I guess it's finally come to this:

https://news.yahoo.com/ethernet-cable-h ... 57519.html

I'd question who is the stupid but.... I knew a nice older lady who assumed internet and wi-fi were the same and didn't now why here tablet couldn't get on line after all she had internet. Yeah Marge, you have internet but no wi-fi router so....

I can't be doing with this new-fangled stuff. I'm still running Novell Netware 286 on my 4mbps Token-Ring network.

I spit on your puny little RJ45 connector. Give me manly Token-Ring connectors any day!

Source: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com

Is Yahoo News competing with the Onion now?

Yes, it's hard for the uninitiated. The other stumbling point seems to be WiFi vs cellular data. Usually I ask "which company are you paying for Internet" to try to get people to consider the different services.

I'm now writing a troubleshooting guide and it's very difficult. At one point it was safe to assume pretty much everyone using the Internet had a basic understanding of how IP addressing worked, what a subnet was, what a DCHP server was, etc. Now, I can't. I at least have to give them a definition and a pointer to a wiki page and hope they can sort things out.

Francoflier wrote:

Is Yahoo News competing with the Onion now?

Pretty sure Yahoo News don't write any articles themselves and this seems to be from Business Insider

scbriml wrote:

I can't be doing with this new-fangled stuff. I'm still running Novell Netware 286 on my 4mbps Token-Ring network.

I spit on your puny little RJ45 connector. Give me manly Token-Ring connectors any day!

Source: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com

You haven't lived till someone plugs that convenient connector (DB9?) into the video output of their workstation.

Then you get to go find where the rack of MAUs is (remember those?), find the right one, and learn how to reset it.

Often these were kept under lock and key, good luck finding someone who could open the lock.

This was happening all the time where I used to work, at a development lab at IBM.

I used to say if we can't keep this stuff straight, how do we expect our customers to?

Francoflier wrote:

Is Yahoo News competing with the Onion now?

If this person is under the age of 25 then it is entirely possible they have no idea what in the heck an Ethernet cable is. Most ISP's today give you a wifi modem that they give you the SSID and password for and that is just placed in a convenient place. Also every single device has wifi capability today, even desktop PC's.

When I got internet at my new place a few years ago and they guy gave me the information for the Wi-fi he was generally shocked that I was going to go into the router settings to set up my own SSID and password.
This person probably have no idea what a rotary phone is either.

Most of us here happen to be old enough to remember the days of when you perhaps only had 2 hours of time on the internet and had to use dial up to connect to it and once the internet became prominent we all needed second phone lines without call waiting to get online.

Revelation wrote:

scbriml wrote:

I can't be doing with this new-fangled stuff. I'm still running Novell Netware 286 on my 4mbps Token-Ring network.

I spit on your puny little RJ45 connector. Give me manly Token-Ring connectors any day!

Source: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com

You haven't lived till someone plugs that convenient connector (DB9?) into the video output of their workstation.

Then you get to go find where the rack of MAUs is (remember those?), find the right one, and learn how to reset it.

Often these were kept under lock and key, good luck finding someone who could open the lock.

This was happening all the time where I used to work, at a development lab at IBM.

I used to say if we can't keep this stuff straight, how do we expect our customers to?

Oh the joys... And of course the fun on 10base2 or 10base5 cables... I still have a couple scars from stripping for N or BNC connectors yay... Well N were better that way but 10b5 was so picky... Or prickly... But I miss neither!

Sent from my ONEPLUS A5000 using Tapatalk

I find using an ethernet cable is still very reliable, especially when getting around company firewalls that might make getting remote work done through wi-fi challenging.

Revelation wrote:

Yes, it's hard for the uninitiated. The other stumbling point seems to be WiFi vs cellular data. Usually I ask "which company are you paying for Internet" to try to get people to consider the different services.

I'm now writing a troubleshooting guide and it's very difficult. At one point it was safe to assume pretty much everyone using the Internet had a basic understanding of how IP addressing worked, what a subnet was, what a DCHP server was, etc. Now, I can't. I at least have to give them a definition and a pointer to a wiki page and hope they can sort things out.

