Time To Cut the Ethernet Cable? 496
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."
Too much interference (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I can think of a few (Score:5, Interesting)
Bingo!
Because of security concerns my employer does not and will never have (that I can see) wireless access to the network.
It's just too large of a security risk when you have any sort of sensitive information floating around.
Re:I can think of a few (Score:5, Interesting)
RFI.
As CIO at a radio astronomical observatory with instruments receiving in the 2.3GHz band, I can say that we prohibit WiFi here completely. We went as far as running shielded Cat5e and Cat6, and building the data center into a screened room to reduce the RFI. Ferrite beads on all cabling going into and out of the data center are installed as well.
Wired Ethernet is the only thing working here.
Re:What a bunch of Drivel.... (Score:3, Interesting)
> For the love of god don't even think of putting a server on wireless...
Oddly enough, when 802.11g came out, we entertained the thought of adding new servers wirelessly. We were serious for the first ... umm ... 30 seconds. It would have been neat, and reduced cabling, but where we actually wanted them to work well, it wasn't an acceptable solution.
I have put AP's in a rack before, but it was so I could fire up my laptop, and be assigned an IP. Sitting 6' from the rack, with clear line of sight, it wasn't really a good option, so we strung a cable from the closest switch to the workbench. Oh my gosh, like 20' of wire (to keep it out of the way). :)
Re:I can think of a few (Score:4, Interesting)
A company I worked for tried cutting the cord and replacing everything with dumb terminal-like laptops, only to discover that the infrastructure couldn't handle so many simultaneous connections. It was a complete failure because the wireless density and capacity just could not support everyone going wireless.
Besides, what they forget to address is this thing called sunk cost. You've purchased that hardware and infrastructure. You're not going to get any $$$ by replacing everything with wireless anyway.
Re:wireless only? (Score:3, Interesting)
The entire article can be summarized as follows:
"Buy wireless equipment now! Everyone else is doing it!"
Re:I can think of a few (Score:4, Interesting)
Because I can hook onto your wireless network from the car park.
Really? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Ethernet cabling at home (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's a little side note on that.
With default settings from a few providers (who I won't name), if they have a 5 character SSID, it's trivial to find the key. It's just math. Well, more math than I'm willing to do, but there are tools line.
For giggles, I left my laptop on with netstumbler running on the drive home from work the other day. Over 90% of the AP's were encrypted. About 90% of the encrypted had the default 5 character SSID. So, all these "protected" AP's really aren't.
For proof of the concept, I know someone who tried the keys on a few AP's in his apartment building. The ones with a decent signal strength, he got in, and was able to sniff their traffic. Sure, they're encrypted, but they don't do per-client isolation.
Your plausible deniability may be a defense in court (but most likely not). If caught for nasty stuff, you will end up in court either way though, so I wouldn't gamble on it. Use a neighbor's unencrypted AP for bad things, not your own. :)
Re:I can think of a few (Score:3, Interesting)
RFI.
As CIO at a radio astronomical observatory with instruments receiving in the 2.3GHz band, I can say that we prohibit WiFi here completely. We went as far as running shielded Cat5e and Cat6, and building the data center into a screened room to reduce the RFI. Ferrite beads on all cabling going into and out of the data center are installed as well.
Wired Ethernet is the only thing working here.
Out of curiosity, would fiber have been easier/cheaper than all that shielded Cat5e/6 cable?
Re:wireless only? (Score:3, Interesting)
Wireless while nice isn't the end all be all UNLESS you licence the spectrum from the FCC and have the right to shut down any interferance.
I recently had problems where i live.. in my house i can pick up 11 OTHER wifi networks.. several neighbors just switched over to N routers with that lovely mimo (yaeee lets eat channels because we can)
anyways.. running my normall wrt45g at 5ft channels 4-10 are completely useless due to the amount of interferance from the neighboring networks.
i ended up butting dd-wrt on it switching to chan 2 right next to the control chan for the n's and bosting the tx power from 70mw to 220mw
now at 5ft works fine at 50ft it is useable - oustide the house i can't even see the network.
oh and the wifi bridge to my garage with a cisco 800 wifi AP.. yea.. you should see the crap it is spewing out..
any company that things relying on the 2.4ghz spectrum for actual reliable work.. i want their names.. in 6 months i will drop by and drop off a qoute to run hardwires
Re:I can think of a few (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I can think of a few (Score:3, Interesting)
Exactly. Lucking into a bargain situation has nothing to do with the long term. By your scenario, once prices have risen, I'm already sitting on a small mountain of cheaply-obtained networking gear which will keep me set for life.
Also, your assumption is faulty. Another way to deal with less demand on equipment is to reduce prices. Wired is already cheaper than wifi, so a better way to compete would be to lower prices some more.
Re:I can think of a few (Score:5, Interesting)
Let me be the first to say that you have a really cool job.
Let's see if I can best that... C;-)
In Antarctica [gdargaud.net] we can't use CAT cables because their dielectric properties change at extreme cold temperatures (-80C) and they run like crap. The cables also turn to raw spaghetti and break at the slightest touch.
So we use wireless (absolutely no interferences there !), or fiber, which doesn't change properties with the cold. Usually both as a backup in case a snowmachine runs in a cable (we can't put them in the 'ground' or they would disappear under the accumulated snow over a few years, so we place them on rows of low poles).
Re:wireless only? (Score:5, Interesting)
having fun with unsecured wifi.. a good freind of mine lived in college appartments. noticing plenty of unsecured networks in the appartment building he took a small linux box stuck 3 or 4 can't remember exactly wifi cards in it and set it up for his lan in a bridged mode to round robin route his local nat'ed lan.. for any single download it was normal cable modem speeds .. for bit torrent wow was that fast..
he did that for 3 years.. kinda sad when you think about it
Re:I can think of a few (Score:4, Interesting)
I can attest to that, mostly because my neighbors have those multi-frequency spamming "super" access points.
Wireless pretty much doesn't work between 5pm and 9pm upstairs in my house.
Wow (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:I can think of a few (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I can think of a few (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
I recently bought a new Apple Airport Extreme to solve this - by being able to use both 5.0 GHz and 2.4 GHz at the same time. 5.0 GHz is a lot less crowded - for the time being, there's just above 30 wireless networks in the 2.4 GHz range, and just me in the 5.0 GHz. A dual band router allowed me to take advantage of that, while not rendering useless the equipment I've got that can't use 5.0 GHz.