Wireless is a trap (2020)

https://www.benkuhn.net/wireless/

by behnamoh • 4 years ago

474 409 4 years ago

doommius• 4 years ago

Yup. Also just mostly wireless equipment is super low quality. It's easy to see this when living downtown in any larger city. You'll easily be competing with 100s of other APs for the 2.4 ghz wireless band. With tbr 5 and 6 ghz this is getting better but there still isn't nearly enough channels.

modeless• 4 years ago

USB-C hubs or monitors with power delivery make this really easy these days. One cable gets you everything. Power, display(s), mouse/keyboard, Ethernet, and any other peripherals you need. It's absolutely worth getting a USB Ethernet adapter. They work way better than WiFi.

A wireless mouse is still worth it though. Logitech G305 is essentially perfect IMO. Extremely reliable, extremely low latency, months of battery life, reasonable price.

KennyBlanken2• 4 years ago

I have a wireless gaming mouse. It's never been anything but completely reliable. The dongle is integrated into the charging dock, which sits about two feet from the mouse.

I've never heard a single person complain about a wireless mouse. The author is just a crank.

I would advise people to not get a Logitech mouse, however. Their button switches are poorly made and fail much sooner than any other manufacturer.

betwixthewires2• 4 years ago

What makes a wireless mouse worth it?

Also from what I've read, usb-c has a lot of interoperability problems because the connector is a different standard than all the different communications standards that it can be used with.

smilekzs• 4 years ago

My biggest gripe with wired mice is that the wire never seem to cooperate --- it would drag on the table, be too stiff, tangle, etc. Plus, latency for at least the dongled mice (not the bluetooth ones) is low enough for me to notice.

davidelettieri• 4 years ago

I have MX Keys and MX Master 3 and couldn't be happier. Bluetooth works with dongle and with integrated usb.

adamch• 4 years ago

This is really noticeable with video chat. I never use Bluetooth when talking with my family... between the Texas - Australia lag and the Bluetooth headphones - Android phone lag, it's enough to impair conversation.

Now the problem is just how to manage all the cables that come from having a gaming PC and work laptop that use the same keyboard and monitor. I have a KVM switch but I can't hide it under the desk if I want to press it.

hug• 4 years ago

Most KVMs have a keyboard shortcut that will let you switch, commonly double-tapping scroll-lock and then hitting 1 or 2 for the first or second input.

formerly_proven• 4 years ago

I have a KVM switch but I can't hide it under the desk if I want to press it.

Why not? I bolted mine to the underside of the table roughly 20 cm (about 13/20 ft) back from the edge, it's both invisible and the button is trivial to find without fumbling.

nerdbaggy• 4 years ago

AX has BSSID Coloring which really helps improve performance when multiple APs are on the same channel. Still have the saturated channel limitation but that rarely happens on 5Ghz

https://www.extremenetworks.com/extreme-networks-blog/how-do...

Avamander• 4 years ago

Anecdotal personal experience, but I don't think it would take 802.11ax to improve available bandwidth, just better AP hardware.

I replaced a high-performance n/ac router with years old leftover enterprise AP. Price-wise the enterprise AP would've cost as much 2nd hand.

It improved the situation in a very very crowded airspace in every measurable metric (~10-50%). Better latency, average, minimum and maximum speeds, connection stability, packet loss and even security (PMF support). All that on the same standards and other conditions.

My suspicion is that consumers are being sold bottom of the barrel hardware and new protocols just rise the bar on what s*t they can get working.

areoform• 4 years ago

I bought a Homepod Mini on sale some time ago, and it's one of the worst experiences I've ever had. It continuously stutters. It stops working. I realize just how magical it is that it works at all. But the realization that it needs WiFi to stream music to, despite having bluetooth, has been quite depressing. I don't think the product will ever work without jitter given the amount of overlapping WiFi signals in my area.

It's a bit like the butterfly keyboard of speakers. A wonderful idea in theory. But it makes you wonder if anyone at Apple has ever tried using it an apartment building, a dusty environment, or some place that isn't a pristine lab or upper middle class suburbia

lstamour• 4 years ago

I set up a second wifi hotspot in the same room as the HomePods and they still struggle to connect to wifi. At this point I’ve given up and assume it’s like the Apple Watch - the wifi works when it wants to. It’s annoying that Apple makes both products that work great with wifi and products that don’t work great - and the ones that don’t work great with wifi often lack Ethernet connectivity options or I would use that instead. At least my watch can connect to cellular. It’s disappointing when you find yourself wanting 5G home speakers to ensure proper internet connectivity…

turtlebits3• 4 years ago

I have a stereo pair of Homepods and they work perfectly. Maybe the wifi channel of your AP is congested? Surprisingly, the Homepod also works when there is no wifi available.

It still boggles the mind why there is no wired input though.

bob-442• 4 years ago

On my home network, the HomePod Mini's demand to use both IPv4 and IPv6 is what I'm thinking is contributing to the unreliability of my stereo pair. My ISP doesn't provide me an IPv6 address, so my home router and pihole both seem to struggle with the HomePod Minis. My original HomePod doesn't have this issue.

What I'd really love is if my HomePod Minis stopped assuming the primary HomeKit Hub role and instead let my Apple TV connected via Ethernet handle all of the requests. There's no way to select a device to be the primary hub as far as I can tell.

benhurmarcel• 4 years ago

Yes I wish the Homepod could use an ethernet adapter on its power supply, like the Chromecast does.

qq66• 4 years ago

I wanted wired Ethernet in my office but didn't want to punch holes in the wall. Luckily I have an old "central vacuum system" that as far as I can tell has never been even powered on, many years before I bought the house.

I tied a ping pong ball to a piece of string and used a vacuum cleaner to suck it through the pipes, then used the string to pull a stronger rope and then the Ethernet cable. So now my Ethernet goes from my office to the wireless router via the vacuum ducting.

robotnikman• 4 years ago

Other alternatives I've found to work are Ethernet over power (varies depending on how well your house is wired though) and ethernet over coax using MoCA adapters (if your house was previously wired with coax for cable TV these work great)

bin_bash• 4 years ago

MoCA adapters are crazy expensive though

aidenn04• 4 years ago

I've used Ethernet over Power, and it sucks except under ideal conditions. The pre-G.hn versions are quite slow.

G.hn is fast, but all of the G.hn devices I've found seem to use the same chipset (and presumably similar firmware, since the configuration pages have identical options, but different branding), and the chipset seems to buffer a massive amount, which means a single hiccup while using a high-bandwidth application makes the network unusable for a while.

Example: while streaming video over a G.hn adapter, I was running ping. There was a brief hiccup, and then ping times exceeded 20 seconds (!!), finally recovering after a few minutes. I eventually ran a program that ran on devices connected to each side and would reboot the adapter if ping times exceeded 500ms. This made the network far more reliable.

garaetjjte• 4 years ago

Note that Ethernet over power should also work on coax, or really any other cable. (connect adapters to the wire and feed it with eg. 48V power supply)

wpietri2• 4 years ago

Now that's a proper series of tubes.

Arrath• 4 years ago

Very clever!

tablespoon3• 4 years ago

I wanted wired Ethernet in my office but didn't want to punch holes in the wall. Luckily I have an old "central vacuum system" that as far as I can tell has never been even powered on, many years before I bought the house.

Lucky you, you had a preinstalled system of cabling conduit :)

Before I had my basement finished, I installed a bunch of PVC conduit for the network wiring, so it would be possible to upgrade or add to it in the future.

a9h74j4• 4 years ago

Same intent here. I don't know what cable I will eventually upgrade to, but the first step will be easily-snakable conduit to every room.

AussieWog932• 4 years ago

Our Ethernet cables go out the windows and around the house. Joys of renting!

wrycoder• 4 years ago

Around here, the cable installers nail the cables around the outside of the cheap houses and just punch holes through the walls to access the interior.

Forge36• 4 years ago

I love how you ran the wire. Equal parts brilliant and rediculous.

Lapsa• 4 years ago

Reminds me of my dad who connected to ISP through antenna made out of Pringles can. Surely he found a recipe somewhere but everybody was in awe regardless.

kirrent• 4 years ago

My wired ethernet triumph was in my current rental. There's an old under-floor evaporative air-conditioning ducted system which is no longer used. I bought a $40 remote control car with large rubber wheels and a low CoG, strapped a GoPro and a head torch to it so I could stream video to a phone, and tied on a piece of string. The mission was to get from my study to the kitchen which is about 10m all up.

It was more of a challenge than expected. The ducting had ramps, multiple corners, debris/rubbish, and a mouse skeleton to navigate around. All of this wasn't helped by the terrible latency and needing to move the phone to different places to reduce distance and attenuation through the floor. I got stuck quite a few times but could always use the string to pull back a bit when I got wedged on a rock. Sometimes I just needed to gun it to get over an obstacle.

In the end, the car and ethernet cable were cheaper than a good wireless card or POE kit, and I got to give away the car to a kid.

chrisweekly2• 4 years ago

Stories like this make HN what it is. Thanks for sharing! Love it!

klenwell• 4 years ago

It was more of a challenge than expected. The ducting had ramps, multiple corners, debris/rubbish, and a mouse skeleton to navigate around.

