It was going to be a simple job… really!
All I was going to do was move my main cable connection from my office to my living room. And… add computer network connections to a couple of rooms. Well… maybe 4 or 5 rooms. Oh, and while I’m up in the attic stringing wires, why not have a whole house sound system? Speaking of wiring, there are a couple of places in my house that need extra outlets. Let’s not forget about the TV antenna, either… OK, maybe not simple, but at least straight forward. More or less. For certain values of “straight forward”.
“But David,” you, my hypothetical future reader, asks, “why not just go wireless, like everyone else?”. That’s a Real Good QuestionTM. I hope I can come up with a Real Good AnswerTM. This is an issue that has been debated for a few decades. For a couple of years in the 80s, there was a brief window of time where home networks were possible, and the only option was wired1.
Having a home network was the hallmark of being an Alpha Geek. People were advised that if they were building a new house, get it wired for networking during construction, because it was (and still is) easier and cheaper to do it at that stage. Fast forward to the present day. No one is talking about wired networks. So… what happened?
Wireless is what happened. Looking back, it seems as if it happened overnight. The first routers and wireless computer cards were slow and quickly weakened over distance. Even as imperfect as they were, people flocked to them because they were so durn convenient.You weren’t limited to being within a few feet of a wall jack. Soon enough, wireless signals reached parity with wired networks in terms of speed, and surpassed them in cost and convenience.
Ok, if wireless is so good, why are we messing with physical wires?…
To be continued…
- Well, technically it was also possible to hook computers up with fiber-optics, but for a home network that was not only overkill, but hideously expensive. ↩︎
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