Is Ethernet cabling becoming obsolete due to WiFi?

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mewtwo55555
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22 May 2014, 12:06 am

So is cat5e/6/6a cabling becoming obsolete due to wifi? will fiber take over? what is your experience?

SammichEater
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22 May 2014, 1:39 am

Nah, not at all. A wired connection can handle much more data than a wireless connection. I get about 20mb/s on my laptop and phone, but 60mb/s through the same router on a wired connection with my desktop.

Also, the quality of a wired connection is significantly better. Signal strength isn't an issue. It doesn't stop working when you get too close to a microwave.

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22 May 2014, 1:40 am

mewtwo55555 wrote:

So is cat5e/6/6a cabling becoming obsolete due to wifi? will fiber take over? what is your experience?

Nope. You use the right tool for the job. It's all about costs vs benefits.

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22 May 2014, 2:53 am

SammichEater wrote:

In addition, a wired connection is also more secure than wifi, although that depends on how your router is set up, as well as how security is implemented on your desktop or laptop.

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22 May 2014, 5:19 am

mewtwo55555 wrote:

So is cat5e/6/6a cabling becoming obsolete due to wifi? will fiber take over? what is your experience?

Fiber may take over at some point, but it is still technically speaking a 'wired' connection. WiFi OTOH, is slower and less secure. WPA encryption can be cracked, whereas wired networks are harder to get into unless you have actual access to the network, either by physical access or by remote login.

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sliqua-jcooter
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22 May 2014, 11:09 am

There's still hundreds of miles of copper being installed in datacenters and office buildings every day. Wifi is a bad joke with more than a couple dozen devices, and fiber is both too expensive and too limited to see adoption for end device connectivity.

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Kurgan
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22 May 2014, 3:04 pm

With sufficient access points and a controller that's any good, you can have many connected clients in a wi-fi network. The signal strength is still strong enough for a WPS system to tell the position with a very high accuracy.

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sliqua-jcooter
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22 May 2014, 3:22 pm

Kurgan wrote:

Sure, right up until you run out of spectrum to support any more WAPs. Then you're pretty well screwed.

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Kurgan
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22 May 2014, 3:55 pm

sliqua-jcooter wrote:

Kurgan wrote:

Sure, right up until you run out of spectrum to support any more WAPs. Then you're pretty well screwed.

This is true, but it takes a lot for it to happen, thanks to more intelligent systems. There's currently no issues with this at any major university here in Norway. Also, new protocols that adress this are right around the corner.

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sliqua-jcooter
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22 May 2014, 4:24 pm

Kurgan wrote:

This is true, but it takes a lot for it to happen, thanks to more intelligent systems.

Tell that to any tech conference/large media event organizer and watch them laugh at you.

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Kurgan
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22 May 2014, 7:21 pm

sliqua-jcooter wrote:

Kurgan wrote:

This is true, but it takes a lot for it to happen, thanks to more intelligent systems.

Tell that to any tech conference/large media event organizer and watch them laugh at you.

My university only has two wireless networks (one UNIX network and one Eduroam network), and the Eduroam network at any given time between 8 AM and 9 PM has thousands of connections. Apart from the fact that the UNIX network gets congested every now and then (which is a Solaris related issue, not a WiFi related issue), the networks are pretty much flawless.

Conferences are crowded places, not open places, and crowds tend to soak up the signals rather nicely (particularly when you're in the crowd yourself). Modern Cisco equipment tends to handle situations like these pretty well, though.

Just like it's easy to tell amateur code from professional code, it's also easy to tell if a network is configured by an amateur or a professional; tech conference WiFis aren't always configured by professionals. Most conferences won't cap the speed once you finally get access, which means that whatever applications are active on your computer prevents others from connecting.

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sliqua-jcooter
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22 May 2014, 8:06 pm

Kurgan wrote:

Just like it's easy to tell amateur code from professional code, it's also easy to tell if a network is configured by an amateur or a professional; tech conference WiFis aren't always configured by professionals. Most conferences won't cap the speed once you finally get access, which means that whatever applications are active on your computer prevents others from connecting.

I worked as a network engineer for a company that managed wireless deployments for large events. You've now spent a bunch of time arguing with someone with a lot more direct experience than you about something that has absolutely nothing to do with the topic, and all you've managed to do is prove my point for me. Congratulations

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Kurgan
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22 May 2014, 8:24 pm

sliqua-jcooter wrote:

Kurgan wrote:

Where precisely did I say that all events were configured by amateurs? Medium sized gaming conventions here frequently have networks configured by someone with no computer or electrical credentials beyond gaming, thus an amateur (and it usually shows).

I don't care how much experience you have, which is why I didn't mention it. Wasn't your point that WiFi was a bad joke with more than a couple of dozen connections? The topic was whether or not WiFi will replace ethernet.

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sliqua-jcooter
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22 May 2014, 8:37 pm

Kurgan wrote:

Wasn't your point that WiFi was a bad joke with more than a couple of dozen connections?

No. My point was my entire post, that wifi and fiber have limitations that copper does not. And in the context of comparing the two, you can't claim that the controller is the network - you're comparing the physical medium of connection, which is a network switch vs a WAP. Saying that a campus wifi system with 100 aps and 3 controllers is representative of wifi is the same as saying a full datacenter network with 10 million hosts is representative of wired networking.

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LupaLuna
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23 May 2014, 11:58 pm

sliqua-jcooter wrote:

Saying that a campus wifi system with 100 aps and 3 controllers is representative of wifi

And what do you think all those AP's are gonna be connected with. Ethernet of course. You could set them in repeater mode but that would very Slooooooooooow! and very unreliable.

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24 May 2014, 12:04 am

I should mention that some of the other reasons fiber is not use at the endpoint is not so much that it's expensive, but it's a lot more difficult to work with and you have to be careful how much of a bend you put in to it as well.

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