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."

Comments

I can think of a few

[SCHecklerX]

- security
- bandwidth
- interference/reliability ... etc.

Re:I can think of a few

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactamundo.

We tried ditching ethernet a couple years back, and boy, lemme tell ya - ever try transferring a 300 meg CADD render over Smoke Signal? It's not pretty.

Re:I can think of a few

[MrNaz]

Wireless is great for end users and other "last yard" applications, but I don't see WiFi ever overtaking wired networks for anything else. Cables will always be faster (I'm comparing *tomorrow's* cables, with *tomorrow's* wired networks, so sit down and put your trousers back on) than WiFi, and far more reliable due to greater resilience against interference and other environmental factors. It also has a smaller attack surface area, so for security sensitive applications, the additional physical constraints may be a benefit.

Yes, I think that office floors and other last-hop from switch to user applications could become completely wireless, but let's not get carried away. Anyone who says "we don't need wired ethernet any more" is short sighted and simply trying to attract attention. Wired ethernet will always have a place trunking the WiFi hotspots and carrying bulk data.

Re:I can think of a few

[pyite]

Sure, if you know nothing about security. Why does everyone think wired is so secure? I would say well implemented wireless networks are more secure than the average wired network. This is because well implemented wireless networks have strong authentication (e.g. client side certificates) and encryption whereas most wired networks do not have these things.

Re:I can think of a few

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It is certainly possible(and easy) to implement wireless security wrong or not at all; but the notion that "wireless=fundamentally insecure" seems dubious at best.

After all, we generally trust encryption, in the form of SSL, VPNs, and the like to safely carry data across the public internet, a known cesspool of hostility and attackers. It isn't clear why it would be any less safe when dealing with the pool of possible attackers that exists within(assuming good antennas) a few kilometers of your site. Plus, since wireless is known to be vulnerable, people generally try to secure it. Unless your physical security is tight, I'll almost certainly have a much easier time sneaking in and plugging in than I will trying to break WPA or better. WEP absolutely blew, but the bad old days are (mostly) over.

Re:I can think of a few

[Reapman]

Seriously? More Secure?

If you want to break in at a "physical" level between two wireless connections you just have to be sitting in radio range. Which may, or may not, even be in the same building. To break into a wired connection at the same level you'll have to attach some vampire clamps or whatever somewhere which means a physical break, physical access to the network.

as for client side certs there is nothing preventing wired from having this, and in fact a lot of secure installations do. Just because Wireless has some fancy WPA stuff that most people should enable doesn't make it more secure, if anything it's a nice warm blanket for people to have.

A Hardened Wireless connection will always be less secure then a Hardened Wired connection. One sends signals throughout the air one through a small cable.

Whew managed to do that without mentioning OSI once

Re:I can think of a few

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Just updated to Ubuntu 9.04 on the laptop. First thing that went wrong was the wireless card. Drivers gone and no connection. Wired ethernet on the other hand, worked flawlessly. No driver issues, no compatibility errors, nothing. It worked likely a keyboard. There's a lot to be said for the maturity of ethernet cables.

There's also a lot to be said for the reliability of cable, or rather, the unreliability of wireless. Yes, it is convienient to give devices wireless connections, but signal quality is a huge issue with location, time and simple randomness all coming into play in ways cable simply does not have trouble with. For me, a typical ping over wireless goes something like this (below numbers are made up from memory)

PING 10.100.1.1 (10.100.1.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 10.100.1.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=62 time=4.35 ms
64 bytes from 10.100.1.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=62 time=3.67 ms
64 bytes from 10.100.1.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=62 time=3.56 ms
64 bytes from 10.100.1.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=62 time=4.45 ms
64 bytes from 10.100.1.1: icmp_seq=5 ttl=62 time=1500 ms
64 bytes from 10.100.1.1: icmp_seq=6 ttl=62 time=3.02 ms

Whereas the equivilent wired ping times, for a device in the same room would be

PING 10.100.1.1 (10.100.1.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 10.100.1.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=62 time=1.35 ms
64 bytes from 10.100.1.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=62 time=1.37 ms
64 bytes from 10.100.1.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=62 time=1.56 ms
64 bytes from 10.100.1.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=62 time=1.05 ms
64 bytes from 10.100.1.1: icmp_seq=5 ttl=62 time=1.41 ms
64 bytes from 10.100.1.1: icmp_seq=6 ttl=62 time=1.02 ms

A wireless connection is a tradeoff of human convenience for machine efficiency. When it comes to web browsing, email and even watching youtube videos, it's more or less worthwhile for most users. However, when you get to things like voip, bittorrent and online games, wireless connections begin to sag under the weight of your demands.