I've been using Internet since I was like 7 years old in the mid-90s. I consider myself competent with technology for the most part. I cannot say I know what, specifically, all of those things are even if I've heard of them (of the 3, obviously I know about IP addresses the best).

So I have to assume you're talking about a time before "Internet" even existed as a term. DARPAnet days?

By the way, I appreciate that you capitalize Internet, as it is, in fact, a proper noun. People occasionally ask me why I capitalize it all the time.

Anyway, to the topic at hand...

I am a firm believer in the vast superiority of wired connections. Yes, I have a cell phone. Yes, I have Wi-Fi devices. But if I can wire in, I do it. In college from 2005-2013 I always kept a cable with me to plug if I was using a laptop in class; all the classrooms in the Business Building had ports. No wonky connections for me. At home, I still am on a desktop far more than any wireless device. For me, mobility is far down the list of priorities.

StarAC17 wrote:

If this person is under the age of 25 then it is entirely possible they have no idea what in the heck an Ethernet cable is. Most ISP's today give you a wifi modem that they give you the SSID and password for and that is just placed in a convenient place. Also every single device has wifi capability today, even desktop PC's.

When I got internet at my new place a few years ago and they guy gave me the information for the Wi-fi he was generally shocked that I was going to go into the router settings to set up my own SSID and password.
This person probably have no idea what a rotary phone is either.

Most of us here happen to be old enough to remember the days of when you perhaps only had 2 hours of time on the internet and had to use dial up to connect to it and once the internet became prominent we all needed second phone lines without call waiting to get online.

Kinda makes me wonder why they bother putting ethernet ports on the wifi boxes these days. That would save them a few nickles on each box they make. Charge extra for 'gamer experience' boxes with ethernet ports? Hope this does not become the norm, though.

cjg225 wrote:

Revelation wrote:

Yes, it's hard for the uninitiated. The other stumbling point seems to be WiFi vs cellular data. Usually I ask "which company are you paying for Internet" to try to get people to consider the different services.

I'm now writing a troubleshooting guide and it's very difficult. At one point it was safe to assume pretty much everyone using the Internet had a basic understanding of how IP addressing worked, what a subnet was, what a DCHP server was, etc. Now, I can't. I at least have to give them a definition and a pointer to a wiki page and hope they can sort things out.

I've been using Internet since I was like 7 years old in the mid-90s. I consider myself competent with technology for the most part. I cannot say I know what, specifically, all of those things are even if I've heard of them (of the 3, obviously I know about IP addresses the best).

So I have to assume you're talking about a time before "Internet" even existed as a term. DARPAnet days?

Actually the troubleshooting stuff is for the older demographic, in particular amateur radio (ham) operators who are using software defined radio instead of classic analog or analog/digital hybrid stuff. I volunteered to write this doc because a lot of very basic questions were being asked on the email list. I suppose for many of them they have had no need to understand what an IP address is till now. This particular radio only has an Ethernet interface and expects to have a DHCP server available, yet many people directly cable it to an Ethernet port on their PC which (typically) is not running a DCHP server. They may not even know their wifi box has an Ethernet port, so this conversation is helpful to me.

Since I have people's attention, can you recommend a good primer on these topics (IP address, MAC address, DHCP, network configuration), ideally Windows-centric, since most of these people aren't adventurous enough to try anything else?

I am not aware of such a thing as «ethernet cable».
I bet you can’t show me a picture of one.

Revelation wrote:

Then you get to go find where the rack of MAUs is (remember those?), find the right one, and learn how to reset it.

Often these were kept under lock and key, good luck finding someone who could open the lock.

This was happening all the time where I used to work, at a development lab at IBM.

I used to say if we can't keep this stuff straight, how do we expect our customers to?

Ah yes, the good old MAU - a full 19” unit that had Ring-in, Ring-out and a whole eight user ports!

scbriml wrote:

Revelation wrote:

Then you get to go find where the rack of MAUs is (remember those?), find the right one, and learn how to reset it.

Often these were kept under lock and key, good luck finding someone who could open the lock.

This was happening all the time where I used to work, at a development lab at IBM.