My uncle worked for a company that designed and installed commercial ductwork. The joke he liked to tell while they were going in: "Make sure Bruce Willis can get around in there."

turdnagel• 4 years ago

Have you ever seen Blue Streak? There's a scene with a remote control car just like that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUGjZQtXkr4

account-5• 4 years ago

I love how you had to use wireless to solve your wireless problems.

all2• 4 years ago

Can we have this as a video game? This would be hysterical to do multiplayer. Maybe old style MarioKart balloons or something.

KineticLensman• 4 years ago

I visited an old Victorian National Trust house in the UK where the owner had used his rabbit-hunting ferrets to help install electric wiring under the floors rather than rip up the expensive wooden floors and panelling

dreamcompiler• 4 years ago

Off-topic but since you brought it up, does anybody ever use builtin central vacuum systems? I have several friends who have houses built during the era when these things were popular but none of them ever use the systems.

lreeves• 4 years ago

Yeah I definitely do, the hose is stupidly clunky but as someone with allergies the big advantage is there's no pass through of fine particles into the room you're vacuuming.

JadeNB• 4 years ago

Off-topic but since you brought it up, does anybody ever use builtin central vacuum systems? I have several friends who have houses built during the era when these things were popular but none of them ever use the systems.

I grew up in a house with one. I haven't lived there since 1998, but, yes, we used it all the time. As my sibling commenter lreeves says (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31361950), it's good if you have allergies.

brk• 4 years ago

Our house, built in 2004, has one. We’ve never used it. The closet that has the vacuum in it also has some other equipment and is a bit of an IDF for my home network. Strongly considering removing the vacuum unit entirely and using the ducting as conduit per the above comment!

ethbr0• 4 years ago

They made more sense before high efficiency motors miniaturized & high capacity lithium ion batteries existed.

Old vacuums were heavy.

Now, they're more useful to repurpose into shop vacs.

ajmurmann2• 4 years ago

My house has this. I've only used it when something was wrong with the alternative. I love the idea, but the hose is huge and ours has a minor defect where it turns itself off if you plug the hose in completely. Roomba and then a handheld Dyson for details is much more convenient

brandon272• 4 years ago

Yes! Use mine all the time. Strong sustained suction and much quieter. Less frequent bag emptying. Air quality seems better. Hose is a pain to deal with, but not a big deal as long as you have somewhere to store it.

theshrike795• 4 years ago

On the plus side, all of the noise and dust goes Somewhere Else.

On the minus side the long-ass hose is a huge pain.

In the 2020's you can just get a robovac for daily cleaning and a smaller unit for manual stuff.

WalterGR• 4 years ago

Everyone I've known that has them dispenses with the hose and uses it only as a - sort of - magic trash can for small objects.

throwaway092234• 4 years ago

I once wired up an apartment for ethernet using the old rj11 (telephone) wires. The phones were all run with cat5e so it was very easy. If you're only doing 100bt you only need two pairs for full duplex, leaving two other pairs to run two phone lines. There are a lot of homes built using cat5 for the phone systems with 2-3 unused pairs in each cable. All I did was swap out the faceplates for rj11/rj45 combo plates and rewire.

Of course these days you might just give up the land line entirely to get gigE over all 4 pair and just remove the old rj11 jacks.

toast05• 4 years ago

If you're only doing 100bt you only need two pairs for full full duplex, leaving two other pairs to run two phone lines.

10base-T and 100base-Tx both use two pair even for half duplex.

slyall• 4 years ago

Around 20 years ago the Internet suddenly became a thing but you had big hotels that were not pre-wired with RJ45 and the owners did not to spend lots of money running new cables.

One solution was to use the existing phone line in each room and put an ADSL modem on it. They got Internet (and kept analog phones) in every room by just upgrading the endpoints.

zw1234569• 4 years ago

for those who do not have old pipes to use, most of us have coax, there is something called MOCA, simply go onto amazon or whatever and search. it allows you to run your ethernet over the cable tv coax in your house "over the top" of any cable tv you have runnning on it. cable uses the first 800Mhz of spectrum on the coax, moca rides above 1ghz so they can coexist. You can extend ethernet from any coax outlet to any other coax outlet. not hole punching, not central vacuum or whatever.

ranger207• 4 years ago

Wow, running Ethernet over coax like it's the 80s again. Nothing new under the sun I guess

gabereiser5• 4 years ago

There is also Ethernet over powerline via powerline adapters. I run these in my apartment. From the router you plug a “host” adapter into an outlet, plug in the ethernet cable. Now you have a source. Throughout the rest of the apartment or house you plug-in a receiving adapter (there’s a little sync button to sync it to the host) and plug in an ethernet cable as an output. Plug that into a small switch if you need more connections. Repeat throughout your home. It’s just as cool as MOCA.

girvo5• 4 years ago

You can extend ethernet from any coax outlet to any other coax outlet. not hole punching, not central vacuum or whatever.

Man that would be perfect, except the main coax is already being used for my internet as is. I wish HFC for the NBN would hurry up and die already.

einichi• 4 years ago

I had no idea MOCA existed. Thanks for this.

nvgeele2• 4 years ago

If you do already have telephone and/or coax cabling in your home, it might be easier in the long run to just replace it to be honest. Ethernet sockets and cables are cheap, and don't consume power.

I was looking into MOCA, but eventually I decided against it due to pricing and latency concerns. In the end, I opened up the coax socket at my router, tied an ethernet cable to the coax cable, went to my office (room above the room where the router is), opened up the coax socket, pulled out the coax cable, and voila, I now had an ethernet cable in the duct.

keeganpoppen• 4 years ago

oh man this is why i read HN; i had no idea that this existed-- somehow-- and am the kind of person that runs ethernet cables all over the house rather than compromise in any way (powerline SUCKS ASS); and also i happen to currently live in a house with 1.2 trillion coax jacks, but no cat5/6 wiring to speak of, so this seems like it completely solves my problem in the best possible way. i don't know if i could possibly be more excited than this (i wish i were kidding more than i am).

yeah, sure, if i got a bunch of really fancy wireless equipment, that could probably swing it too, but would also require getting new WiFi cards to actually be able to take advantage.

Geezus-42• 4 years ago

Make sure you put a filter on the outside of your house if it is hooked to the cable system so you don't create feedback and screw everyone else around you who are using the cable system.

fuzzygroup• 4 years ago

For what its worth, I saw this comment and bought Moca hardware (ScreenBeam Bonded). Ten minutes of setup later after an Amazon delivery and I'm happier with Netflix / Prime / Hulu / etc. There is literally no comparison on the performance I'm now getting.

I have Fiber to the house and then an Eero first generation to provide Wifi. I also have an AmpliFi HD. And we still had regular (3x per week) problems with streaming video.

THANK YOU !!!!

rkagerer• 4 years ago

The great thing is you can upgrade the cable in future for newer technologies (eg. over a decade ago I bought used Mellanox equipment cheaper than 10G and ran fiber drops).

gonzo2• 4 years ago

Internet as a series of tubes!

closeparen• 4 years ago

If you are thinking about doing this make sure you use plenum-rated cable, otherwise in addition to packets your Ethernet cables will also be an excellent transport for fire.

conk• 4 years ago

I’m under the impression the concern is more about smoke being emitted during a fire which would then filter into a room and obscure escape paths.

This is more of an issue in a commercial building where you have lots of people who need to move through potentially narrow escape routes than it is in a home where every major room will have multiple means of egress.

tzs• 4 years ago

The various people who have replied to you with their own cable solutions is interesting. Mine seems downright uncouth by comparison.

I just ran mine up near where the wall meets the ceiling. When inside I look down a lot more than I look up so the ugliness of the cable doesn't bother me.

Here's part of my Ethernet cable run [1] through the living room. The other cable in that picture is a speaker cable for one of the home theater rear speakers.

[1] https://imgur.com/gallery/uZ0VvtM

bee_rider3• 4 years ago

They are sharing their stories because they are more clever than the rest of us.

I had a cable going diagonally across the wall for ages before the SO put their foot down and demanded something slightly more aesthetically pleasing. Now it follows the trim at least.

mananaysiempre• 4 years ago

You can also just own it, cables are not inherently ugly. I’m not saying go full on Centre Pompidou, but a couple of dirt-cheap adhesive clips in an appropriate colour can go a long way (though not if your walls are plastered). The setup in 8-Bit Guy[1]’s old studio is a good inspiration.

(Sometimes the clips can be a bit too cheap, in which case tearing off the original crappy adhesive and using some of that insanely-strong double-sided 3M tape helps.)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8uT9cgJorJPWu7ITLGo9Ww

Cthulhu_2• 4 years ago

There's cable gutter kits you can probably get at your local DIY store to make that look a bit neater if you're looking to improve. They're usually stick-on so no drilling or anything required.

There's also decorative ones that run along your floor, I forgot the English name, but they're a bit bigger than the usual ones and can hold a number of cables out of sight.

PretzelPirate• 4 years ago

Perhaps there’s a market for ethernet cables with LED wraps so you can run your cables near the ceiling AND have cool lighting effects in your house.

muxneo• 4 years ago

This is quite interesting idea!

mro_name2• 4 years ago

Like the beetle with honey on its antennae, pulling the thinnest first thread. Thanks for sharing!

Cthulhu_2• 4 years ago

I have a fairly modern house (built mid 2000's) but for some reason wasn't built with ethernet; what was there was phone and coax cable lines, going through these yellow PVC tubes embedded in the wall.

In theory it would be a matter of tying an ethernet cable to an existing coax cable and pull through, but in practice, eek. I don't believe those lines are continuous, or there may be debris or kinks in it somewhere in the wall. In the end it took an electrician half an hour and an improvised cable pump to get it through.

