Does 802.11n Spell the 'End of Ethernet'?

alphadogg writes "Is the advent of the 802.11n wireless standard the 'end of Ethernet'... at least in terms of client access to the LAN? That's the provocative title, and thesis, of a new report in which the author began looking into the question when he heard a growing number of clients asking whether it was time to discontinue wired LAN deployments for connecting clients. Would 11n, the next generation high-throughput Wi-Fi, make the RJ45 connector in the office wall as obsolete as gaslights?"

wait

[wwmedia]

didnt they say the same about 802.11g not too long ago?

and what do we have now? both systems coexisting with each other

same gonna happen again

Re:Um, no.

[Praedon]

I think we will always have wired networks, for the simple fact that as technology progresses, so do the methods of spying and such. It's much easier to eavesdrop on WiFi than it is on a wired network. You would need physical access to the wired network in order to carry out your plans for espionage.

No

[DJ Jones]

RJ45 jacks will never be obsolete for one reason... Security.

And I don't know what you're talking about, I still use gaslights.

Shared medium.

[saintlupus]

I can't wait for wireless to take over everything. Collisions and shared bandwidth are awesome. I miss hubs so much.

--saint

Re:Um, no.

[niceone]

And that's going to happen just after the Porcine Aviation Assocation makes WiFi actually run at the speeds that it says in the headlines.

Re:Um, no.

[cayenne8]

Yep...I was thinking one word when I read this:

SECURITY.

Yes, of course

[blueZ3]

This is totally a replacement for wired connectivity, because in a building with three or four hundred computer users, there won't be any radio interference between wireless cards. I'm sure that there won't be any issues in high-density deployments. I mean, the four PCs in my house never, ever have any reduction in speed when they're all connected simultaneously.

What do they teach them in schools these days?

Re:Um, no.

[nine-times]

Right. There are too many reasons to use ethernet, and security is just one of them. Ethernet is also more reliable, and it's still faster. 802.11n is not running as fast as 1Gbps (which is what both my home and work network are running at). Give it a couple years, and we'll probably all be running 10Gbps networks, and though wireless speeds will improve too, I see no reason to believe that they'll ever catch up. Also, wired connections are more reliable, easier to control, etc.

Now, I don't see much reason to string ethernet through people's homes, at least not most of the time. Use WPA, secure each of your computers (password protect them and firewall any services you aren't using, preferably don't use Windows). You'll be fine, and 802.11n is probably way faster than any internet connection you might have.

Reasons not to change.

[GodCandy]

First I will admit. I have an 802.11n setup at my house for my laptop and a desktop on the far side of the house. It works well for this.

The issues are as follows.
Security: There is little or none. All of your transactions are flying through the air and anyone with the proper equipment (which can be obtained at the local electronics store for very little money) can intercept those packets. Even if you bother to use encryption all that has to be done is some processing to "crack" the encryption. Without breaking into my house/office and tying into my physical copper network there is no way to intercept packets on a copper network.

Stability: I cant speak for 802.11n as of yet. My AP has never been rebooted and my clients stay conected. However my prior 802.11x products were somewhat less stable.

Speed: 802.11x is a bus topology much like a hub. True they are running a great deal of bandwidth now. For few users this is great however what happens when you have 20 users on the same access point sharing the same bandwidth.

I do however see uses in business for this. I don't think at this time it is the end all replacement for the simple switch and the complicated wiring closet yet.

Re:Um, no.

[bleh-of-the-huns]

Yes, its called STP instead of UTP...

And how about open drivers.

[ahfoo]

The security doesn't bug me at all compared to the issue of open drivers. If all the drivers for 802.11n products were as open as wired ethernet then it would be an almost maybe possibility but as we've seen with regular Wifi, there's no way in hell. Personally, I think pushing yet more closed and fucked up drivers is almost certainly one of the goals of the 802.11n standard.

It's a well known fact that UWB and other existing techniques can push wireless bandwitdth far past what 802.11n offers, but they're not "ready" for the consumer market. The game is to incrementally push the consumer market into a series of screwed up proprietary drivers to push out open standards and ensure that only "enthusiasts" use open source.

