Comment by rvba
2 years ago
It sounds fake, especially as the solution would be to get the original equipment higher, instead of buying new equipment?
Also why not lay a cable.
2 years ago
It sounds fake, especially as the solution would be to get the original equipment higher, instead of buying new equipment?
Also why not lay a cable.
> It sounds fake
I don’t think so. I definitely know tech people who get a particular idea in their head and will debug it to hell and back before taking a step back and realizing the obvious thing they missed. I’ve definitely done it before myself.
> Also why not lay a cable.
It sounds like they were trying to run a network between two properties that weren’t adjacent. They may not have had permission from the neighbor in the middle to lay cable on their property, or it might’ve required laying a cable across a street.
(Author here) Across several city blocks, in fact, and longer than the max range of Ethernet on normal (Cat 5/5e/6) cables.
Past ~300ft/100m, you need a repeater even for Ethernet. We would have needed at least one repeater somewhere along the line, which adds even more cost and complexity on top of needing to get permits from the city and approvals from all the neighbors in between. Anyone that says "just go get a permit from the city" has never tried doing it.
As for cable, you'd use fiber optic. There is really no need to go with copper in such a case.
Other than that I'd agree about your solution being optimal back then, and now. Btw how did you check the power brick, peak to peak voltage measurements? Bad capacitors is likely the single most common failure.
What happens when the tree grows taller? Would the new wifi still go through leaves and branches?
Edit: it probably did as the story is 10 years old.
You omitted to answer the question why the equipment wasnt simply put higher.
You can't just lay a cable across a public street
Also, if it was roughly 10 years ago then upgrading to N wireless was a good solution anyway. Not only did it solve the problem but it would've given then quicker speeds.
Raising the original equipment might not have been possible, and likely would've only been a temporary solution as the tree could keep growing taller.
> Also why not lay a cable.
According to the stories the two bridge endpoints were in different buildings a few blocks apart. You can't just lay a cable in the middle of a public street.
It's just from some guy's office to his house, they aren't going to lay a cable across a few city blocks.
(Author here) Worse: to the balcony of our apartment building. Imagine asking your HOA how they'd feel about you mounting your antenna "higher" AKA on someone else's balcony or on the roof above someone else's apartment.
"Just" move it higher vs replace ~10yr old (at the time) equipment with newer, faster equipment that doesn't have the problem? Easy answer if you ask me, and I'd make the same choice again with ~10yrs of retrospect -- the same 802.11n antennas are still there today!