Lightbody• 4 years ago

You should double check that they didn't actually run CAT5e and just terminate using RJ11. My old house (built in 2007) did that.

hamilyon2• 4 years ago

Can't you use 220/110v power wiring to also transmit ethernet? Seems a bit simpler than laying new cable.

mhandley2• 4 years ago

Yes, in principle. In practice I found all the TP-Link ethernet-over-power equipment I used to use to me even less reliable than the WiFi I was trying to supplement. It would work fine for a while, then just lose sync, and I'd have to go round unplugging and replugging everything to get it to sync again. In the end I ran cat-6, but it took me a long time to conclude it was worth the effort. Now my only regret is I didn't decide to do it 10 years earlier.

Symbiote• 4 years ago

Depending on your wiring, the performance can be terrible.

I have one of these, advertised as 2000Mb/s but actually doing about 80, and in a small apartment. Every 6 months or so it connects to my neighbour's system without me doing anything.

SkeuomorphicBee2• 4 years ago

I'm so glad that in my country we build houses with ducts for cables, with two separate duct networks (one for AC power, and one for "telephony"), when it comes time to change technology we just push those spring-tipped cable guides through the ducts and then pull the new wire (or even just use the old outdated wire as a guide to pull the new one). I've installed Ethernet cables and even replaced AC wire (to a wider gouge or more phases) on rentals with no need for any McGyver shenanigans.

stratosmacker• 4 years ago

What country is this so I can read more and/or move?

Ruphin2• 4 years ago

I recently did some renovation work and the house had unused telephone (and COAX cable) wiring running to most rooms. Decided they would probably remain unused forever, so I replaced everything with cat6. You can usually use the old cables to pull through the new one. It's a bit of a chore and may require some specialised tooling for certain outlet brands/types, but it's so nice to just have ethernet outlets everywhere.

alexvoda• 4 years ago

It's too late now. We are already entering the age of laptops without headphone jacks.

If only people listened earlier.

amelius• 4 years ago

Wired would be so much better if it were just a replacement for wireless, where you just plug a wire between two points, and they start communicating without any configuration necessary if the two points already had a wireless communication going.

falcolas3• 4 years ago

It... usually does? For example, I can plug in an ethernet cable to my router and computer, and it works perfectly fine. And if I unplug, it's still connected, just by wifi.

timando2• 4 years ago

Now try with an SSH session open

layer8• 4 years ago

TIL why Bluetooth is called Bluetooth:

It was the epithet of King Harald Bluetooth, who united the disparate Danish tribes into a single kingdom; Kardach chose the name to imply that Bluetooth similarly unites communication protocols. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth#Name_and_logo]

Another thing, not mentioned in the article, is that microwave ovens tend to interfere with Bluetooth in my experience.

JonathonW• 4 years ago

And WiFi. And anything else that might happen to operate in the 2.4 GHz ISM band (like some cordless phones, back in the day).

falcolas3• 4 years ago

It absolutely does. Especially if folks are in the habit of opening the door before the microwave shuts itself down.

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS• 4 years ago

Tom Scott had one of his usual informative videos on this

https://youtu.be/VdmQp9M9jUo

HeyLaughingBoy• 4 years ago

Not just your experience. I worked for a company that made a lot of wireless devices. We had a pretty open-plan office and learned not to test anything around lunchtime.

Seriously. There were many times that I was working on something that suddenly had a spike in the receive failure rate and I'd look at the time and realize that somebody was heating up their lunch in the microwave.

wwweston2• 4 years ago

This is one reason why I'm still down on Apple's decision to remove 1/8" audio jacks from iPhones: they took away a decades old "just works" standard that wasn't subject to interference or battery or latency issues and replaced it with something that fundamentally is. Their efforts at filing down the sharp edges here with the airpods (and they have done as well as anyone could expect and more) don't change the fundamentals.

"Get a dongle" -- maybe I will when I finally give up my original iPhone SE, but I'm not going to be cheerful about paying an extra $30 for the privilege along with the overhead of keeping track of an additional thing.

reaperducer• 4 years ago

I'm not going to be cheerful about paying an extra $30

$9. Not $30. If you're going to grind a three-year-old axe, at least get your figures right.

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MMX62AM/A/lightning-to-35...

samatman• 4 years ago

I wish I had only bought three of those tiny things... finally ended up sugruing one of them to the lav mic.

wwweston2• 4 years ago

Thank you, I will now discount the economic fraction of my not-cheerfulness about dongles by about 70%.

The axe grinding, however, was brought up by Mr Kuhn. This is simply one instance of it, and the economic fraction isn't even the biggest part.

TimTheTinker• 4 years ago

If I'm not mistaken, removing the 1/8" audio jacks was significant in enabling the IP67+ water resistance ratings iPhones have these days.

That rating comes in handy for those who have butter fingers like me and drop their phones in water once in a while.

ozfive• 4 years ago

Couldn't a rubber gasket on the 1/8" jack help with water resistance?

boolemancer2• 4 years ago

I have a phone from 3 years ago with both an IP68 rating and a headphone jack. There's zero reason that Apple couldn't do the same, they just wanted to convince a lot of people to buy $150 headphones.

the_third_wave2• 4 years ago

I'm still using a number of Motorola Defy phones from 2010-2011 which are IP67+ rated (30 minutes at 1.5m water depth). Needless to say they have 3.5mm headphone as well as micro-USB connectors. The solution to this problem lies in a simple rubber plug which closes the hole when the connector is not in use.

Does it work? Well, one of the phones used to be my daughter's. She forgot to take it out of her pocket when she put her trousers in the washing machine so it ended up going through a full wash and spin cycle. It still worked, there was no water ingress in the phone itself. The earpiece did seem to have gotten damaged so I replaced it (5 new earpieces for $2.50 incl. shipping, I still have 4 left...). This phone is now used as a media player, running mpd which can be remotely controlled from other phones in the network. It connects to my jobsite radio (an oversized and overweight boombox I made around an old car MP3/CD/Radio with 2x40W speakers with bass reflex and a SLA starting helper/power pack) using that 3.5mm jack.

daurnimator• 4 years ago

My Sony Z3 Compact back in 2014 had IP68 and a headphone jack.

mackrevinack2• 4 years ago

no sony had waterproof headphone jacks a really long time ago.

a lot of their phones still have headphone jacks as far as i know. seems like they are the only decent company left in that regard

wpietri2• 4 years ago

Yeah, for me it's the "additional thing". I have a few different pairs of headphones depending on location and purpose. They're cheap, effective, and easily replaced if they fail. Having another doodad is just not appealing, whether I try to keep one on the phone at all times or buy a bunch that I add and remove from the headphones depending on what I'm using them for.

I've stuck with the Pixel A series precisely because of the headphone jack. I'm sad to see that once again Google is trying to remove it: https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/11/23067702/google-pixel-6a-...

girvo5• 4 years ago

My solution was to just leave the lighting-to-3.5mm adapter attached to my headphones, rather than my phone. But I was lucky enough that I had two dongles spare and only two sets of wired headphones I cared about. Works well though.

AA-BA-94-2A-56• 4 years ago

The "dongle" is apparently a pretty good for the price audio DAC. I'm generalising with my lack of knowledge, but a semi-decent DAC can improve audio quality and boost volume.

I usually just go wireless, although it has its problems especially with Spotify.

But if I decided to go wired, I would have no qualms about going wired with the Apple USB-C audio jack dongle.

gkop• 4 years ago

Yes and it’s under $10, much less than $30. (I think Apple subsidizes it)

eptcyka2• 4 years ago

How would you connect a usb-c dongle to an iPhone?

javajosh• 4 years ago

Do you have a reference? I've always assumed the Apple 1/8" USB-C dongle was passive.

turtlebits3• 4 years ago

If you need to move around, wired headphones suck. IME, interference and latency are non issues with BT. Otherwise, the lighting to 3.5mm dongle works perfectly.

At my desk, i do have wired headphones, but they are plugged into my TB dock.

Sebb767• 4 years ago

IME, interference and latency are non issues with BT.

Depends on your usecase. Music and Zoom is fine, but for competitive gaming I'd always go wired.

kitsunesoba2• 4 years ago

Yeah, at my desk I use a decent pair of cans (HD6XX or K550 depending on situation) hooked up to a nice DAC/amp since there, cords aren't much of an annoyance. Especially the type on larger headphones which is thicker and far less prone to tangling.

Away from the desk though? Bluetooth all the way. Even if I'm just lounging on my bed bluetooth is better because there's no wires for the cat that will most assuredly be in my lap to chew.

nomel6• 4 years ago

I have an anecdotal possible reason they were motivated: I broke four screens due to my wired headphones pulling the phone out of my hand/off a surface.

I now use AirPods, and it's, mentally, very different, since my head is no longer part of my phone.

w-ll• 4 years ago

I've had wired headphones save my phone from a drop

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I also use air pods now and am fairly certain this water fountain i walk past daily has a short causing some sort of arc that interferes with bluetooth as they always cut out walking past it.

aldebran• 4 years ago

The only reason they did that is to sell more AirPods. And it worked. They’re making billions by selling high margin wireless earphones.

mackrevinack2• 4 years ago

there was an obvious trend with other phone manufacturers as well. as soon as they made their own brand of wireless headphones/earbuds, the headphone jack was removed from their phone.

bee_rider3• 4 years ago

It is so annoying.

