Yes, and that is the best suited market for wireless ethernet - the corporate
LAN. Of course there are security issues and the matters of value to the
competition would best not be transmitted over wireless.
Smitty
On Tuesday 12 November 2002 07:37, you wrote:
> On Mon, 11 Nov 2002, Smitty wrote:
> > On Monday 11 November 2002 20:51, William Coulter wrote:
> > > That is why I don't do wireless. There are way, way too many flaws for
> > > any hacker to get in to the system and cause havoc.
> > >
> > > So why are all of the major companies making and pushing everybody to
> > > buy wireless?
> >
> > It is a profit center and an emerging technology with higher margins than
> > established technologies.
> > Smitty
>
> It can also be very dang handy. Imagine the conference/training rooms in
> many offices. You could buy a bunch of extra CatV switch ports that will
> go unused most of the time to wire up those rooms. That's expensive. If
> you don't buy those extra switches, some poor LAN admin is at the patch
> panel trying to figure out whose desk they can unplug to get the meeting
> room wired when you have an event. That hardly ever goes smoothly.
>
> The clients don't want to crawl on the floor in the meeting room to get
> plugged in. They want these nifty fixtures on the sides or tops of the
> tables with easy access. That means wiring the tables. Often, it means a
> cheap hub bolted to the bottom of the table and that might not deliver the
> streaming media message from the CEO with the quality you hoped. And then
> they want to move the tables into "U"s and circles and rows, so some
> poor LAN admin is moving furniture and patching cables. Since they seldom
> learn how the people holding the meeting want the room configured ahead of
> time, it often happens that the first 20 minutes of your meeting are spent
> moving furniture and patch cords and trouble-shooting layer 1 problems.
>
> I've seen people (Maybe they were sometimes women in skirts.) so loath to
> get on the floor and plug in that they let their laptop batteries go
> dead. If we could get batteries that last a week and recharge in half an
> hour, or could deliver power over the air along with the network signal,
> that would be REALLY cool.
>
> If you have copper network ports on the tables, they need AC/DC bricks.
> Those go missing. The cost of buying spare bricks is trivial compared to
> the lost productivity when some poor LAN admin finally figures out they
> need to unwrap another new brick.
>
> If you have a bunch of CatV network jacks spread across the floor of a
> large room, ladies' high heels can poke into them. The network jack is
> broken. Her shoe might be broken. Hopefully, her ankle is fine.
>
> I once saw where someone trying to be helpful had pulled a broken jack out
> of the floor and twisted all the wires tightly together. I don't know if
> they didn't want the Token to get out or if they were trying to keep the
> bits from escaping into the Ether. Somehow, spanning tree didn't cut it,
> and having all the LEDs on ALL the switches blinking in unison is only an
> attractive or amusing sight in retrospect. (The LEDs seemed to be the
> only functional aspect of the switches at the time.)
>
> If network and power jacks in the floor aren't part of original
> construction retro-fitting them can be very expensive. Core drills
> through concrete floors are messy and noisy. Carpet might need to be
> replaced. With some construction techniques you need to X-ray the floor
> to decide where to drill. If you're not leasing the floor below you need
> to inconvenience, and coordinate activities with, one of your landlord's
> other tenants. Decent floor jack hardware costs much more than wall jack
> hardware and many cable jobs are bid, or at least evaluated by folks who
> might approve your project budget, as dollars/drop.
>
> If you give up on jacks in the floor and keep them on the walls, a large
> room will still have a bunch of cable running around posing tripping
> hazards. Hazards to both your clients and their network.
>
> Conference room problems aside, a wireless connection can be good
> because it is persistent, even if it is a little slower. Someone can
> carry their laptop from their desk to some other office or a conference
> room, stop by the water cooler, realize their meeting is going to start
> five minutes late so go get a cup of coffee (and make it 10 minutes late),
> and all the while they are downloading their email.
>
> Wireless can be a very good solution for situations where people don't
> super-glue their laptops to their desks.
>
> Finally, while sending your data through the air makes you more
> susceptible to sniffing than sending across fiber or copper, it CAN be
> done with reasonable security. Encrypt. Don't rely on the rather
> inadequate security measures that come with the wireless products.
> Encrypt everything you send before you ever drop it on any layer 1
> medium and your wired part of the network will be more secure too. Let
> the black hats get their Pringles cans and listen to your gibberish. And
> to bring this back on to topic for this list, open-source solutions for
> encrypting your transmitted data are superior.
>
> The patch cord leash can be a real pain. Though it's far from perfect,
> and it doesn't fit every situation, there is a good business case for
> wireless.
>
> Apologizing for my ranting,
>
> Greg
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