I used to say if we can't keep this stuff straight, how do we expect our customers to?

Ah yes, the good old MAU - a full 19” unit that had Ring-in, Ring-out and a whole eight user ports!

Yes, and if I remember correctly, no indication if any of them were in the fault state.

Basically someone would plug the TR cable into the video output of a workstation. This would cause switches in the MAU port to take this port out of the ring physically. Someone would have to file a case to telecom saying this happened, hopefully giving some useful indicator of the port number since the MAU itself did not have a fault light. Otherwise the telecom tech would have to walk out to the user's desk and write down the port info.

Once this person's workstation was out of the ring, it would repair itself by splitting the ring into pieces, with the end result the 'survivors' lost half their already meager bandwidth, so that person was a pariah till things got fixed, which at the minimum would be fifteen minutes and it could be hours depending on if/when a tech came free and if/when they could figure out exactly which MAU port to reset.

It was such a clown show. It made me doubt (correctly it turns out) if IBM really had its "stuff" together when it comes to networking.

Then I can tell you about IBM's equivalent of the Intel 'FDIV' bug, which made it next to impossible to get a RS/6000 workstation back in the early days. Turns out these new RISC chips could do floating point math really fast, but sometimes they didn't get the right results.

On the positive side, IBM had an online employee directory a decade before I saw this at other companies. You could look up an employee by name, and since all the office numbers were grid squares you could locate their office by looking them up on the computer. This felt creepy even back then, but eventually you got used to strangers showing up in your office just because they saw an email or a forum post. All this with 3270 'green screen' user interfaces. One receptionist in a fancy office had something freakishly futuristic, a plasma flat screen! It was monochrome, but still quite cool for the 1980s. She got a bit creeped out by all the nerds wanting to stare at her computer screen. It didn't hurt that she was quite pretty as well, so you had two things you could stare at when you walked past her desk.

Interesting pink Ethernet cable in the photo. I wonder if that is a Monoprice. I have pink Monoprice Ethernet cables between my wall and router, as well as between my router and desktop (I have CenturyLink Gigabit Fiber). Monoprice makes a whole bunch of different colors of Ethernet cables.

But seriously, are there such a thing as a ethernet cable?

StarAC17 wrote:

Francoflier wrote:

Is Yahoo News competing with the Onion now?

If this person is under the age of 25 then it is entirely possible they have no idea what in the heck an Ethernet cable is.

Kids into serious gaming do know the advantage of Ethernet.

With COVID-19, entire family operating from home, a lot of them are exceeding Wi-Fi devices supported by their routers, adding a switch and running cables is an alternate to upgrading your router.

Sounds like a Gen Z'er.

It personally irks the hell out of me when people confuse/mix the terms wi-fi, cable internet, internet connection, fiber, router, switch, modem. All they know is "wi-fi".

I still have desktops in my house connected with ethernet and expensive switchgear because I want the highest throughput possible.

Revelation wrote:

StarAC17 wrote:

If this person is under the age of 25 then it is entirely possible they have no idea what in the heck an Ethernet cable is. Most ISP's today give you a wifi modem that they give you the SSID and password for and that is just placed in a convenient place. Also every single device has wifi capability today, even desktop PC's.

When I got internet at my new place a few years ago and they guy gave me the information for the Wi-fi he was generally shocked that I was going to go into the router settings to set up my own SSID and password.
This person probably have no idea what a rotary phone is either.

Most of us here happen to be old enough to remember the days of when you perhaps only had 2 hours of time on the internet and had to use dial up to connect to it and once the internet became prominent we all needed second phone lines without call waiting to get online.

Kinda makes me wonder why they bother putting ethernet ports on the wifi boxes these days. That would save them a few nickles on each box they make. Charge extra for 'gamer experience' boxes with ethernet ports? Hope this does not become the norm, though.

They better not take those away. If I can wire up I will. I link as much as I can directly to the router and whenever I need to configure a router it's hardwired.
I actually want to buy a few cables for my brother to wire him up some of his devices.