I got the dang dongle. Now, I want to listen to a podcast while doing to bed. Of course, because cellphone batteries only last like 24 hours, I have to charge overnight.

So now I've got some big fancy inductive charger, so I can leave my charging port open, to attach a dongle. But hey at least Apple saved $1 and got to remove the only non-proprietary port on the thing.

quickthrower2• 4 years ago

For me I think it has just reduced my podcast consumption. Too much hassle now.

Gareth321• 4 years ago

No no, friend, you just need to buy this additional $35 accessory. Problem solved!

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/HLJV2ZM/B/belkin-35-mm-au...

bodge5000• 4 years ago

Based off my experiences with my iPad, I'd really like an iPhone, but whether its for reasons of practicality or just principle at this point I refuse to cave to "just use a dongle" or any of that. The few times I've used wireless audio its presented me with a load of problems (having to charge something Im not used to having to charge, connectivity issues, poor audio quality, you know the drill) with the only upside being I can move further away from the thing that fits in my pocket.

I'm willing to use the equivalent of a dongle with my PC (audio interface), but obviously thats a very different use case. I'm just glad laptops haven't decided to take the "brave" action yet.

lproven6• 4 years ago

Yup. That's why my spare phone is a 6S+ and I am considering fitting its 3rd battery and getting it refurbed.

I have some fancy Sony Bluetooth noise-cancelling phones I bought just before my kid was born. They are _amazing_ but they should be for over £300. The noise cancelling is superb... so I use them when flying. Otherwise, too much faff.

My £20 Sony wired bass-boost earbuds sound nearly as good and live in my pocket and I use them far more, because of the convenience factor. They never need charging, pair 100% instantly the second I plug them in, latency is a couple of nanoseconds (a metrr of copper at the speed of light?) and quality is superb.

They also are excellent for voice calls, while the fancy Bluetooth cans are rubbish at picking up my voice.

nl• 4 years ago

This "managed cables on my desk" is reason enough to stick with wireless.

kazinator• 4 years ago

Most Bluetooth headsets introduce around 150-300ms of latency (the time between my computer receiving the audio from the Internet, and the sound coming out of the headphones)

I must have an incredible $10 BT speaker (used for quiet TV listening at night). I don't see any delay versus the regular audio (plan old 1/8" audio jack out of Android box, to stereo). You would notice 150-300 ms as serious lip synch issue.

lxgr• 4 years ago

Modern Bluetooth devices can communicate their internal latency, and modern AV stacks use that figure plus known physical layer latencies to delay the video just enough to compensate for that.

For interactive audio like games or video conferencing, this doesn‘t work of course.

can16358p7• 4 years ago

And recording music.

Working on Logic (just hobbyist here) and gaming are the only two activities that I connect my wireless headset via USB C. The latency (because of Bluetooth protocol itself) is too much.

For Zoom calls it doesn't affect me much.

boolemancer2• 4 years ago

If you're watching non-interactive content, the device can just play the audio a little ahead of the video to keep things synchronized.

I've noticed this with YouTube where sometimes the audio gets out of sync when listening on bluetooth headphones and I have to pause and re-play to force it to sync again.

timando2• 4 years ago

It might be that your device is also delaying the video by 150-300ms so it matches with the delayed BT audio.

nonrandomstring3• 4 years ago

Three notable things in this article are:

1) wireless degrades by degree and is hard to debug

2) it fails silently or just in non-obvious ways

3) people generally have no idea how good it is supposed to work, until they experience it working properly

I think there are many things, in life generally, but especially in tech, where these qualities conspire to give people a rotten time.

People will complain when things fail, or take action. "Graceful degradation" seems like a feature, but it can keep you on a slippery slope of increasing tolerance toward ever worse performance.

The complexity, and fuzzy "connection to everything" means that no one has to take responsibility. Maybe it's your neighbour? Or the trees? Or the alignment of Venus and swamp gas on a full moon?

Unless you have a full spectrum RF field meter and other very expensive test gear microwaves are "black magic" to even great engineers.

I'm sure when Apple met to discuss remotely degrading iPhone performance the words "They'll never notice" were spoken. Companies that sell complex services and oversell resources love this combo of fuzzy, hard to measure, diffuse, naturally erratic behaviour, broad tolerance, mixed with vague customer expectations.

They prevent you from knowing, and comparing, what you should be getting, and what you are getting.

Many recent development directions, 5G, secure enclaves, encrypted updates and exfiltration (telemetry), are set to increase the "random magic factor" and make gear even more precarious and mysterious to the end user.

mypalmike• 4 years ago

"I'm sure when Apple met to discuss remotely degrading iPhone performance the words "They'll never notice" were spoken. Companies that sell complex services and oversell resources love this combo of fuzzy, hard to measure, diffuse, naturally erratic behaviour, broad tolerance, mixed with vague customer expectations."

I suspect Apple would prefer their products to be reliable rather than erratic.

nonrandomstring3• 4 years ago

They quite deliberately decided to make them degraded (to prolong battery life). And they were fined for it [1]. Nobody mentioned erratic in that case.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51413724

jolux3• 4 years ago

See, the alternative to what Apple did is having phones that randomly shut down at peak load. I have had this happen to me on a degraded battery in a cold Rochester winter. It’s not fun! It means I can’t even trust my phone to be a phone anymore. I think that is more of a “random magic factor” than things getting slower.

Nextgrid4• 4 years ago

The right solution would be to degrade performance and tell the user about it, not do so silently.

er4hn• 4 years ago

I think your posting of this comment may have had a "graceful degradation" for an improved user experience. Unfortunately it has appeared twice with people commenting different things on each thread ;)

edit: disregard this, I don't see the other thread anymore. Maybe I was the one experiencing magic fuzz factors.

nonrandomstring3• 4 years ago

I blame bad wifi. :)

Nextgrid4• 4 years ago

Unless you have a full spectrum RF field meter and other very expensive test gear

You actually have that, at least for the frequency range that matters: the wireless hardware in your computer.

Your wireless card absolutely knows how good/bad the RF environment is - it wouldn't work without it. The problem is that none of this information is exposed to the user.

The Wi-Fi "signal strength" meter is consistently useless on basically every device I've tried. In fact, I wonder what would it take to actually make it go down, since it's happy sitting at max level even if you can't get a single packet through. I guess it must be measuring RSSI, when the one that matters to the user is "how many packets am I actually missing" which can be obtained by keeping stats on TCP flows or pinging the default gateway.

Duologic2• 4 years ago

I can really recommend cable sleeves/tubes, I use these on my desk: https://www.amazon.com/Alex-Tech-10ft-Protector-Sleeving/dp/...

cjohnson3182• 4 years ago

Great suggestion. Q: Do these vacuum well? Or should I just replace them every couple of years?

Duologic2• 4 years ago

I've bought them 2 years ago including a few spares, haven't replaced them since (not sure what 'vacuum' means in this context).

jrockway• 4 years ago

Yeah, I've never really seen the appeal. Wires are just so reliable. I am always in meetings with "sorry, my headphones died, can you repeat that" or people mysteriously vanishing because their laptop can't charge as fast as Zoom draws power and their computer just dies. I have a wired mic, headphones, and power, and it just never breaks.

Wireless is just temporary, if you have wireless headphones, you have to plug in a wire to charge them. If your computer has a battery built in, you have to plug it in every day to charge. So it's just an extra chore that makes your life worse. Not that exciting.

Maybe everyone fantasizes about being a digital nomad. I do not. I have a great desk, chair, keyboard, and 3 monitors. I couldn't work without them. If I want to see the world, I'll go do that without bringing my computer. A vacation with your computer is just work.

A question I'm asked is "what if there's a power outage" but we have had about 10 total minutes of power outage here in Brooklyn in the 10 years I've lived here (during Hurricane Sandy). My thought is I just won't do any work if there isn't any power. We waste an hour a day dealing with wireless not working, 10 minutes every 10 years is no big deal. ("But what if it's the big one!?" Then my ISP's backup batteries will also be drained and I still can't work.)

can16358p7• 4 years ago

I like spending time around my house, sometimes in garden, sometimes around a coffee shop, some work/some socializing/free time.

This can't be possible (at least practically) with a wired setup. I've almost never ran out of battery on my laptop or headphones and never have issues with Wi-Fi (worst case I have wireless hotspot on phone anyway).

I don't see any problem with a wireless setup other than convenience, where the extra capacity/reliability of wires isn't needed 99.9% of the time anyway.

varajelle• 4 years ago

It's not all black and white. Wireless sure has its uses.

I don't see any problem with a wireless

One of the problem explained in the article is that you may not realize the problems.

---

So the idea would be to use wires by default (when sitting at your desk), and switch to wireless when you want mobility.

turtlebits3• 4 years ago

The ability to not be tethered to your computer desk/office is a big one reason to use a laptop. Your computer isn't just for doing work.

I think a good balance is a laptop with a single wire to USB-C/Thunderbolt dock, with external monitors and wired peripherals, ethernet.

If you move around, wired headphones are a PITA, Airpods have pretty much solved wireless audio for me (especially consistent device switching).

throwawayboise• 4 years ago

I don't have too many issues with WiFi, but my house is sort of isolated. I don't have much if any interference from neighbors. If I lived in an apartment complex with 10 or more different WiFi networks in the same airspace it might be different.

