Just a general enquiry really. Noticed on posts for data/sky/tv cabling that people were still advocating installation of network and phone cabling. This is obviously at odds to the current hype re: wireless networking/broadband etc. I have already installed cat 5 and phone lines to most rooms, but am beginning to think that technology has overtaken this.
Apart from the security issues with wireless broadband, can anyone support the case for putting in a wired home network and phone system?
Wired phone system, no. But there are no end of niggles with wireless networking, it seems to me. Handy to have, but nowhere near as reliable as TP, ime.
What you *should* have done is run fibre around the house, although the various media convertors might have proved a touch expensive ;-)
Wired phone system, yes. When you are in bed and fire breaks out downstairs and trips your power supply your bedside DECT phone is simply an ornament! There is a place for DECT phones and I have several - but I also have a number of wired extensions.
Also network cabling is faster and more reliable, but again I also have a wireless access point.
Coincidently I just read a review of a wireless media streamer, capable of streaming HD video from a PC to a TV
formatting link
It noted that
'if you're looking to push HD through the device, you're probably better off sticking to the wired link. With an un-congested 802.11g network and the wind behind it, it'll just about cope with HD over wireless, but if anyone else is using the connection, then dropped frames and blocky pictures could ensue.'
That seems a reasonable endorsment of the need for cables. I personally think of wireless vs wires like a helicopter vs a road - take the helicopter to get a light load to the bottom of the garden, take the road when you want to move a few tonnes cheaply.
For network acccess, wired still offers better speed, reliability, and security. It is also easier to configure. As the amount of data we stream about our homes increases (and our neighbours) this will become more apparent.
Telecoms almost becomes a non issue since it can share the same wiring as the network if it is done right. DECT is ok, but wired phones still offer a reliability and simplicity that they don't.
Finally if you want to add your own PBX then wires are still the way to go as well.
Gigabit switched networking against 56 ( or a bit more ) Mbit shared just doesn't compare, especially if you are shifting large DVD ISOs around the network for example.
There are also plenty pieces of networking kit that are designed for wired operation, which would require you to buy wireless bridges for. I've yet to see a wireless bridge that supports high-end security options like WPA2-Enterprise which I use on my network. An un-necessary, poorer-performing ( if it can be made to work at all ), cumbersome alternative to wired, if wired is an option.
Also, if you have any plans to use VoIP, then wired networking can provide Power-over-Ethernet, which is a tidy way to hook up your phones.
I use wireless only where wired is difficult or inconvenient. It's nice on the laptops in the middle of the living room, or sitting on a kitchen worktop for example.
I have a perfectly good mobile phone for just such an emergency. Besides, I would have to extend your argument to placing a wired extension phone next to the beds of everyone in the house who might have to call 999 and so that's at least 3 upstairs. I'm quite happy to have one wired phone downstairs.
I've found it very flexible to have very simple CAT5 cabling between 3 rooms (double socket in each room, wired to each of the other two to make a sort of triangle) as well as a wireless access point and then expand as necessary with switches (which are cheaper than additional cable & sockets) because:
- Initially used a couple of older PCs with cheap network cards
- Some visiting computers haven't been wireless
- We have a network printer and network filestore Worked well for us and fairly discrete except in the office with most of the kit. Al
you've had some really traditional answers re cables but if you actually think about what you are going to access the web/whatever with, you'll come to the conclusion* that you have 1 main PC, one laptop and maybe a pocket PC. the laptop will have wi-fi built in, so will the pocket PC so to get the benefit from their portability you'd need at least an access point.
might as well use a wireless router and take time to RTFM which will remove 99% of connection and security issues. I have three or four PCs lying about the place and whereas they had to be in a room with a cat5 outlet or one with a temporary cable running into it, now I just add an £8 wireless NIC and I'm on. sometimes I have to right click and repair the wireless connection, big deal, 1 min later I'm back online.
all this tosh about network speed is willy waving, really. who /really/ wants to push HDTV over wi-fi when there's a far simpler method of watching movies ? whoo, yeah, I can send a 3gb file over my network in x minutes ... most people would use a DVD and take much less time.
excuse me, I'm just about to take my wi-fi laptop into the cat5 free kitchen to read a recipe for slow cooked shin beef in ale with thyme dumplings.
The smoke alarm should have woken you long before the power trips.