My parents still use a bunch of Cat5 cables installed pre wifi by me.

dtw2hyd wrote:

StarAC17 wrote:

Francoflier wrote:

Is Yahoo News competing with the Onion now?

If this person is under the age of 25 then it is entirely possible they have no idea what in the heck an Ethernet cable is.

Kids into serious gaming do know the advantage of Ethernet.

With COVID-19, entire family operating from home, a lot of them are exceeding Wi-Fi devices supported by their routers, adding a switch and running cables is an alternate to upgrading your router.

Gamers know how this stuff works because they learn it. The average Internet user does not and likely has very inefficient Internet.

M564038 wrote:

But seriously, are there such a thing as a ethernet cable?

Yes, it is used in the mother modem.

scbriml wrote:

I can't be doing with this new-fangled stuff. I'm still running Novell Netware 286 on my 4mbps Token-Ring network.

I spit on your puny little RJ45 connector. Give me manly Token-Ring connectors any day!

Source: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com

Sorcery!!!

In my day we had VT520's connected to a MUX and a DEC system running SCO! US robotics 9600 modem on the back and that was how you got to the internet of connecting to someone else who had the same setup!

Ethernet.pfft.. If my grandmother had wheels she'd be a wagon..

cjg225 wrote:

I am a firm believer in the vast superiority of wired connections. Yes, I have a cell phone. Yes, I have Wi-Fi devices. But if I can wire in, I do it. In college from 2005-2013 I always kept a cable with me to plug if I was using a laptop in class; all the classrooms in the Business Building had ports. No wonky connections for me. At home, I still am on a desktop far more than any wireless device. For me, mobility is far down the list of priorities.

I learned long ago to bring a 20 foot ethernet cable with me on business trips. Never know how good the remoter worksite or even hotel wifi will be. Hard line baby! That's how you make a real connection.

Tugg

Pellegrine wrote:

It personally irks the hell out of me when people confuse/mix the terms wi-fi, cable internet, internet connection, fiber, router, switch, modem. All they know is "wi-fi".

I still have desktops in my house connected with ethernet and expensive switchgear because I want the highest throughput possible.

You can't really blame them. The vast majority of folks don't have a clue what Ethernet is and don't have any cabling at home. Someone sets up their broadband router and gives them the WiFi password and away they go. As far as they're concerned router/WiFi/Internet/broadband is just all the same "thing".

Like you, my main PC is hardwired to our broadband router. I'm still amazed that SWMBO allowed me to run a couple of long Ethernet cables around the house (including drilling through Victorian internal brick walls!) I must have caught her on a good day. She occasionally complains that "the internet is down" to find me happily working away on my PC and I try and explain the difference between WiFi and Internet. It doesn't work and she just tells me to "fix the Internet".

She agreed to us having Sonos all over the house because I told her it was a wireless system. She then questioned me in great depth when she realised each speaker still needed power!

Wow! Andreas is my hero! Venturing into the heart of the hard drive is not for the faint hearted!

Thunderboltdrgn wrote:

M564038 wrote:

But seriously, are there such a thing as a ethernet cable?

Yes, it is used in the mother modem. ;)

dtw2hyd wrote:

Kids into serious gaming do know the advantage of Ethernet.

Yup. The cable guy wanted to know why I didn't put my router in a more central place.

Wanted it right next to my gaming desktop so it was a short cable hop away. No way you game over wireless if you can avoid it.

My WiFi router is in my office, so my laptop is connected by an Ethernet cable. The stuff in the living room, all WiFi connections to the internet.

vrbarreto wrote:

Sorcery!!!

In my day we had VT520's connected to a MUX and a DEC system running SCO! US robotics 9600 modem on the back and that was how you got to the internet of connecting to someone else who had the same setup!

Ethernet.pfft.. If my grandmother had wheels she'd be a wagon..

Wow, SCO Unix, one of the great technological dead ends of all time!

Remember the days when you could not swing a dead cat without hitting a VT100?

Now we have: https://www.hackster.io/Megardi/2-3-sca ... ion-696b89

Also, if you have fiber internet you need an Ethernet cable to connect the modem/router to the ONT.