Bluetooth on the other hand is an absolute no-go. I have had uniformly bad experiences with it, and refuse to use any device that depends on a bluetooth connection.

Gigachad5• 4 years ago

I live in a high rise and it still isn’t an issue. The floors and walls block out almost all wireless signals. I can see a handful of networks but they are all on 1 bar strength. On speed tests I can reasonably get 600mbps on wifi.

AussieWog932• 4 years ago

I am always in meetings with "sorry, my headphones died, can you repeat that" or people mysteriously vanishing because their laptop can't charge as fast as Zoom draws power and their computer just dies.

You're missing the point. Wireless technology failing is a fantastic excuse to get out of Zoom meetings!

notacoward3• 4 years ago

Reliable, yes. Easy to implement? Not necessarily. If you don't own the property, you might not be allowed to run your own wires. Even if you do own it, some houses make it more difficult/expensive than others to run wires everywhere they need to be (e.g. consider formerly-external walls full of obstructions in an older house). Let's not make the classic HN mistake of assuming everyone's overpaid, able/willing to pay for the privilege of owning the right kind of property. My family does pretty well with a combination of Ethernet, G.hn powerline, and wireless. Then again, we don't subscribe to the Apple groupthink either so MacOS's misbehavior is not an issue for us.

olyjohn• 4 years ago

Please. It's not a privilege to run Ethernet any more than having Internet and a laptop is a privilege. A spool is like $100, and you don't need to drill gigantic holes and run 60 wires back to a central drop to a 10 gig switch. I have run Ethernet cables in all my rentals (even when I was working minimum wage), usually only need 1 or 2 at the most. It's not rocket science either. You can go around the outside of your house, just like how a cable TV or phone installer will do it.

Landlords never notice or care. Just don't make it look shitty, they will just think it's a phone jack anyways.

mewse• 4 years ago

people mysteriously vanishing because their laptop can't charge as fast as Zoom draws power and their computer just dies

This doesn’t seem to have anything to do with your “wires are more reliable” thesis, does it? A laptop with onboard devices drawing wall/battery power would be drawing more power than if those devices each have their own separate batteries, right?

CrazyStat2• 4 years ago

A laptop with onboard devices drawing wall/battery power would be drawing more power than if those devices each have their own separate batteries, right?

Not necessarily, because the laptop has to do additional work transmitting Bluetooth/whatever for the wireless devices. In any case, his thesis appears to include preferring a permanently wired desktop computer to a laptop, as well as preferring wired peripherals to wireless.

Personally I use mostly wired peripherals, but I am a sucker for a wireless headset. Being able to stay on a call while I walk over to the other side of the room to grab something is a great freedom, and plugging the headset in at night is not a big deal.

recursive4• 4 years ago

For me the appeal is that I don't need to figure out how to run wires all over my house, or have them stapled to the walls or something. Wifi works well enough that I would never get to a net positive after considering the ethernet wrangling project inconvenience.

Gigachad5• 4 years ago

Wireless makes cleaning and vacuuming so much easier. Also means I can walk around while in calls. And it just works well enough that the times it doesn't are more than made up for the times it does work.

vonseel3• 4 years ago

WiFi is fine for most consumers, it’s only really a problem if you have a big enough of a house to need multiple APs with wired backhaul, but the cabling isn’t there so you go with wireless backhaul / meshing. Wired backhaul always works better in my experience.

RajT884• 4 years ago

Crimping ethernet is a mandatory tech skill for every geeky homeowner. It's not that hard, but there's a few things it takes a while to figure out are really important. Once you do that, you can do it really consistently.

Wireless is nice and all. Powerline ethernet is great when it works out of the box, and a Kafkaesque nightmare when it does not.

toast05• 4 years ago

You don't even need to crimp unless you really want to. Everything should go to punchdown blocks, either on the room jacks or a patch panel. Crimping is for the patch cables, if you can find manufactures cables for less, no need to make your own.

vonseel3• 4 years ago

I suspect the biggest barrier to most homeowners running Ethernet besides not knowing that it’s not that difficult is insulated walls. Running some cables through walls without insulation to the attic and making some drops is not problem, but if you have insulation in the way the job is a lot more difficult.

ajmurmann2• 4 years ago

I absolutely love the idea of working for a month from one place and a month from another. But the problems you call out are very real and I'm honestly shocked that nobody had solved them to take advantage of the fact that relatively wealthy techies can now work from everywhere. Airbnbs will advertise Wi-Fi and maybe a tiny desk with a kitchen chair. I'd pay a premium for a place with Ethernet, a real desk, a real desk chair and a proper, external screen. I worked for a few weeks from my parent's house in Germany, but even that required need to ship them a long Ethernet cable, a screen and keyboard ahead of time. I don't want to buy all this every time I want to work a few weeks remotely.

ziml77• 4 years ago

Wireless headsets are something I understand because I'm someone who never wants to go back to wired headsets. I always hated being tethered to my device by my head. And when they were off my head I would always end up snagging on the cord in some way and pulling them to the floor. And I am often in calls with people where I want to get up and grab something or even do something else. It's very nice to be able to just stand up and walk away from my PC while still being able to hear and talk.

The fact that they need to be charged doesn't matter. My current ones have a swappable battery with the battery that's not in use able to be charged by slotting it into the wireless reciever that sits on the desk. But there's also newer wireless headsets that have 30-40 hours of battery life. So you only need to plug them in overnight (or every few days depending on usage).

mbeex• 4 years ago

Wireless headsets are something I understand because I'm someone who never wants to go back to wired headsets.

That's also true for me. Ultimately, I think it's a matter of using good judgment. All my major devices - even laptops - run on cables by default, tablets/phones wireless of course. For keyboards and mouses (OK, not WiFi in a strict sense) it depends.

nso95• 4 years ago

We waste an hour a day dealing with wireless not working

seems unlikely

1122332• 4 years ago

Wires are just so reliable.

Not in my experience. Ethernet cables have bern reliable, but most have connector latches that self destruct.

HDMI cables are a lottery, and the prize is in no way related to the ticket price.

mini/micro USB connectors go out in about year, depending on use.

All 3.5 mm audio cables seem to have half-life of around 4 months, regardless of price. The only survivour cable came as an extension with old Sennheiser earbuds.

In comparison, I have yet to experience those bad bluetooth earbuds just stopping to work.

[edit] not to mention all the equipment with soldered-in cables that are either too long or too short and cannot be replaced. Hi, homepod mini!

kuschku3• 4 years ago

I've got ethernet cables that I've been using since 2011 without them breaking. My headphones are in fact from 2008, all I've got to do is replace the leather pads every 5 years.

I'm still using the USB-C cables from my Nexus 5X today, no problem with them.

With HDMI cables I just buy them, connect them to my GPU and wait for the AMD driver to tell me the maximum bandwidth they support. Super easy way to measure what they'll support and what not. So now I've got a dozen that work at 4K 60Hz HDR just fine.

On the other hand, I've never been able to get a single bluetooth device to sync reliably for more than 5 minutes.

gmueckl• 4 years ago

This post makes me wonder what I do differently. I've some cables wired up here that are easily 5+ years old and I've had micro USB charging ports survive daily plug/unplug cycles for 4 years. My number one cause for cable-related malfunction is when I don't plug something in correctly.

I think the mouse that feasted on cable insulation in my backpack may actually have made it to second place. That's an entirely different story...

cjohnson3182• 4 years ago

There's a tradeoff with wired headphones. Sometimes they act like their own antenna, and if you live in an area with very poor reception, then that becomes a huge problem. In that scenario, bluetooth earbuds are actually preferable, until they run out of battery mid-call.

BenjiWiebe2• 4 years ago

Not saying this is impossible, but it doesn't make sense to me.

The phone antenna isn't a straight piece of wire entwined with your cable (probably not even parallel with it), and your cable isn't connected to the antenna port.

How would the cable block the signal?

cyral• 4 years ago

Maybe they mean the noise you can hear from the phone as it communicates. I wonder if it is more pronounced when reception is bad as it searches for other towers? I had wired headphones + mic with an amplifier for a while and if I put my phone anywhere near it you'd hear the classic GSM buzz.

betwixthewires2• 4 years ago

So they do share ground, which is where the interference comes from. You might find sometimes even stereo sound speakers pick up a ticking noise right when you receive a phone call. This is pretty common with speaker systems, wired headphones being a type of speaker system.

Also, a lot of SoCs with FM antennas use the 3.5mm ground as the antenna, so they are wired into the SoC in such a way that they can receive undesired interference.

salawat• 4 years ago

That would be a problem... Why? You're wired.

ryukoposting2• 4 years ago

I yearn for the day that I will get to work at a company that gives me a wired connection at my desk.

tablespoon3• 4 years ago

I yearn for the day that I will get to work at a company that gives me a wired connection at my desk.

It boggles my mind that any company wouldn't do that. Wifi sucks so bad and offices are so dense with people. The cube at my office have several network drops each, across many different cubicle systems. I figured they were standard equipment.

ryukoposting2• 4 years ago

Startups.

can16358p7• 4 years ago

Wireless (and LTE hotspots) gives me freedom to get my laptop and work with wherever I like with my laptop.

I don't need cabled connections of any kind 99.9% of the time, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth headset, and my laptop "just work". Any stability and performance gain from using a wired setup is negligible in daily life (apart from very specific tasks) and convenience of wireless is far outweighing any gains of wires.

Been this way for many years with zero issues.