Getting everyone out comes higher on my list than trying to 'phone anyone, even if it means jumping out of a window. If it's got to the stage where summoning rescue by 'phone is your only hope, then you are probably doomed anyway ;-)
Its faster than wireless. Its more secure than wireless It works in electrically unfriendly environments. Its dirt cheap because everybody has gone wireless and cant sell their
100BaseT kit for love or money on ebay. You can run hones over it, You can run alarms over it.
The ONLY downside is it is a pain to run wires,..but if you are rewiring anyway, its a no brainer IMHO.
for the diehard cable users/gamers no doubt, but I'll bet a lot of the kit is going because people are /upgrading/ to wi-fi specifically because of the benefits it offers over cable in houses with multiple PCs, laptops and pocket PCs. even digital cameras have wi-fi these days but it still remains horses for courses.
On 2007-01-05 08:45:06 +0000, "TheScullster" said:
I think that the short answer to this one is yes.
Just to put a perspective on this, I've worked in the networking industry with various technologies for over 25 years - right back to when ethernet involved a thick yellow co-ax cable that you had to drill and tap into in order to make connections. The slightly later 10base2 (thin coax) ethernet that was popular for a while was the first that was perhaps realistic to install for a small workgroup or home network. That worked OK but tended to suffer from reliability problems because of the large number of connectors physically involved.
Undoubtedly CAT5 technology made the big difference to the practicality of quite a lot of network installation, and the components and cable have become extremely cheap.
WiFi has obviously made a huge contribution as well in terms of convenience and for a lot of applications gives good results.
In enterprise (large company) environments, I typically see relatively limited deployments (depends on the business and sector) and a lot of trouble taken over design and security, to make sure that coverage is right but that the overall security of the company network is not compromised by the wireless network. Usually this is accomplished by using higher end access point devices - e.g. Cisco which have a variety of security mechanisms built in and there is effort made to fix bugs in the firmware that risk compromising the performance and security; and to have additional mechanisms like firewalls and secured VPNs to further raise the security barrier.
Smaller businesses and home users tend to buy the cheaper, off-the-shelf wireless products that you will probably have seen on the shelves of PC World and on the web. Manufacturers include the usual suspects such as Linksys, D-Link, Netgear, Belkin,..... and so on.
These are supposed to work with minimal set-up and to an extent be an out of the box product. To a first degree, that is true. People with little technical skill can get them working by following a quick install guide. Where a physical card has to be installed in a PC or equivalent, there are the usual possible issues with drivers, interrupt conflicts and all the rest of it which can cause problems and sometimes be difficult to address. This has been made easier by devices such as notebooks, printers and PDAs having WiFi built in.
Having said that, most people seem to be quite clueless about installation and security and there are several issues there. Security has been publicised a lot and the reasonably sensible are able to do a reasonable first level job by using WPA security. It has its shortcomings, but generally all that is required for a home network is to enter a text password on each device - a lot easier and somewhat more secure than the earlier WEP mechanism which was not that secure and which often required users to enter passwords in hexadecimal on some devices and text on another.
A surprisingly large number of people still don't bother. Recently, I made a train trip of about an hour from Waterloo, going through the suburbs of inner and outer London and beyond. I was using my Mac for some other work, but turned on a utility called iStumbler. This activates the WiFi interface and scans listening for access points. It displays a list of what it finds with SSIDs (name of the wireless LAN), plus channels, security status and type and signal strengths. It doesn't attempt to join the network, but will identify and log the presence of an access point based on a couple of samples. So even with the train moving along it was able to detect over a hundred wireless LANs installed within a couple of hundred metres or less of the railway line - this was a mix of domestic and office networks. Of this lot, only around a half had WPA or WEP turned on.
So it's like a burglar alarm. It won't protect against the determined attacker (if he believes the prize is worth it) but will make most try the next house. Most people if asked, wouldn't be keen on their neighbours sniffing into their financial information or getting free ride on their internet connection.
The next point is about installation and channel selection. The radio band used (around 2.4GHz) is an unlicensed one in most countries. It is the place where a lot of devices can potentially be run including microwave ovens, video senders and other devices. These may not generally be a specific problem, but if you are in a location where you have a lot of neighbours with wireless LANs within range, there can be various problems with some equipment. One example is if access devices close by are running on the same or nearby channels (there are 13 in the UK, although some equipment supports only 11 because that is the limit in some countries). Radio interference can certainly affect reliability and performance of the connection; so if you are going to use WiFi it makes good sense to do a survey around your house and property to see what is close by. This can be done with free software like NetStumbler to a reasonable degree. It's best to avoid channels used by neighbouring WLANs and indeed adjacent ones. Of course a lot of people are unaware of this and don't change the defaults, so if a bunch of neighbours talk to one another and go out and buy the same vendor's product, they will probably all be on the same channel unless someone changes theirs. Ideally, it's an idea to choose a channel that is two or three away from others, especially if the signal is strong from a neighbouring access point. Even so, location of access point(s) in the house is quite important to get good coverage.
