[ale] Home fiber network?

[david w. millians]

Greg Freemyer wrote:
> I'm planning on building a new house.  My thought is wireless and repeaters.
> They can always be upgraded as speeds increase, but 54gb/sec is pretty
> cost effective today I think.  Probably less than the cost of wiring,
> etc. even ignoring labor.

I think if you do the wiring and pulling yourself- and like said, I just 
ran conduit so that I could put in the drops later at my leisure- will 
cost more than wireless, but is going to last a lot longer than wireless 
will.

In reality, I find that you can expect, with security, about a third of 
stated bandwidth. Some of the pricier N setups can actually *do* 100 
megabit- but again, it's like a hub. We finally got rid of hubs and have 
nice switches; but wireless takes us back.

And of course, N is just barely official...

> If I were designing a new office for dozens of users, then I would
> definitely want hardwire lines.

I admit my pro-wire bias of course. That's because I've done a fair 
amount of wireless work, and well, wires just work. A gigabit switch 
delivers oodles of bandwidth.

I like wireless- even though I've got to upgrade to wpa2 now that 
they're trivially broked wpa, drat!- but if a device is going to stay in 
one place, I say just run the drop.

But then, my wife was nice enough to add in a server closet when she 
built the extension, and I've got plenty of room.