So yeah, I like this "trap".

anonu• 4 years ago

Yet were moving quickly to millimeter wave 5G tech... which apparently doesn't have the same congestion issues that WiFi or other older cell technologies do.

zw1234569• 4 years ago

I would not call it a trap, I would call it a trade off. But I am quibbling over semantics. I would reference Shannon here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon%E2%80%93Hartley_theore... which essentially says the following: C ~= B * SINR ( see the link for exactness ) C is the capacity of the link (think bps) B is the amount of spectrum ( how many Mhz can I get across the medium ) and SINR is Signal to Interference and Noise Ratio

If you think about this, of course, wireless will be limited spectrum, there are only so many Mhz that is made available for whatever wireless standard you are thinking about, Wifi, 4G, 5G, Bluetooth, whatever.

And, obviously, wireless will struggle with Noise and Interference.

Wired solutions, whether shielded twisted pair (e.g. CAT6) or Coax, or Fiber or Waveguide, whatever, will do much better on SINR, you have thermal noise sure, but generally, it would be a much quieter medium.

Also, you would not have the FCC saying you only get X Mhz, whatever you can get across that medium you get to use.

Thinking about all of these factors then of course, Wired will generally win out, all things being equal.

The Trade off, is that wireless is more convenient.

xeyownt2• 4 years ago

It is more convenient on the short term.

On the long term, if you look for reliability and hassle-free setup, you lose the benefit of convenience.

kuschku3• 4 years ago

When you’re using 100% of the spectrum on your wires, you can just put down a second shielded cable. When you’re using 100% of the spectrum of the air, that’s it.

richardfey• 4 years ago

The further problem with the Logitech device can be explained by driver or firmware updates: the driver may upload a firmware blob when device is powered up and if the combination of the two is not well tested you might get some unwelcome surprise. Another more mundane reason for jankyness could be related to I/O saturation: your mouse will not necessarily be prioritised when a variety of workloads are being handled by your OS.

Pxtl2• 4 years ago

This. I love Logitech hardware but G hub is software cancer.

tempnow987• 4 years ago

I love wired connectections.

The LATENCY is noticeably better. If you are on a zoom call with both parties on headsets and on wired connections (so no echo cancellation needed) or other audio connections I find it noticeably better (less stepping on each other etc).

I have AT&T's fiber product (2 Gbps) and the office has their biz product (300 Mbps) and latency between is good and to google et al is great (< 10 ms in almost all situations).

nomel6• 4 years ago

At home, my WiFi vs Ethernet ping is just a few ms different. For data, my WiFi 6 devices (most of them now) are faster over WiFi.

But, at work, there's hundreds of ms difference between ethernet and WiFi. I assume it because most offices use mesh networks now, and none here are WiFi 6.

So, network setup and router quality definitely play a part. My AP was ~$200, used for streaming VR.

nezgar• 4 years ago

Wired ethernet resolves most of my own teams/zoom/webex etc anxiety that any glitches in anyones meeting video or audio are probably NOT caused by my own connection....

jchw5• 4 years ago

A little pro-tip for those about to run wires through your walls: use shielded cables. Also, probably don’t run them anywhere near AC wire. Some people recommend a full stud between them, whereas the NEC allows them to be run next to eachother as long as there is at least 50mm of clearance.

I think this is usually recommended for safety reasons, to prevent mistakes from causing high voltage to get into your low voltage runs and become a shock hazard or potentially start a fire. But, I have noticed empirically that running a bit too close with the wrong cable does absolutely result in some serious interference issues. So… your wired connections are not free of signal issues either, especially if you want to neatly run them in-wall.

edit: also, worth noting that this is a highly U.S. centric piece of advice. I mean I’m sure it applies elsewhere, but both electrical systems and construction differences probably make some of the details very different, and I’m not cultured enough to know exactly which and how.

fulafel5• 4 years ago

Ethernet on copper cabling doesn't seem to be keeping up, shielded or not, previous and current gen ethernet (10g/100g) over copper is really power hungry or nonexistent.

jchw5• 4 years ago

Consumer devices hardly even have 10Gbit, and often don’t even have WiFi 6. Even if they did, my NAS running on spinning rust is not bottlenecked on network bandwidth even slightly, and affording the amount of switching fabric necessary to sustain 10Gbit across all my devices is not economical right now.

I mean, this might be different for fiber in some regards, but I doubt that is terribly economical either.

walterbell4• 4 years ago

Some of the "shielded" ethernet cables on Amazon are questionable.

Monoprice sells double-shielded (SFTP) enterprise-grade cables directly.

thfuran3• 4 years ago

Pretty much everything sold on Amazon these days is questionable. A lot of their Ethernet cables are definitively trash though.

musicale• 4 years ago

Qt included a component which would poll for networks every 30 seconds whenever a “network access manager” was instantiated, causing pretty much any Qt app using the network to degrade your wifi for ~5 out of every 30 seconds.

This intrigues me and makes me wonder:

1. Why should it need to do this?

2. Why should this degrade the wireless network performance? (I don't recall the details of wi-fi but shouldn't it be able to do this passively without disrupting anything?)

foobarian• 4 years ago

2. if it needs to send/receive at the lowest bitrate (used for discovery/broadcasting) that takes up a ton of wall clock time, which is equivalent to a lot of bandwidth at the highest bitrate.

hedgehog• 4 years ago

1. If you want the machine to switch to stronger / more preferred networks when available it needs to know about them somehow.

2. The radio in most (all?) WiFi radios can only tune to one channel at a time, scanning all channels requires retuning to each one, which takes a little time.

ogoffart• 4 years ago

1. Why should it need to do this?

I vaguely remember from the time (~10 years ago) is that this was a requirement for phones (eg, when Qt is used on a Nokia phone) that the network request go to the interface preferred by the user (so not to use the cell network when wifi is available). Anyway, the whole thing was implemented in a "bearer manager" plugin, and that thing was quite buggy. https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/bearer-management.html

I think apart from people running Qt on phone, this had virtually no use. And yet this was enabled by default on all platform, and causing lots of troubles. What we ended up doing for the application we were shipping was to make sure that this plugin was not included in the final package.

walnutclosefarm• 4 years ago

My broadband access has been wireless ethernet, over a roughly 5 mile hop from the nearest tower, for roughly 20 years. I'd still be using 14.4kpbs modems over copper telephone wire without it. From the post in the South pasture where we pick that up, it's wired to the two dwellings on the place, and pure wireless after that, including extension APs in two more outbuildings, and a LR outdoor AP. Rarely have any trouble with any of it. Of course, I don't have to worry about my neighbor's router causing interference - the nearest neighbor with broadband is half a mile away, most of which, from a line of site point of view, is through dirt. Before I retired, I was CTO for a hospital where we ran 14,000+ APs on roughly 100 sites, serving 100,000 or so employees, patients and visitors daily. I regularly used it at a restaurant across the street from one of our buildings. The service was highly reliable and available nearly everywhere. (And, believe me, if you took away a surgeon's wifi that she or he used to do quick email and other updates between surgeries, you'd know it in short order.

So, yeah, wifi can require some management, but the thought of running all those laptops, phones (you couldn't rely on cell service - which of course is another form of wireless - inside most of the buildings - worked some places, not others), and portable medical devices only on wired ethernet is a non starter.

As for other forms of wireless - Bluetooth and BLE have their issues, but you get an awful lot in return.

franklyemphatic• 4 years ago

If you mess with a doctor's icon placement you hear about it. If a computer they use looks old I hear about it. So, yeah. Don't mess with wifi.

keithnz• 4 years ago

I have everything wired except my headset (Technics EAH-A800), which works well, I haven't had any problems with it. Network cable vs Wifi is a REALLY different experience in terms of performance and ping, which I care more about for gaming than for work.

chrismcb• 4 years ago

I dunno my wireless just works. Two people in the house running meetings on wireless. TV is on wireless. Everything seems fine. My wireless keyboard acts up sometimes, but I blame the keyboard not wireless. I do run wires when I can, but that is mostly just the equipment near the modem Perhaps it's because we are in the suburbs and the house is fairly open. Or maybe I just have my wireless setup properly.

sgtnoodle3• 4 years ago

I ventured under my 120 year old house to make a couple Ethernet runs. It took a lot of meditation on my part to bear doing it. On one run, I needed my wife to pull on a fish line from above, but then she had to feed the baby, and so I watched an episode of star trek on my phone for half an hour while wedged between wood stilts.

6 months later, I got a notice that the cable I used was recalled for a bad UL rating. Monoprice had to pay a contractor had to come out and replace it. When coordinating the work, I warned the company that it was a very dirty job that would require two people. They sent an older guy out all alone, and he poked around for half an hour then left, saying he would come back with PPE and a helper. A couple weeks later the same guy came back alone and unprepared again. Finally the third time he came back with a much younger guy and bunny suits, and they redid the runs.

I had stapled the cables up every couple meters, and followed a Manhattan path based on where I could crawl to. they just fished it in a straight line, and left it resting in the dirt. They presumably billed Monoprice several thousand dollars...

sgtnoodle3• 4 years ago

Oh, and they left the box of recalled cable that I hadn't installed yet, so I have like 400ft of free but uninstallable CAT6.

