less than critical. (Maybe you can have an "Authorized users and guests only, sign your name in red pixels here" page to keep your HR department's pet lawyers happy, but other than that your wireless should be set up for insecure use.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
You obviously haven't tried to get a network connection in a random conference room in an older office building. There are typically *lots* of jacks sitting around, and especially if it's your own company's building (as opposed to a customer or vendor, where there's somebody to ask), you can go through multiple cycles of
Or did you mean getting people to plug into false network jacks on *purpose*?
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
You're already +5 Insightful, but yeah, putting the wireless AP outside the protected network is absolutely the right choice, and in general you want it inside at least a simple DMZ so that users can get out to the internet (and their own corporate VPNs if they're visiting customers/vendors) but aren't harassed by too much noise.
If you have a corporate HR or legal department, you can make them happy by having guests get intercepted by an "Authorized users and guests only; I promise to behave myself" page or whatever, and maybe you also do some malware blocking or install an outbound-spam filter, but that's getting into the fine points.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
It has a single collision domain.
This is one of the problems wireless faces even when it is the "same" speed as wired. You effectively are back on a hub like system. Unless your wireless standard provides each and every device with its own frequency range, which would use a prohibitive amount of spectrum, you have the same problems that hubs did of everything talking in the same space. That means it isn't going to scale like wired does. 5 computers on a 5 port 100mbit switch do just as well as a couple hundred computers on a 288 port switch (like a Cisco 6000 with 48 port blades in it). The individual computers all get the same bandwidth. The only place you have to worry about contention is uplinks, but then that would be the same case with wireless. However if computer 2 wants to transfer full speed to computer 20, that doesn't slow down computer 5 transferring to computer 40.
However with a wireless link, it isn't the same deal. With a few computers, there isn't much contention, and heck maybe you have a couple APs on different frequencies to reduce it more. However you put a couple hundred computers in a room, and now they are all fighting over that same space. The bandwidth available to each computer goes down since there are more people fighting for the same space.
So even if you have wireless that's the same base speed as your wired, it's still slower in enterprise settings. Sure, at home Wireless N is around about as good as 100mbit wired since it is 1 or 2 laptops on it. However that isn't the case in a big office full of computers.
This is all aside from the fact that there is faster wired networks, of course.
and the first thing the Mainframe admin screamed back at me was the need for encryption. Of course, this is a health care outfit, so It's a must, but I really don't like the idea of any of my "special bits" straying further than they have to, encrypted or not.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
It's not the bandwidth, it's the latency. In a quiet house, in the dead of night, I get 2 ms pings to my 802.11g router, in the best case. The average is around 3 ms, and if I so much as sneeze it'll spike into the tens of milliseconds, due to retransmits. Those are tiny packets, and there's negligible interference in the area. When you pack an office full of users, 2.4 GHz bluetooth cell phones, microwave ovens, etc., you'll get averages in the tens of milliseconds with frequent spikes in the hundreds. Some packets will get dropped completely, causing TCP stalls and UDP DNS timeouts.
Honestly, the average web/popmail user *still* won't notice this, but the instant you start opening files on network shares and large IMAP mailboxes, demand paging data as you scroll through anything large, everything will slow to a crawl.
At my old job, IMAP was faster when I was logged in from home (wired or wirelessly, since my home was relatively RF-quiet) than when I was in the office and unplugged. Large attachments still went faster at work, because I had plenty of bandwidth, but the latency made many tasks painfully slow.
For many small businesses, the article's assertion may be accurate, but don't go ripping the cables out of large cube farms just yet.
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
This says it all.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The future of humanity may rest on a few retrograde hardwired installations that can't be remotely violated by a horde of robot spawns.
- drivers/OS support (WXP still has a horrible wireless implementation/stack which is very unreliable and buggy - most corps won't accept this. Anyone who's had to support laptops knows what I'm talking about.).
- roll-out cost (Wireless adapters, particularly for desktops, are expensive. Existing wired infrastructure isn't going away, so use it while it's there.)
- interference (There are a lot of things out there using the 2.4GHz frequency. It'd not be cool to have half the users in one section of the building losing connectivity when some idiot in the office next door uses his 2.4GHz wireless phone.)
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Sure, wireless is cool and all but having to configure those things over and over; better off having Ethernet as the standard at least as a fail-safe.
Maybe they all got sent home because they visited Mexico..
And for all of those reasons, my company drops a couple ethernet ports to every office, and we make people use wired when they are in their offices (by hooking the wire to the laptop dock). And we don't hear any complaining, because ethernet is still much faster and is also much more reliable than wireless is when you have a whole office online.
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.