Re:I can think of a few

[Captain Splendid]

Umm, hello? Businesses downsizing their ethernet equipment requirements is a good thing. Means the market's going to get flooded with good, cheap gear that we're all going to buy because we're the kind of people who can be bothered to run cable all over our houses.

Re:I can think of a few

[abigor]

Let me be the first to say that you have a really cool job.

Re:I can think of a few

[plague3106]

Well, the problem with me totally securing my home network is that half of my wireless clients don't support the most secure method; WPA2-EAS. So instead I end up using the "shared key" approach, which although is AES, it still leaves a hole in that the key doesn't change, so it becomes possible to get.

Re:I can think of a few

[Stray7Xi]

Sure, if you know nothing about security. Why does everyone think wired is so secure? I would say well implemented wireless networks are more secure than the average wired network. This is because well implemented wireless networks have strong authentication (e.g. client side certificates) and encryption whereas most wired networks do not have these things.

And tell me how that stops me from jamming the wireless frequency bands. Security isn't just confidentiality, it's also protecting yourself from DoS.

You can implement strong authentication on wired connections as well. Really what you're saying is "Wireless is more secure because it's so insecure at physical layer that we had to implement proper network security"

Re:I can think of a few

[JediTrainer]

#5 - realize that the (hopefully) smart network admin placed the AP outside of the internal network. Users connecting still use VPN as if they're external, so you can't sniff anything useful.

Re:I can think of a few

[kheldan]

I don't agree with that, at least not in the long view. In the short view equipment might become more ubiquitous and inexpensive, but if it became an industry-wide trend then manufacturers would build fewer models and units and the price would most likely go up, not down, in the long run, especially for the home user who only needs to buy one or two ethernet switches and a few cables. Luckily I also don't believe that this is going to be a trend; we can't do everything over WiFi, nor should we try; it would be a debacle.

Re:I can think of a few

[jafiwam]

Well there are other aspects. If you are not the IT guy, you may get one semi-legit answer when some real answer lies underneath.

For example;

Luser: "I want wireless" IT: "No, it's too insecure"

The REAL reason; "no, we do not have a proper policy about computers from home, and your dumb ass will doubtless bring in an infected laptop."

Or: "What, do I look like I have time to help you troubleshoot sitting on the crapper (in a metal box), nor do I want to listen to you bitch about how fast it is and explain simple high-school physics to your retarded ass for failing to understand why the microwave screws up your download."

Wired connections help IT police what goes on on the network. Wireless hurts that to a large degree. EVEN IF it's properly secured, I don't always want to finger-fuck whatever garbage the Lusers may want to try to connect with (looking at YOU iPhone).

So, if you got told "no for security reasons" and you are not in the IT department, they probably think you are too dumb to deal with a wireless card not to be a persistent pain in the ass.

Also, if you have any type of government audit, you have to deal with ignorant auditors that also have old beliefs about wireless networks. IT DOESNT MATTER what you may know about wireless if you deal with one of those bozos.

All of this stuff can quickly make wireless a net-negative for the IT folks around you and get the thing rejected "for security reasons".

Re:I can think of a few

[jonbryce]

You are still going to need ethernet to connect all the wireless access points together.

Re:I can think of a few

[tinkerghost]

Exactly. At home I've had wireless for a decade. But now with the ubiquity of wireless ADSL modems, there are about 15 hotspots within range and I can't get a stable connection anymore.

The last wireless network I installed in an apt showed 4 'Lynksys' networks available plus a few secured & a few more unsecured with actual names. Given what I've seen, I wouldn't be surprised if 20% of apartment dwellers are using the wrong wireless connection.

As dargaud pointed out, saturation is becoming a significant issue in residential areas - most apartment buildings outside of the slums are already having interference issues, a situation which is only getting worse as people continue to push for a wireless life.

Re:I can think of a few

[moseby]

For you IT folks that will get burnt if you don't do the right thing, consider this....

WIFI is considered an FCC part 15 device, and as such is a secondary user of the wireless spectrum. If a primary user parks a transmitter next to your office building and cranks it up to much higher power levels than you are allowed using his primary allocation privileges, he can legally irradiate your business back to the stone age.

While you may whine and complain, send checks to lawyers, call your congressman, etc. you will still be off the air for long enough to become unemployed.