And so there's this Japanese article talking about What is Wireless LAN
https://prebell.so-net.ne.jp/tips/pre_2 ... L-21030901

And, to add to all of this... 5G is coming!!!

DIRECTFLT wrote:

And, to add to all of this... 5G is coming!!!

That's another pet peeve of mine, pretty much anything that can be called '5G' does get called '5G'.

Having worked on 5G hardware, it is a totally different animal than 4G, yet many companies will add one small thing to their 4G offering and say it is 5G just to try to get in under the halo.

DIRECTFLT wrote:

My WiFi router is in my office, so my laptop is connected by an Ethernet cable. The stuff in the living room, all WiFi connections to the internet.

I do the same. I have a cable running out of my Mesh Wifi device right into my PC, but that Mesh wifi device is taking the Cable modem Feed.

If I run ookla's speedtest. I get on my PC
16 ms ping, 178 MB download, Jitter not reported
If I run on my phone 24 inches from wifi I get
16 ms ping, 115 MB download jitter of 9.6 ms
If I take my phone to the other end of the house( farthest from mesh, I get
16ms ping, 85 MB download speed. jitter of 7.6 ms

The collision domain and latency are not reported by Ookla, but I assume it accounts for a great deal of the slower speeds across the wifi.

the 16ms ping is not a great counter for real delay, as it is an ICMP packet, and not UDP or TCP which will be the majority of traffic across the network.

casinterest wrote:

DIRECTFLT wrote:

My WiFi router is in my office, so my laptop is connected by an Ethernet cable. The stuff in the living room, all WiFi connections to the internet.

I do the same. I have a cable running out of my Mesh Wifi device right into my PC, but that Mesh wifi device is taking the Cable modem Feed.

If I run ookla's speedtest. I get on my PC
16 ms ping, 178 MB download, Jitter not reported
If I run on my phone 24 inches from wifi I get
16 ms ping, 115 MB download jitter of 9.6 ms
If I take my phone to the other end of the house( farthest from mesh, I get
16ms ping, 85 MB download speed. jitter of 7.6 ms

The collision domain and latency are not reported by Ookla, but I assume it accounts for a great deal of the slower speeds across the wifi.

the 16ms ping is not a great counter for real delay, as it is an ICMP packet, and not UDP or TCP which will be the majority of traffic across the network.

One thing I've learned is WiFi systems buffer up data trying to send bursts over the radio link to maximize its performance and minimize chances of interference. It is this buffering that adds the latency. Also these bursts can overwhelm devices that do not have the ability to buffer large amounts of data. So if you are dealing with IoT devices such as microcontrollers without a lot of buffering, wifi can be a poor choice for them. Given how complex WiFi is, most consumer grade routers don't offer you a way to tune the burst size, especially not on a per-target basis.

Revelation wrote:

DIRECTFLT wrote:

...yet many companies will add one small thing to their 4G offering and say it is 5G just to try to get in under the halo.

Don't blame them, they are protecting us by confusing COVID-19. Thank You, AT&T,

cjg225 wrote:

dtw2hyd wrote:

Kids into serious gaming do know the advantage of Ethernet.

Yup. The cable guy wanted to know why I didn't put my router in a more central place.

Wanted it right next to my gaming desktop so it was a short cable hop away. No way you game over wireless if you can avoid it.

Absolutely.

However does this location create any dead zones anywhere in the house. At my parents house their fireplace is between the router in the basement and their Smart TV and where the TV is the wifi is poor.

One of the solutions I have used is an older router as set up as an access point set up through powerline adaptors or wifi extenders. The TV is actually hardwired to the second router.

StarAC17 wrote:

Absolutely.

However does this location create any dead zones anywhere in the house. At my parents house their fireplace is between the router in the basement and their Smart TV and where the TV is the wifi is poor.

One of the solutions I have used is an older router as set up as an access point set up through powerline adaptors or wifi extenders. The TV is actually hardwired to the second router.

Oddly enough, the only deadzone is my kitchen, which is directly beneath where my router is. And I think it's really only my work laptop that doesn't like the signal strength. Everything else works, just with lower connectivity.