Going on from this are the issues of speed and reliability. The newer technologies of 802,11g (Wireless G) and various ones leading to
802,11n (Wireless -N, pre-N and others) promise higher speeds than the original nominal 11Mbit technology. However, the raw, marketed rates of 11, 54 and 108Mbits are not really achieved reliably in typical installatations. There are various reasons for this. Firstly, the wireless and various IP protocols used by the equipment and applications reduce the real rate of data transfer quite substantially - can be as little as 10% of the published speed that is actually achieved. Secondly there is the interference and wireless coverage issue. Thirdly, there is the behaviour of other devices of yours joining the WLAN. All can have an impact.
Another factor is the quality and reliability of the firmware in the wireless components. The lower end manufacturers do not invest a lot in this, and for most products you will see 2-3 firmware updates during a product's lifetime on sale. After that, there are generally no bug fixes even if there are product problems. Bad things certainly do happen. I have seen wireless access points and routers that regularly run into trouble and need to be rebooted every few days or even sooner. Generally this is due to bugs in the firmware.
Of course, if you are using a Microsoft "operating system" you will rebooting the PC anyway quite frequently.
Again if a determined hacker figures out the device (some manufacturers have their name as the default SSID, others even the model), then they may be able to launch a security or denial of service attack. This is probably not that common in a residential setting, but if you are concerned about these things there is certainly a risk factor. Some wireless products turn out to be lemons. Therefore it is unwise to buy the latest and greatest, and much more sensible to wait for at least one firmware update and to read user reviews.
In terms of speed, if the only application is internet access and especially email and web access, then WiFi can be a good solution. In most cases, the available WiFi speed will exceed that of the ISP connection.
If you are concerned about wanting to do device to device communication in your house, then I think you need to look more carefully. Speed and connection reliability are still at a point where, for some applications in some environments, the results are inferior to what can be achieved with wired networking. If you want to transfer large amounts of data where starting from the beginning because the connection dropped out is unacceptable, then you may want to check that carefully for example. Some applications such as certain types of media streaming sometimes do not work well on wireless connections.
So.... for my usage, I use both wired and wireless networks. There is no doubt that the portability of WiFi is useful and convenient for some devices and applications. However, for many usage cases, that can be achieved by having a good distribution of wired outlets. For example, if I want to use a notebook in any room of the house, I can plug it into an outlet with a relatively short cable. I don't really want to do that in the garden and not at all with a PDA. I've taken quite a bit of trouble to secure the wireless LAN (all of the measures mentioned above used by enterprises, and some more) and have used good quality equipment with proper support of firmware.
Nonetheless, I do have applications that are sensitive to connection dropouts and have to do file transfers of tens of gigabytes. I don't use the WLAN for those.
My usage cases and the trouble I have gone to to secure and install the WLAN correctly are probably not needed by a lot of people, but again you can recognise the application areas where there may be issues. The technology is certainly useful, but I wouldn't use it as the only form of networking in the house.
You are talking to a man with a 10 year old pc driving a 7 and a 20 year old printer via cabling that was young last century, with a second hand ADSL router, in a 19" rack I got free as scrap..My stuff works, and goes on working.
My sister in law spent a fortune on a laptop, and a wirless router, got someone in to make it all work, and it seldom does.
HE says its to do with the mobile phone tower at the bottom of the garden I think hes a wanker. However its hard to tell because every time we phone them up they can't find the radio phone and so never answer. My phones can't be carried off in my wife's hand, because they are plugged into the wall. This is fortunate because she has wandered off with 17 cigarette lighters, and I can't find a single one. The ones that the new puppy hasn't chewed up that is. Of course it would take him longer - maybe 2 minutes, to destroy a DECT phone..
And of course the little cheap analog PABX here will take a 10 quid phone, and acts as a door answering machine as well. And will distribute two incoming lines all round the house.
Wireless routers and phones suit youngsters who have never put a plug on a cable in their lives, in ditzy new flats where they don't want to even THINK about laying a cable. They are to busy laying each other. I see no reason to not profit from their profligacy, do you?
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