Re:I can think of a few

[Wisconsingod]

We nerds are smart, here are the answers to your problems

security

The security issue is once you press send. With wired the password is shielded from the hackers eyes by the thick plastic cover wrapped around the wires. With wireless it's like attaching it to the tail of an airplane and taking it throught he sky. Point for Wired

bandwidth

Think of the old can-string phones. If you and a friend were in different rooms and talked quietly, you couln't hear. if you talked into the can, it was better sound quality. It's the same for music from the internet, the quaility is better when transferred over wires. Point for Wired

interference/reliability

WE ARE GEEKS, WE DON'T HAVE CATS (point for all geeks)

Re:I can think of a few

[BrokenHalo]

You are still going to need ethernet to connect all the wireless access points together.

Exactly. More to the point: for all those desktop machines out there, I see no purpose to flooding the air with wireless signals when the machine is essentially nailed to the desk and not going anywhere. You might just as well enjoy the faster, more secure connection.

Wireless is a great way of conveniently dealing with portable devices like laptops and so forth, but nobody can deny that congestion is going to be a real issue if we do away with ethernet.

Re:I can think of a few

[Phroggy]

Until you realize your VPN is using SSL which has recently become trivial to hack.

This is false; the linked article even says so (it cites SSL as an example of how MITM attacks can be prevented).

wireless only?

[JWSmythe]

    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?

Re:wireless only?

[Moryath]

No shit.

Upside of Wireless: no wire.

Downsides of Wireless:
- It is slower than Wired, unless you've somehow got an old 10-Mbit connection through the wall and an 802.11g AP in 30 feet of your location..
- It is inevitably more finicky than wired.
- It is inevitably more power-consumptive than wired.
- It is much more vulnerable to interference - and JUST ABOUT EVERY HOUSEHOLD DEVICE puts out interference. I get a lousier wireless signal (yeah, I have an 802.11g station in my house because I have a laptop and Wii to hook through it) whenever someone turns on the washer or dryer, or the microwave. In both spectra that 802.11 specs use, there are "cordless phones" and cell phones interfering as well. And like parent poster said, if someone else sets up an AP on the same channel you use, even more problems can result.

I ran a 100ft length of Cat6 from my gigabit switch upstairs, through the ductwork and into my living room, for a reason. Between the Xbox360, PS3, and my home DVR box, I'm not about to try to leave things to the unreliability of "wireless."

Not time yet

[Maclir]

Until I can get 1G bps that cannot be easily hacked into - wire has a future.

What a bunch of Drivel....

[tekiegreg]

Wireless has it's pros, I have 3 laptops at home so all I use is 802.11n. But I can think of many reasons Ethernet will prevail.

• Speed, I have yet to see wireless reliably hit 100mbps in any configuration. Sure some of the standards out there quote that speed but they must be in a clean room with no other radio interference or walls between them or their access point. Let's just forget about 1gbps+ speeds for now with Wireless
• Security, even with the best security wireless has to offer, you're just a smidge more vulnerable than with Wired access. It may not be that much, but I've done work with the U.S. Millitary and I never recall seeing a WAP at a sensitive location...
• Reliability, less noise on a wired line than a wireless connection, any time someone uses the wrong wireless phone and zap, your connection is zero....try that with a wire. For the love of god don't even think of putting a server on wireless...

That's what I've got now and I'm sure more is coming...

I develop wireless networks for a living

[stevedcc]

And as they say, people who know radio use wires.

No wire = big headache

[mark-t]

Ever seen a $150 brick before?

Try doing a firmware update on your router over wifi and you'll see why this proposal is a bad idea.

Speed

[pzs]

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.

practical limits?

[Lord Ender]

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.

50-90% of hubs were probably unused pre Wifi

[tekiegreg]

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:

• You can do more with fewer servers these days, fewer network plugs in new organizations due to fewer servers
• Employees tend to work at home more often now, eliminating the need for as many workstations
• Your Employees may tend to have laptops, which even in the pre wifi Days weren't plugged in much to the network anyways (Modems or Floppy disks were the norm)

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.

WHAT?

[Archangel Michael]

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.

Shared, not Switched

[scubamage]

Wireless only runs in half duplex. That's reason enough to use wired.

You funny Dr Jones

[DigiShaman]

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.

One word:

[Franklin Brauner]

Hotels.

99% of the railroad tracks are unoccupied!

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

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!

Wireless is only fine for casual use. PERIOD!

[Chas]

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.

Why cutting the cord is bad

[kimvette]

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!