Revelation wrote:

casinterest wrote:

DIRECTFLT wrote:

My WiFi router is in my office, so my laptop is connected by an Ethernet cable. The stuff in the living room, all WiFi connections to the internet.

I do the same. I have a cable running out of my Mesh Wifi device right into my PC, but that Mesh wifi device is taking the Cable modem Feed.

If I run ookla's speedtest. I get on my PC
16 ms ping, 178 MB download, Jitter not reported
If I run on my phone 24 inches from wifi I get
16 ms ping, 115 MB download jitter of 9.6 ms
If I take my phone to the other end of the house( farthest from mesh, I get
16ms ping, 85 MB download speed. jitter of 7.6 ms

The collision domain and latency are not reported by Ookla, but I assume it accounts for a great deal of the slower speeds across the wifi.

the 16ms ping is not a great counter for real delay, as it is an ICMP packet, and not UDP or TCP which will be the majority of traffic across the network.

One thing I've learned is WiFi systems buffer up data trying to send bursts over the radio link to maximize its performance and minimize chances of interference. It is this buffering that adds the latency. Also these bursts can overwhelm devices that do not have the ability to buffer large amounts of data. So if you are dealing with IoT devices such as microcontrollers without a lot of buffering, wifi can be a poor choice for them. Given how complex WiFi is, most consumer grade routers don't offer you a way to tune the burst size, especially not on a per-target basis.

It has always been a tradeoff, I work a lot in telecommunications, and the tradeoff is as follows.
I want good quality, so if I send voice, I am willing to let a few packets go bad and be dropped to keep my latency low. I keep the jitter buffers small. However, if I am running fax/modem, then I have less tolerance for dropped packets as this will cause misalignment of the pages., or dropped connections. So I run a larger buffer during these times, and the delay is noticeably larger.

All of this requires knowing I have a good network.

Wifi networks and cellular networks have to deal with a lot more collisions than a wired network ,and will have dropped/delayed/errored frames more often. Therefore the buffers have to be larger.

Tri-Band mesh networks use multiple channels to work around collisions ,but they will still happen with microwaves, cellular, other device, walls stairs, steel impediments in the house.

At some point, I may run a cable back across the house to replace an old coax line to get Ethernet to some other devices.

DIRECTFLT wrote:

And, to add to all of this... 5G is coming!!!

And the great thing is that a circa 1940's cable (when did the current "phone wire" come into being?) beats any 5G in speed. And there is never anyway to overcome that. Direct hardwired connection can't be beat.

Tugg

casinterest wrote:

It has always been a tradeoff, I work a lot in telecommunications, and the tradeoff is as follows.
I want good quality, so if I send voice, I am willing to let a few packets go bad and be dropped to keep my latency low. I keep the jitter buffers small. However, if I am running fax/modem, then I have less tolerance for dropped packets as this will cause misalignment of the pages., or dropped connections. So I run a larger buffer during these times, and the delay is noticeably larger.

All of this requires knowing I have a good network.

Wifi networks and cellular networks have to deal with a lot more collisions than a wired network ,and will have dropped/delayed/errored frames more often. Therefore the buffers have to be larger.

Tri-Band mesh networks use multiple channels to work around collisions ,but they will still happen with microwaves, cellular, other device, walls stairs, steel impediments in the house.

At some point, I may run a cable back across the house to replace an old coax line to get Ethernet to some other devices.

Yes, T38 (fax/modem tunneling protocol for VoIP use) is pretty problematic in a lossy network.

Tugger wrote:

And the great thing is that a circa 1940's cable (when did the current "phone wire" come into being?) beats any 5G in speed. And there is never anyway to overcome that. Direct hardwired connection can't be beat.

Wikipedia says:

Twisted-pair cabling was invented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1881.

Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twisted_pair

Also, the 'bel' and thus the 'decibel' are named for Bell.

Speaking of which, it's interesting to look the power levels of WiFi and cellular data from the various phone apps and compare them to the chart at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBm to see how tiny the amount of energy your phone is receiving. For WiFi and bluetooth the transmit power is often in the milliwatt range, whereas the received power is in the picowatt range.

