4 ms·

> While there are physical limitations to what wireless can do, over the last decades we've had groundbreaking research which repeatedly has increased the BW av

by creshal 11y ago

> While there are physical limitations to what wireless can do, over the last decades we've had groundbreaking research which repeatedly has increased the BW available to wireless systems by orders of magnitudes. And they have been outpaced by the bandwidth improvements on wired networking. Why settle for some increase in speed (maybe, assuming you don't have signal quality problems – which only grow worse as adoption increases), when you can have a much larger increase in speed (guaranteed)? Sure, wired doesn't always make sense: Anything that can be sensibly battery powered is a candidate for wireless connectivity. But if you're stringing wires anyway, why not use much more reliable wired networking while you're at it? We're putting power delivery into Ethernet and USB, and Ethernet into HDMI, so we're increasingly not even needing additional wires.

cm2187 11y ago
I am not an adept of wireless because of performance problems but wire consolidation makes a lot of sense. For instance it would make sense for all laptops to have the ethernet connection as well as additional connections going through the power supply. So that a single wire to plug when you go wired and all wireless when on the move. Docking stations sort of do that but you loose the "lap top" ability. I think most people use their laptop in bed or on a couch when not working. And even on a table it's nice to have the wiring underneath the table.
- creshal 11y ago
  > So that a single wire to plug when you go wired and all wireless when on the move. That's the whole idea behind USB-C with Thunderbolt 3 and USB 3.1, yes.
  - cm2187 11y ago
    Thunderbolt can accomodate many protocoles but can it do them at the same time? I.e. drive a 4k monitor, and an ethernet connection, and power the laptop, and connect an external hard drive and printer through USB? To go the power supply hub way you need simultaneity.
- paulmd 11y ago
  That's not a half-bad idea, you could do that relatively easily with current-gen tech by building a powerline-ethernet adapter into the charger brick. You might need to use a "dock" connector that has pins broken out for the ethernet. Powerline Ethernet has some issues, its bandwidth is limited and it can be susceptible to interference. But when you can't run a real ethernet cable, it's a very solid option. In particular it's much lower latency than wifi.
  - cm2187 11y ago
    I would used a custom connector for the power adapted. Powerline ethernet is slow and messy. Pretty much any laptop uses a custom port anyway so that wouldn't be a problem in itself. In fact Surface does pretty much that: https://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-us/accessories/surface-dock https://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-us/accessories/surface-... except that it comes with a very short cable which makes it unsuitable for sofas or beds.
    - paulmd 11y ago
      Again, powerline ethernet isn't ideal. It's two selling points are (1) not having to run a new cable, and (2) significantly improved latency and packet loss compared to wifi while maintaining reasonable bandwidth. I normally get about 70-80 mbps across my PLE adapters. It is susceptible to picking up some interference at times, which cuts performance in half, but during those times the wifi is unusable for any sort of realtime/latency-sensitive applications. I have local GigE segments in my living room and computer room, but I would need to run a drop to connect them and I rent. USB-C and Thunderbolt are point-to-point bus connectors, they're not designed to have multiple clients on a network. Even if you designed a switch that could use ethernet-over-Type-C as a physical layer, the maximum length for an active cable is only 50 feet for USB 3.0 speeds and 82 feet for 2.0 speeds. Passive cables are 15ft. That's not really enough for long runs inside a wall, so we're back to asking the question: OK, I plugged my USB Type-C into the wall. Now what? If you're going to actually run a new cable to your outlets, running Type-C seems like a poor choice. You could stick a Type C ethernet adapter in a wall-socket formfactor, run CAT-6 in the walls, and call it a day. That gets you runs of up to 330ft for GigE. But if your vision is "plug into the wall and instantly get on my network, without pulling ethernet to every outlet" then you need something that runs over a power-line, because that's the only wire that's guaranteed to be run to a power outlet.

by creshal 11y ago

cm2187 11y ago

I am not an adept of wireless because of performance problems but wire consolidation makes a lot of sense. For instance it would make sense for all laptops to have the ethernet connection as well as additional connections going through the power supply. So that a single wire to plug when you go wired and all wireless when on the move. Docking stations sort of do that but you loose the "lap top" ability. I think most people use their laptop in bed or on a couch when not working. And even on a table it's nice to have the wiring underneath the table.

creshal 11y ago
> So that a single wire to plug when you go wired and all wireless when on the move. That's the whole idea behind USB-C with Thunderbolt 3 and USB 3.1, yes.
- cm2187 11y ago
  Thunderbolt can accomodate many protocoles but can it do them at the same time? I.e. drive a 4k monitor, and an ethernet connection, and power the laptop, and connect an external hard drive and printer through USB? To go the power supply hub way you need simultaneity.
paulmd 11y ago
That's not a half-bad idea, you could do that relatively easily with current-gen tech by building a powerline-ethernet adapter into the charger brick. You might need to use a "dock" connector that has pins broken out for the ethernet. Powerline Ethernet has some issues, its bandwidth is limited and it can be susceptible to interference. But when you can't run a real ethernet cable, it's a very solid option. In particular it's much lower latency than wifi.
- cm2187 11y ago
  I would used a custom connector for the power adapted. Powerline ethernet is slow and messy. Pretty much any laptop uses a custom port anyway so that wouldn't be a problem in itself. In fact Surface does pretty much that: https://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-us/accessories/surface-dock https://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-us/accessories/surface-... except that it comes with a very short cable which makes it unsuitable for sofas or beds.
  - paulmd 11y ago
    Again, powerline ethernet isn't ideal. It's two selling points are (1) not having to run a new cable, and (2) significantly improved latency and packet loss compared to wifi while maintaining reasonable bandwidth. I normally get about 70-80 mbps across my PLE adapters. It is susceptible to picking up some interference at times, which cuts performance in half, but during those times the wifi is unusable for any sort of realtime/latency-sensitive applications. I have local GigE segments in my living room and computer room, but I would need to run a drop to connect them and I rent. USB-C and Thunderbolt are point-to-point bus connectors, they're not designed to have multiple clients on a network. Even if you designed a switch that could use ethernet-over-Type-C as a physical layer, the maximum length for an active cable is only 50 feet for USB 3.0 speeds and 82 feet for 2.0 speeds. Passive cables are 15ft. That's not really enough for long runs inside a wall, so we're back to asking the question: OK, I plugged my USB Type-C into the wall. Now what? If you're going to actually run a new cable to your outlets, running Type-C seems like a poor choice. You could stick a Type C ethernet adapter in a wall-socket formfactor, run CAT-6 in the walls, and call it a day. That gets you runs of up to 330ft for GigE. But if your vision is "plug into the wall and instantly get on my network, without pulling ethernet to every outlet" then you need something that runs over a power-line, because that's the only wire that's guaranteed to be run to a power outlet.