[HN Gopher] Their secret for workplace Zen? Landlines and Ethern... ___________________________________________________________________ Their secret for workplace Zen? Landlines and Ethernet cords Author : imartin2k Score : 29 points Date : 2022-03-30 17:33 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (www.wsj.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com) | denimnerd42 wrote: | I don't like doing any kind of daily team voice conversation on | the telephone network. my colleagues globally and those on cell | phones sound like complete garbage. I'd much prefer something | like mumble or discord for daily team calls but alas.. | vidanay wrote: | It's absolutely astounding how far phone call audio quality has | fallen in the last 30 years. I'd kill to have routine narrow- | band analog POTS phone calls again. | gkop wrote: | > in the last 30 years | | Isn't the biggest contributor the discrete transition from | circuit-switched copper to packet-switched data? You imply | some sort of gradual erosion.. | | But anyhow yea, kids today will never know the special | intimacy yielded by the low latency of a circuit-switched | landline call. | vidanay wrote: | Yeah, for sure it was probably a five-year transition | period, and crap since then. | ryandrake wrote: | Maybe I'm showing my old age, but I never thought of Wi-Fi | networking or mobile voice as anything other than "toy" | technologies, unsuitable for SeriousBusiness(tm). Wi-Fi is what | you use very temporarily at a coffee shop or something when you | simply _have to_ log in to deal with an emergency while on the | go. But, for serious daily driver usage, it 's wired all the way. | First thing I did when I moved into my home was crawl under the | crawlspace and run two CAT 6 drops to each room. | | If I were to be hired by a company and went into their office the | first day, and they said, "so the corporate Wi-Fi SSID is..." | well, I'd kind of not take them really seriously as a business. I | realize with today's much better Wi-Fi and cellular technologies, | that this is an emotional response and there's no rational facts | behind the way I feel. Just an artifact of growing up with "wired | = reliable". | lizknope wrote: | The last 3 companies I have worked at over the last 10 years | all have wired connections in every office / cubicle as well as | 3 separate WiFi networks. | | Wifi 1 is for if you disconnect your laptop from ethernet then | it automatically connects to the internal corporate WiFi | network. This is great if you go to a conference room and need | to access to your remote desktop session in the compute | cluster. | | Wifi 2 is for employees personal devices like mobile phones and | is outside of the corporate network with no access to | confidential data | | Wifi 3 is for guests and vendors who need network access for a | demonstration etc. | cryptoz wrote: | What a take. So from your perspective, the developing world | that has largely skipped wired connections for their | connectivity is all doing 'toy' stuff, not real work? There are | literally billions of people with Wifi/Cell but no wired | connection, you're just going to write them off as never having | what it takes to do SeriousBusiness (tm)? | | That you're privileged enough to consider, even emotionally, | the majority of the world's connections as 'toys' is something | you should recognize. Way more SeriousBusiness happens on | Wifi/Cell than I think you expect, and writing off that large | (and growing) group is honestly ridiculous. | | On the other end of the spectrum, Steve Jobs, and Elon Musk, | etc, did/do so much of their work on Wifi/Cell only that it | seems insane to think that they are just doing 'toy' stuff as | well. | | I was on a plane about 10 years ago working on a global network | of barometers for weather forecasting research using phones as | sensors, and the flight attendant told me rudely to 'put away | my toys now'. I've been upset at this ever since, so I'm sorry | if this comes off as rude too, but honestly, wtf. I'm working | on real stuff, nothing to do with 'toys', as are so many | people. | | Belittling the Wifi/Cell revolution is a mistake IMO. | carlio wrote: | I'm not sure "I refuse to adapt or change" is a desirable trait | in a new employee anyway so probably the relationship would be | mutually suspicious. | turtlebits wrote: | Companies with a large enough IT deparment will have enterprise | APs all over the office with certificate authentication. IME, | ever since 802.11ac (~2014), wifi has been fast enough to not | need to be wired in. | dijit wrote: | Honestly this reads as painfully naive. Maybe you've never | worked with radio communications before in which case I | definitely give you the benefit of the doubt for not knowing | this: | | But wifi (just like other radio tech like 4G) has limited | capacity, and that capacity is shared across all radio | systems- this sounds obvious but when you realise how few | devices can be talking simultaneously you will understand | what an absolute pain this is. | | Most of the huge gains in wifi technology (and 3g-4g) is not | just making assumptions about what a signal is based on the | leading and trailing edge of the wave of the transmission: | mostly it's about collision detection algorithms. | | Collision detection, by necessity, adds undeterminable | latency to your connection, it's literally how it works. | | So taking calls over wifi in a room full of people using | wifi: you're going to have a bad time. Worse: that room full | of people is not _just_ that room full of people. Wifi works | in 3 dimensions, you'll be competing with your upstairs and | downstairs neighbours too. | titzer wrote: | My workstation doesn't have a WiFi adapter, and I'm glad. | It's gigabit ethernet plugged straight into the cable modem. | I'm happy to keep tinkering away, even watching videos and | such on my laptop, but a big black tower with a keyboard is a | holy thing that needs a big pipe jacked into the wall, and | you can't convince me otherwise :) | [deleted] | legitster wrote: | I bought a giant spool of Cat-6 cable and now I run around like | Johnny Ethernet-seed upgrading my friends' internet. | | For most homes, you know exactly where your datahogs are going to | be - computer desk, smart tv, consoles, etc. People are addicted | to the convenience of running everything through the air, but an | hour in a crawlspace and you've got something faster and more | reliable. | uneekname wrote: | An ethernet connection is a must for me. Unless I'm traveling | somewhere and need to log in on someone else's network, it's a | pain to deal with wifi's slow speeds and connection issues, even | in 2022. | TrainedMonkey wrote: | This is probably highly subjective, but I rarely have WiFi | issues. I think primary driver there is investing in a stable | home networking equipment. | dijonman2 wrote: | Based on the anecdote Inread home wifi works great, other | network APs do not. | nextos wrote: | Even with high end networking equipment (at work), I have | found WiFi introduces a lot of latency which is noticeable | when e.g. SSHing to other machines. | ericd wrote: | I'm in no ways an expert on this, so someone please correct | me if it's wrong, but one of the things that I learned that | was surprising was that one client with marginal reception | can really dominate the airtime with retries, effectively | DOSing your wifi network. So good coverage is also pretty | key. | oh_sigh wrote: | Can you quantify "a lot of latency"? It should be...a few | microseconds more latency? I have to guess the high end | networking equipment was configured incorrectly or | something. I ssh to machines on my network from wired and | wireless devices and it is impossible to tell what kind of | network you're on when doing so. | coward123 wrote: | I agree with you, but: | | -- It took a lot of years to get here. | | -- It took expensive equipment to get here. | | -- I'm lucky that my house doesn't have a lot of brick or | steel or some other material that blocks signals | | -- I still believe that wired is more secure. | | -- When it's wired, I _know_ it 's either working or it's my | ISPs fault. When it's wireless, I'm left doubting. | neonate wrote: | https://archive.ph/SFhwq ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-03-31 23:00 UTC)