This shows why a good old hard wired connection wins, the amount of energy lost just transmitting from your local wifi router to a receiver is enormous.

The loss is even more enormous for cellular data.

The 'Network Cell Info Lite' app on my Android phone says my Wifi signal is -65 dBm (around 300 pico-watts) and my cellular data signal is -109 dBm (around 0.01 pico-watts or 10 femto-watts).

Revelation wrote:

casinterest wrote:

It has always been a tradeoff, I work a lot in telecommunications, and the tradeoff is as follows.
I want good quality, so if I send voice, I am willing to let a few packets go bad and be dropped to keep my latency low. I keep the jitter buffers small. However, if I am running fax/modem, then I have less tolerance for dropped packets as this will cause misalignment of the pages., or dropped connections. So I run a larger buffer during these times, and the delay is noticeably larger.

All of this requires knowing I have a good network.

Wifi networks and cellular networks have to deal with a lot more collisions than a wired network ,and will have dropped/delayed/errored frames more often. Therefore the buffers have to be larger.

Tri-Band mesh networks use multiple channels to work around collisions ,but they will still happen with microwaves, cellular, other device, walls stairs, steel impediments in the house.

At some point, I may run a cable back across the house to replace an old coax line to get Ethernet to some other devices.

Yes, T38 (fax/modem tunneling protocol for VoIP use) is pretty problematic in a lossy network.

Tugger wrote:

And the great thing is that a circa 1940's cable (when did the current "phone wire" come into being?) beats any 5G in speed. And there is never anyway to overcome that. Direct hardwired connection can't be beat.

Wikipedia says:

Twisted-pair cabling was invented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1881.

Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twisted_pair

Also, the 'bel' and thus the 'decibel' are named for Bell.

Speaking of which, it's interesting to look the power levels of WiFi and cellular data from the various phone apps and compare them to the chart at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBm to see how tiny the amount of energy your phone is receiving. For WiFi and bluetooth the transmit power is often in the milliwatt range, whereas the received power is in the picowatt range.

This shows why a good old hard wired connection wins, the amount of energy lost just transmitting from your local wifi router to a receiver is enormous.

The loss is even more enormous for cellular data.

The 'Network Cell Info Lite' app on my Android phone says my Wifi signal is -65 dBm (around 300 pico-watts) and my cellular data signal is -109 dBm (around 0.01 pico-watts or 10 femto-watts).

Just to clarify. T.38 aims to solve the issues of sending the T.30 Fax signal through the network. V.xx modems mostly still depend on RTP inband signaling. There are caveats and exceptions, but it helps keep me gainfully employed.

casinterest wrote:

Just to clarify. T.38 aims to solve the issues of sending the T.30 Fax signal through the network. V.xx modems mostly still depend on RTP inband signaling. There are caveats and exceptions, but it helps keep me gainfully employed.

I used to work on code that supported millions of T38 capable ports, and I don't miss it one bit.

Revelation wrote:

Kinda makes me wonder why they bother putting ethernet ports on the wifi boxes these days. That would save them a few nickles on each box they make. Charge extra for 'gamer experience' boxes with ethernet ports? Hope this does not become the norm, though.

I am actually shocked and horrified that no one has suggested deletion of this post and all others who commented, you seem to not realize the number of people who read this forum including folks in Asia who may make these devices.
No sensible person watches IPTV etc on device using wi-fi, it makes the Law & Order lip sync commercial look normal.

I actually pulled wires in my ceiling when internet via fiber came to my house, was so glad to get rid of dial up I wired up each room with Cat5, still thinking of replacing with Cat6...wait till they write articles on that to confuse the masses.

Revelation wrote:

casinterest wrote:

It has always been a tradeoff, I work a lot in telecommunications, and the tradeoff is as follows.
I want good quality, so if I send voice, I am willing to let a few packets go bad and be dropped to keep my latency low. I keep the jitter buffers small. However, if I am running fax/modem, then I have less tolerance for dropped packets as this will cause misalignment of the pages., or dropped connections. So I run a larger buffer during these times, and the delay is noticeably larger.

All of this requires knowing I have a good network.