HWR_144• 4 years ago

Free but uninstallable CAT6 has some uses. I've seen quite a few street artists use the thin copper wires to make art, usually jewelry. But with 400 ft, I could see some art or construction projects that make use of it as a physical not electrical product.

humpday69• 4 years ago

What is a "bunny suit" in this context? The web results make me wonder if there was miscommunication about hiring plumbers for a "very dirty job" if you know what I mean.

mintplant• 4 years ago

Something like this: https://www.nciclean.com/disposable-bunny-suits.html

(For reference, I searched "bunny suit ppe" to find an example.)

can16358p7• 4 years ago

Now having read this comment, I can't think of anything non-dirty.

ggm• 4 years ago

I convinced my 8yo offspring that crawling like an alcatraz escapee over the under-house dust, asbestos, DDT, and probably decaying possum was "fun" and we did it together.

OTOH he got the most fun using the power tools drilling the holes.

vvanders2• 4 years ago

I often joke that I have an amateur radio license and only use wired earbuds for conference calls.

The 2.4ghz ISM bands are just noisy, sometimes all it takes is a poorly shielded microwave to take out everything in a 50 yard radius.

panny• 4 years ago

June 2020

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23589798

Pxtl2• 4 years ago

Yeah, I still use a desktop with wired everything except headset. I need my wireless headset, I pace in long meetings.

causality0• 4 years ago

I ran a sixty foot HDMI cable and a powered USB extension cable through my crawlspace from my office desktop to my living room television. Relaxing on the couch is so much better than sitting at a desk.

shmerl• 4 years ago

No question about it. WiFi can't come even close to wired connection, especially in latency.

chazeon• 4 years ago

I agree very much with what Ben have said. In my experience, I elect to use my once Bluetooth noice-cancelling overhead phone with a 3.5mm cable plugged, and voice from webcam. Life with Zoom are much improved than using it as wireless headset.

chaostheory• 4 years ago

One con for Bluetooth that wasn’t mentioned is security. It’s an issue if you have this setup in a people dense space.

jhugo2• 4 years ago

For instance: most people, when their video call stutters, blame their Internet service provider. That’s understandable, since most ISPs are overpriced oligopolists with barely-usable software and horrible customer service. However, every time I can remember helping someone track down the source of their connection problems, the culprit has turned out to be their wifi.

Can confirm. I work on videoconferencing infrastructure, and easily 90+% of the end-user quality problems we investigate are caused by the end-user's WiFi. It's very difficult from a customer support perspective too, because it's common for WiFi to have latency and loss problems that are severe for real-time video or audio but not so noticeable for bulk TCP transfers (like most speed tests) or web browsing. So communicating the issue to users is hard.

crackercrews• 4 years ago

Opposite experience here. It's always the provider, and when the provider fiddles with settings on their end it fixes the issue.

jhugo2• 4 years ago

You'd be in that 10% then :)

I'd also suspect people on HN might tend to have paid more attention to their WiFi setup than the average user.

lproven6• 4 years ago

Remember the secret password: "shibboleet".

DeathArrow• 4 years ago

I like speed on my desktop and there's no way I can have 10Gbps link with wireless.

1ncorrect• 4 years ago

Wireless network links should be exclusively the domain of nomadic, temporary or sacrificial endpoints.

If the device is expected to be used in a fixed spacial or temporal manner, or you care about the data conveyed across the link, constrain its path as much as possible with a waveguide.

walterbell4• 4 years ago

Yes, even WPA3 remains vulnerable to various attacks.

2143• 4 years ago

For instance, on my Mac’s built-in bluetooth, my mouse (a Logitech MX Master) displayed noticeable jank—stopping, then jumping, instead of moving smoothly.

Anecdata. On my Mac the MX Master 3 works flawlessly via Bluetooth. However, it has janks when I use it on my recently purchased ThinkPad running Linux.

Similarly, when connected to Mac bluetooth, my Jabra Evolve 75 headset would frequently have the mic or sound drop. It (mostly) worked fine on its own dongle.

Again, all my bluetooth headphones work fine on my Mac, but on some (not all) of my Linux computers it sometimes work and sometimes doesn't. I don't know if it's Linux or the hardware.

Also, on the aforementioned ThinkPad, when I connect a new device via bluetooth the wifi disconnects and immediately reconnects 40% of the time. Don't know what's up with that.

I've been using Linux long enough to take things like these in its stride :)

(Btw, it was after I was issued a Mac by my employer that I started using Bluetooth devices regularly; before that in Linux it was mouse via IR-usb-thing, wired headphones etc.)

I agree with the general sentiment that wired devices are inherently more reliable. But I don't know if we should collectively move towards wired, or improve the reliability of wireless.

notfed• 4 years ago

Again, all my bluetooth headphones work fine on my Mac, but on some (not all) of my Linux computers it sometimes work and sometimes doesn't.

The issue I'm currently dealing with is that my Bluetooth ZMK keyboard works flawlessly on Linux but won't pair with a Mac. I guess devices are nuanced.

renox• 4 years ago

Yes! On my part of the bed video streaming with an IPad works OK but often this isn't the case for my wife! How am I supposed to fix this???

mro_name2• 4 years ago

also having a dedicated place for work is a bliss. Nearby the outlet.

grujicd2• 4 years ago

I have another problem with bluetooth - sharing. With a cable you always know the device is connected to you and you only. With bt, another person's device can overtake your audio even if they don't mean to. They were paired once and now simple notification sound can take over your bluetooth speaker. These invisible connections from multiple devices are hard to track and often cause problems.

theshrike795• 4 years ago

This is 99% a UI/UX problem, not a bluetooth or wireless issue.

HWR_144• 4 years ago

I find bluetooth sharing to be a feature. I can make my headphones enumerate which devices they are connected to. They can also connect to both my computer and my phone simultaneously, so I can be using the computer audio mostly and have my phone override the audio input/output when a call comes in.

bmicraft• 4 years ago

I don't know what kind of headphones you have but none of mine can be "taken over" while music is playing. Most don't do that.

grujicd2• 4 years ago

Most of my problems are with JBL Charge 4, which I often share with friends. Multiple phones get paired and connected during a day. Notifications definitely can stop currently played music from another phone in this case.

bowsamic• 4 years ago

I’ve never had any of these issues, except for Bluetooth latency

wodenokoto• 4 years ago

Any program on your computer can ask your wireless card to enumerate the nearby networks. This causes it to go into “polling mode,” where it spends less time transmitting data and more time listening for routers advertising their network info

Except for the Wi-Fi widget I click on when I want to choose Wi-Fi network, what software needs this access? I can think of two use cases:

- A Wi-fi diagnostics application.

- Data collection to co-relate Wi-Fi networks and locations.

I don't see why the OS doesn't simply refuse going into to polling except for white listed applications, because out of the box there is only one application that needs to ask for polling (my wi-fi widget) and I don't care if Google Maps wants to geo-tag the wifi in my surroundings, so just give it the list from the last whitelisted poll. And if I need a Wi-Fi diagnostic tool, then I am an advanced enough user to figure out how to white list it.

mod• 4 years ago

A lot of smart devices create their own local wireless network for setup, and manage the process of switching between them.

Pretty valid use case IMO.

a-dub• 4 years ago

lol. been saying this since 2007.

although wifi works pretty well in professional installs these days and bluetooth earbuds were a godsend with masks.

bluetooth connections are still unacceptably flakey though... even with top shelf name brand gear.

aheilbut• 4 years ago

I just have a 50ft ethernet cable running across the floor.. 3 years and I haven't yet tripped.

eafkuor• 4 years ago

That means that if I’m chatting with a friend in New York, the audio data will take about 50ms to get from them to my computer, and, say, 200ms—4x as long—to get from my computer to my ears. Since high latency ruins the natural flow of conversations, I’d like to eliminate as much of it as I can.

For whatever reason this isn't a problem for me. I work with a laptop connected to my WiFi, use bluetooth headphones, and have 2-3h of meetings per day. Not a problem whatsoever.

zerd• 4 years ago

Maybe because you just talk, or just listen. Having a conversation where you go back and forth is when it's the worst, especially with multiple people.

FooHentai• 4 years ago

Good wireless is expensive, and not maintenance free. This is at least true in any business setting. At home, wireless is simply fantastic for mobile devices, but wiring in fixed items (PC, consoles, TVs) is 100% the way to go.

Also, being conscious of what's in the air space is as crucial as the quality of your wireless equipment. It's all for nought if your microwave, AV sender, bluetooth headset or crappy 2.4Ghz wireless mouse is shitting into the same airspace as your network connection.

I say all of this as someone that pushed HARD to switch our office from wired to wireless when we moved. Aside from the direct cost saving (~200k in wiring alone) the side benefits of things like not having to use a crappy 'presentation PC' in each meeting room was a complete revolution. You just bring your laptop, and it's not even going to shit itself roaming from wired to wireless because boom, you were on wireles the entire time anyway. Same principle about wiring in fixed items applied though, we put fancy ipad meeting room control stuff in, and dropped extra on ethernet adapters for them because they're fixed devices, wireless is not a good choice for that despite ipads being wireless devices primarily.

Lack of visibility is probably the biggest shortcoming for enthusiast-level home wireless. I've had good outcomes buying ex-business Aruba gear and repurposing it for home use, but it's power hungry and you need to know what you're doing to get it off the ground. But being able to actually see what's sitting in the spectrum and watch the impact of things like turning on the microwave for ten seconds is a game changer.

magic_hamster• 4 years ago

Wireless is an added bonus to my router which we mostly use wired. It's nice to have for guests and mobile devices.

leokennis• 4 years ago

Counter point:

- I can move houses and just put all my WiFi mesh nodes anywhere and I’m online again.