Ubiquity

[Alzheimers]

It will only be truly ubiquitous when it's a common check box feature on every PC sold, built-in to the motherboard and included in the final price.

As long as it's a peripherial, I don't care how cheap or easy to install, it'll never replace what's already there, ie. the Ethernet port. For more reference, see USB vs. Firewire.

Don't forget denial-of-service

[coyote-san]

Don't forget that there are multiple aspects to security. You don't want the sleazy competitor sniffing your network, but you don't want them blasting your network out of existence two days before the RFQ is due either. The bad actor could be hard to track down if they're using a highly directional antenna and an illegal amplifier.

Re:Um, no.

[fbjon]

Not to mention: until someone figures out a way of turning radio from shared to switched medium for cheap, it ain't replacing anything.

As a physicist...

[drolli]

i have to make a comment. Let's assume we have amplifiers and signal generators avaiable which have at each time a certain "eqi-cost" line in the "power consumption" vs "noise level" plane in the bandwidth you are interested in. If you couple these by an really good directed radio link, you can get over a few meters up to a few dB if you are good. Hovever lets assume fo the second that having a parabolic antenna on you laptop is less handy than an ethernet cable. Thus, leaving aside obstacles, wou will definitely have less power at the receiver for the same power send. now here comes the problem. Less power means lower signal/noise ratio, which directly reduces your BW. So no matter how the wireless standard looks like, if you take it literally you can always use it on a network cable, and you will get a much higher rate and an ultimately directed transmission. Nowadays etherenet standard does not use the full bandwidth of the cables. WOuld one use the wireless transmission methods on a cable, one could get substentially more troughput.

O did i forget? eqi-cost can also be translated to "cheaper modules" at the same rate.

Shared bandwidth

[gravis777]

The problem that clients in our building seem to neglect is that, yeah, while we are running G, which is 56Mbps, that does not mean that it will be only half the speed of their 100 Mbps ethernet connection, its generally much slower. The problem is, on ethernet, you have a 100 Mbps connection straight to the switch, dedicated to you. Over the wireless, you are sharing that 54Mbps connection with 50 other people in your area, so you are not getting 54 Mbps, you are getting between 1-5 Mbps. This is why you ge an excellent signal, then almost cannot browse the internet. i think we finally got it through most of our users minds that the wireless was there as a convienince, not at a replacement for the ethernet, and most will now use their ethernet cable.

Re:Um, no.

[somersault]

Although once you have physical access to any ethernet ports, it's a lot easier to get onto an ethernet than it is to get onto secured wireless. Just plug in and away you go..

Re:Um, no.

[MorderVonAllem]

If someone has access to a physical port then your security isn't worth a damn anyway.

Re:No

[DrSkwid]

> RJ45 jacks will never be obsolete for one reason... Security.

Just like BNC

Re:Um, no.

[somersault]

If they really want in, they're going to get in. Most people's houses are going to be pretty easily accessible compared to trying to crack WPA wireless encryption.

Re:No

[Ajehals]

Hmm, so what you are saying is that a badly configured wired solution is more secure than a perfectly configured wireless solution. Well that is fairly obvious. But is a perfectly configured wired solution less secure than a perfectly configured wireless solution? No its not.

If I have decently configured switches / AP's and correctly configured network services (DHCP, Cryto, IDS etc..) then which is more secure? Well the wired solution is. Why? because I am not making my network available for anyone to try and break into, or simply to monitor and carry out analysis against. Not to mention that the wired network will be faster, easier to troubleshoot (generally), generally cheaper (especially for big implementations) and easily managed. Wired networks have their place, as do wireless networks, the only people pushing for wireless everywhere are those with a stake in selling or providing wireless networking, sadly the idea appeals to a fair number of people (its very "high tech"), and 99% of Wireless networks I have stumbled across (pun intended) where not even close to being secure.

3 words

[MSDos-486]

Power over Ethernet

Re:Um, no.

[sam0vi]

I was thinking about something else: Gigabit Ethernet

Re:Shared bandwidth

[Jeremy Erwin]

Over the wireless, you are sharing that 54Mbps connection with 50 other people in your area, so you are not getting 54 Mbps, you are getting between 1-5 Mbps. This is why you ge an excellent signal, then almost cannot browse the internet.