Wifi networks and cellular networks have to deal with a lot more collisions than a wired network ,and will have dropped/delayed/errored frames more often. Therefore the buffers have to be larger.

Tri-Band mesh networks use multiple channels to work around collisions ,but they will still happen with microwaves, cellular, other device, walls stairs, steel impediments in the house.

At some point, I may run a cable back across the house to replace an old coax line to get Ethernet to some other devices.

Yes, T38 (fax/modem tunneling protocol for VoIP use) is pretty problematic in a lossy network.

Tugger wrote:

And the great thing is that a circa 1940's cable (when did the current "phone wire" come into being?) beats any 5G in speed. And there is never anyway to overcome that. Direct hardwired connection can't be beat.

Wikipedia says:

Twisted-pair cabling was invented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1881.

Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twisted_pair

Also, the 'bel' and thus the 'decibel' are named for Bell.

Speaking of which, it's interesting to look the power levels of WiFi and cellular data from the various phone apps and compare them to the chart at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBm to see how tiny the amount of energy your phone is receiving. For WiFi and bluetooth the transmit power is often in the milliwatt range, whereas the received power is in the picowatt range.

This shows why a good old hard wired connection wins, the amount of energy lost just transmitting from your local wifi router to a receiver is enormous.

The loss is even more enormous for cellular data.

The 'Network Cell Info Lite' app on my Android phone says my Wifi signal is -65 dBm (around 300 pico-watts) and my cellular data signal is -109 dBm (around 0.01 pico-watts or 10 femto-watts).

Would be nice if mobile phone and tablet can come with integrated power lan support so wired network can be used relatively easily when streaming or gaming

par13del wrote:

No sensible person watches IPTV etc on device using wi-fi, it makes the Law & Order lip sync commercial look normal.

I have done this for many years now, both with Amazon Fire and Roku devices using WiFi 802.11n, no issues at all.

I presume this is because I live in suburbia, so not a lot of competition on the WiFi bands, especially not on 5 GHz.

par13del wrote:

I actually pulled wires in my ceiling when internet via fiber came to my house, was so glad to get rid of dial up I wired up each room with Cat5, still thinking of replacing with Cat6...wait till they write articles on that to confuse the masses.

You have me there.

There is no fiber service nearby, probably for the same reason, low population density.

Also in the US, there are lots of corporate monopolies in the Internet delivery space.

There was an agreement between the wireless and wired providers to not compete with each other.

Our "government watchdogs" were too busy eating the pork they were fed to take notice of this.

As a result, if you didn't have fiber at the point in time of that agreement, chances are high that you will never get it.

Recently, one man started his own telephone company just so he could get fiber internet.

Yes, things are that bad here.

Revelation wrote:

par13del wrote:

No sensible person watches IPTV etc on device using wi-fi, it makes the Law & Order lip sync commercial look normal.

I have done this for many years now, both with Amazon Fire and Roku devices using WiFi 802.11n, no issues at all.

I presume this is because I live in suburbia, so not a lot of competition on the WiFi bands, especially not on 5 GHz.

par13del wrote:

I actually pulled wires in my ceiling when internet via fiber came to my house, was so glad to get rid of dial up I wired up each room with Cat5, still thinking of replacing with Cat6...wait till they write articles on that to confuse the masses.

You have me there.

There is no fiber service nearby, probably for the same reason, low population density.

Also in the US, there are lots of corporate monopolies in the Internet delivery space.

There was an agreement between the wireless and wired providers to not compete with each other.

Our "government watchdogs" were too busy eating the pork they were fed to take notice of this.

As a result, if you didn't have fiber at the point in time of that agreement, chances are high that you will never get it.

Recently, one man started his own telephone company just so he could get fiber internet.

Yes, things are that bad here.

I about celebrated last week as the AT&T fiber contractors started measuring the neighborhood last week. I will be glad to get away from Cable internet,
I will probably still have to wait a year or two .

My suspicion is that the 25 MB DSL that AT&T offers currently caused their revenues to go negative on them quickly when everyone had to work from home. Most neighbors switched immediately to Spectrum.