- I can play music from my phone while cooking, and use the phone besides my stove to view the recipe simultaneously

- I can browse photos and create a photo book online sitting next to my wife on the couch, instead of sitting at an uninspiring desk in the working from home room

alkonaut• 4 years ago

Wi-Fi used to be bad around the 802.11b era. After 802.11n I barely even see a need to upgrade. A cheap consumer router easily covers my 2-floor house with a half dozen clients without any dead spots.

I imagine concrete houses or congestion might be different but I can’t even find a reason to get a mesh system in my house.

Wireless mice and keyboards also work great. I use them even for gaming where many swear by wired.

You can’t hide a mouse cable thing like you can hide an internet cable. It’s literally on your desk no matter what you do, so the upside of wireless there beats the downside. Same with wired internet to a smartphone…

I still don’t trust BT audio though.

swah• 4 years ago

I haven't had problems with Bluetooth in a while - love my TWS earbuds, RF mouse, BT mouse and BT/RF keyboard. Those devices last for months/years on two AA batteries (other than the headphones of course). I will concede that the audio delay degrades the call experience a bit.

Wifi on the other hand... I have no idea if its interference or the modem. It worked fine for months, then all of sudden my connection went to 2Mbps. And my Chromecast can no longer connect to it, etc..

SkeuomorphicBee2• 4 years ago

I tried Bluetooth headphones a decade or two ago and at the time it was unusable. Then recently I thought to myself: it has been almost two decades, wireless audio is probably a "solved problem" by now, especially with its newfound notoriety after apple ditched audio cables. So I just bought some new Bluetooth headphones, and I'm thoroughly underwhelmed, it is nearly as bad now as it was then, high latency, audio drops (even some failures to connect at all, with no way to debug). Bluetooth headphones are the new printers, they fail (partially or completely) at their job half of the time and yet people just accept that as a fact of life and go with their days.

pvillano• 4 years ago

my use case for Bluetooth headphones is noise cancellation on public transport/airplanes. for listening to music latency doesn't matter, although for me it's enough that I can't use wireless headphones to play games on my Switch

thfuran3• 4 years ago

They also often only support shitty audio.

lproven6• 4 years ago

Obligatory XKCD:

https://xkcd.com/2055/

rkangel• 4 years ago

I work the "Wireless and Digital Systems" division of my company. Nobody distrusts wireless products like wireless engineers.

That said, I adore wireless headphones and would never go back. Whether it's my earbuds to listen to podcasts while doing the washing up, or my BT headset that I use during the day for work. My BT headset (a Bose noise cancelling one) is definitely the most frequent cause of call issues (now that I've fixed a motherboard problem causing wifi dropouts), but it's still worth it to be able to move around, still hear what's going on in the call while I get a drink etc.again).

test65544• 4 years ago

Wireless is great enhancement as long as you can fall back to a wired connection

mc4ndr3• 4 years ago

So use a landline phone.

Work at a desktop computer.

Listen to CD's, not broadcast radio.

Never use GPS.

Never use WiFi.

Never use RFID.

Never use Find my iPhone to recover devices.

Never use automotive remotes.

Never use TV remotes.

Never explore outer space.

Never explore underwater.

All must be wires.

Because wireless is a trap.

test65544• 4 years ago

Should I tether myself to he house when I go out to check the mail or just never go outside.

pkulak• 4 years ago

My covid project was wiring my house with Cat-6. Getting wires through existing walls is an art form, and pretty rewarding when you get a run working! I'm by no means a pro now, but I do own a 6-foot drill bit.

test65544• 4 years ago

Hello ladies!

test65544• 4 years ago

I built my house with this guy's new mindset. There's 2 Ethernet jacks in every room. Even the closets, bathrooms, and garage. I have 3 wifi routers with matching SSIDs as well, because we're not animals... but everything can be wired if I want it to be.

Also, this guy's "cable management", haha.

archi42• 4 years ago

This is a true techy topic :) But the author proably mostly has expierence with bad environments (like apartment buildings with lots of competing WiFis) and/or cheap wireless devices or those which have to do severe compromises (e.g. style or size or battery runtime over RF performance).

These were the issues I had:

1. SO's cheap wireless mouse produced WiFi interference -> massive packet loss

2. Small 2.4Ghz USB dongles plugged into USB 3.0 port (e.g. Logitech's wireless dongle or USB WiFi for RPi) -> USB 3.0 interference render the dongle unusable

3. The HTC 10 has a metal casing -> incredibly poor BT RF performance, causing massive drop outs (especially bad with my FiiO Q5 DAC/headphone amp, which has a massive aluminum case)

4. Client stays on AP with very poor signal (barely in range) instead of jumping to different AP -> retransmissions cause massive degredation for all other clients

5. Lots of APs running at full power in an apartment complex, paired with a router/AP that had low WiFi performance anyway -> bad everything

All but the last can be solved relatively easy (okay, I didn't swap the HTC10 due to BT, though that really annoyed me; it's time eventually came when the battery lasted half a workday without using the phone for anything). Especially coordinated WiFi APs (like Unifi) are great. And even the last point was a non-issue both in our last apt (one well placed UAP for testing) and our new old house (four UAPs).

roeles• 4 years ago

You might think this could be solved by having routers automatically figure out the least interference-prone channel to use, but many of them seem to be quite bad at this.

Partly because of the physics involved. The AP can't magically sense the best channel for the clients, since it can't sense the spectrum at the client's.

Night_Thastus• 4 years ago

I feel the exact opposite. When I was younger, I thought wireless anything was terrible. Slow, inefficient, finicky, requiring constant charging.

But since then I've realized things have changed. It's incredible how much wireless and battery technology have improved in the last 10+ years.

If you want to perform at the top level in most games, you need a wireless mouse. It allows for significantly easier and freer movement than a wired mouse, even with a bungee. Charges can last for weeks, and due to faster charging can charge in an hour or two.

And as my list of equipment and peripherals grows, I find myself wishing more of them were wireless so I don't need to deal with them getting tangled, needing to re-route them, them being too short if I raise a desk up, etc.

However, there are some exceptions:

* Internet. The reliability problem has largely been solved if you have decent quality equipment. (I have a Ubiquity Wifi 6 lite, and it works great) However, the delays are still there, and some houses/apartment layouts and materials just aren't workable. I think people overall underestimate WiFi though, as most setups are very poorly done. The crappy WAP in your comcast router/modem/switch/wap combo box is terrible and will never perform well no matter what. But a good dedicated setup with WAPs spread and placed properly will do amazing.

* IEMs. There are no standards for transferring high-resolution uncompressed audio wirelessly right now (BlueTooth cannot do it), so the only way to get the best experience is a wired IEM. This isn't true for all digital audio transfer, like streaming. That can be done wirelessly just fine over wifi. (IE, wirelessly sending audio to a Raspberry Pi, when then sends it to a DAC, etc)

The moment such a standard exists for IEMs, I will gladly swap over. The wires constantly get tangled, are too short, get damaged, or rub against things while moving leading to undesirable sound coming into the ear.

zzo38computer• 4 years ago

I prefer all wired connections. Many things are wireless but I use wired as much as possible. I have a wired internet connection, keyboard, mouse, display, telephone, etc. We can clearly know what it is connected to without needing configuration, there is less wireless interference, spying, etc.

The radio is wireless, but that is public broadcast and is not a connection to a specific device. Sometimes it is unreliable, but that is not much of a problem in this case.

paradox242• 4 years ago

Since the migration of most employees to working from home I've run into this on a nearly weekly basis in IT where wireless works until it doesn't. Corporate networks can be challenging enough to tune in an environment where you have a lot more access and control than someone at their home. Often this is in a dense urban setting where their setup consists of connecting to the cheapest wireless equipment their ISP could buy.

Once the usual quick checklist items are exhausted,suggesting that maybe we ought to just run a cable before getting into troubleshooting buggy wireless drivers, old hardware that doesn't support modern 802.11 amendments, or conducting a full spectrum analysis are often dismissed, or even if they are open to it, no one seems to own an Ethernet cable these days or their gateway is in a closet, basement or some other inconvenient location.

Someday I hope that installing Ethernet jacks throughout the house becomes as commonplace as it once was to do the same for phone lines, but to many it is an afterthought as they are used to their crappy wireless.

fabioyy• 4 years ago

anyone have tried to use fiber? is there a fiber to ethernet conversor? ( to connect the playstation for example )

meristohm• 4 years ago

What's a rough ratio of power consumption by wifi compared to cable? I'm guessing the wifi transmitters are like radio towers but shorter, emitting radiation radially from the "tower", unless orientation doesn't matter and there are two other wires so coverage is spherical? Our mesh network units each have an obvious base, though I haven't looked inside yet.

I don't care much about heat from electronics when I'm trying to warm the space anyway, but I'd rather minimize it in the summertime.

FunnyBadger• 4 years ago

The other issue: security.

I got my paranoia from working with military SIGINT - the things we routinely harvested from radio and telephone of the USSR was a major wake-up call.

sally1620• 4 years ago

I always use Ethernet at the office because Wi-Fi sucks when everyone is connected to it at the same time. Even though they use commercial grade routers.

At home switching to Wi-Fi 6 has solved some f dead zone problems. I notice a stark contrast between performance of Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 6 devices.

Wireless is a trap (2020)

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