So, are people at your company so accustomed to browsing wit personal T3 lines, or what? Will they break down in tears if forced to work with 768 kb/s DSL?

Re:Um, no.

[swillden]

It's much easier to eavesdrop on WiFi than it is on a wired network.

Not if the WiFi network is configured for reasonable security. Physical access is typically much easier to get than the AES keys.

Re:Shared bandwidth

[tehcrazybob]

I can't speak for his company, but at mine there's a great deal more to the network than internet access. All of our files are stored on network servers. Since we are all connected via gigabit ethernet, these shares are as responsive as local hard drives. Our work would continue undeterred if we were limited to browsing the internet on 768 kb/s DSL, but if we started connecting to our server with the DSL I think productivity might drop. In fact, you're right, I might even break down in tears.

For reference, gigabit ethernet offers theoretical 128 MB/s transfers, while local hard drives offer between 60 and 90 MB/s. Obviously the latency will be a bit higher on the networked drives, but you'll see no drop in sustained transfer rates. Compare that to a theoretical maximum of 37.5 MB/s for wireless N or 6.75 MB/s for wireless G, and bear in mind that those speeds will be shared with all clients rather than dedicated as with the ethernet connection.

Re:Um, no.

[sumdumass]

It is sort of ridiculous to say that anyone could just break in and steal the computer. They could do that for a wired and a wireless network. That isn't a fact that should be part of the discussion.

Now with a wireless connection, a person could hide their attempts to access the network. They could also do it from far enough away to not impose suspicion. This ability is an extra ability that makes wireless dangerous to some on certain networks. It might not be the same for mom and pop, but when they are doing their accounting and managing banking acounts/passwords and whatever, it might.

It wouldn't be too hard for me to create a proxy server or DNS server on a network and use DHCP in order to issue a new DNS number and intercept log on attempts to their banks, credit cards or health insurance. Then All I would have to do is access those sites from another hacked wireless connection and start taking money. It is more involved when doing this with a wired network.

In the end, it is like the saying that locks only keep honest people out. Well you would be amazed at how many honest people aren't exactly honest when they think no one is watching them. The fear of getting caught doing something bad is enough to stop them from doing it. With a wireless network, you are somewhat allowing these honest people be in a position that no one is watching. But more appropriately, you are somewhat allowing the dishonest people inside your building unmonitored to some extent. Wire a wired network, sure it can still be done, it is just that the possibility of being caught is so much more aware to the honest person.

Re:Um, no.

[terminal.dk]

All this Mac address crap is no important for a hacker, he just clones the MAC address of a LAN PC. He can then use another IP address to avoid detection by the PC. That is not anything funny, and something the switch will not react to. It is perfectly normal to use an extra IP address. Or he can plug LAN PC Hacker PC network.

We use VLANs, and many of them. Yes, you can only see traffic from your local segment. And hacking the Cisco switch is no more difficult than hacking everything else.

In big places, they are limited so a few adddresses can manage them. Just spoof this on the uplink port if you get access to the box. And if they use an upstream radius server, this is easy to fake as well. Cisco is only secure as long as the infrastructure is physically protected. Same as for a PC.

Re:The thing I find funny. . .

[AJWM]

the word "Ether" inclines one to think of sending messages through a mysterious invisible medium which connects all things in space

No, you're thinking of "Aether" (as in "lumineferous Aether"), whose existence was shown unlikely by the Michelson-Morely and follow-on experiments.

Ethernet is talking about "ether", the class of compounds where e.g. two alkyl groups are linked with an oxygen atom in between (eg diethyl ether). The network tubes are filled with this stuff. You might think that the reason is ether's high volatility means signals can go faster, but the real reason is far more subtle than that.

Take a look at the diagram of molecular structures here [wikipedia.org]. The one at the top is ether. Now, what does that remind you of? Right! RFC-1149 [ietf.org], A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers. (Not to be confused with Evian carriers -- filling those tubes with water doesn't work at all well.) Being so much smaller (many orders of magnitude) than, say, Columba livia [wikipedia.org], those little ether molecules can travel a lot faster, with a corresponding increase in bandwidth.