“Make do” with ethernet? Charlie Brown, ethernet is the superior networking interface. People “make do” with wifi.
Yes, but tell that again when you and 19 other people bring your laptop to a conference room and try to login on the network at the same time.
Different things have different strengths, and losing one of those things means your experience will be subpar.
So, I haven’t worked in IT in a couple decades, but back in the late '90s/ early '00s, all the conference tables at the companies I worked for, had Ethernet ports built into the table towards the center, and a switch mounted under the table so that everyone could just plug in. Did they stop making those tables once WiFi became ubiquitous?
Yes, they stopped. The ports were never sufficient, people always wanted to move the table around, and the cables and connectors in the table were always breaking.
Besides, there are always people far from the table.
It’s true, they used to be more available and then they stopped making those tables for those reasons (and they were more expensive).
Yes, in a conference room setting with more than 3 people it’s better to have wifi, no disagreement there. In google’s case here it sounds like they’d bring a mobile hotspot in so everyone could see the documents together, which is not ideal but would work.
Still, they’d have ethernet for the video sharing so they could just put a router in each conference room (a huge pain to admin, but - it’s google) and everyone gets wifi in the conference room and no one is very slightly inconvenienced.
OR - y’know. Bring back the ethernet. Werd.
It’s absolutely making do. Having to plug an Ethernet cable in every time you take your laptop to someone else’s office, break room or conference room simply doesn’t work.
Wireless sucks. Wired is always better.
Moan and groan all you like, it doesn’t change the fact that wireless is almost always an option and wired is almost never an option.
Even desktop PCs come with wifi adapters. Finding a laptop with an Ethernet port is damn near impossible.
Don’t most of (maybe all) dell and lenovo laptops come with ethernet ports by default ?
And nowadays, with thunderbolt docking stations, you have more or less every connection available anyway.Don’t most of (maybe all) dell and lenovo laptops come with ethernet ports by default ?
Nope. Ethernet ports are gone. >
If ethernet is not an option, you’re just wasting time. Ethernet-to-USB dongles are cheap and plentiful.
It’s crazy that people with no experience with it have no idea why anyone would want to fuss with a direct wired connection when it’s objectively faster and more stable in every metric possible.
Just gonna ignore those real-world examples and insist on fantasy land, eh?
Can’t realistically plug your phone into the wall every time you want to use the internet
The whole point of a mobile phone is that it’s mobile
Ok Zoomer.
We’re talking about offices where people generally use laptops for work. Why are you mentioning mobiles?
What if I want to move my laptop around the office, say for example to make a presentation, or work in a different area? If I’m just working on some documents online, I don’t need a fast connection, just 30-50Mbit is plenty enough for pretty much everything, including video calls etc
And what you’re telling me you never use a mobile at work? You still need a signal to make/receive regular phone calls
Wireless is always better than no connection at all if you need a connection and you’re not wired.
Conference rooms, yes. Break rokms, yes. Offices? No. Use a docking station? Are you working solely from your laptop screen or do you dock and use monitors mouse and keyboard? Generally, there’s ethernet attached, too.
Conference rooms should have ethernet connected to the USB-C dongle that’s attached to the TV and the Jabra or whatever alternative you use.
Wouldn’t want to take my laptop to the break room, I go there to take a break from work, not continue it in a different setting.
I’ll agree on going to someone else’s office, or using your laptop in a meeting where someone else is connected up, but that’s where Wi-Fi works as the back-up.
Lol! One Ethernet cable in a conference room? What if someone else is using it? Next you’ll proudly state that you carry an Ethernet switch everywhere you go. But, you be you.
I just said wifi works as the backup solution if you’re not the one presenting. If you ARE the one presenting, wouldn’t you want to have a more stable connection?
That’s when you make do with WiFi.
You do know that laptops no longer even come with those “make do” Ethernet ports, right?
it’s called a “dongle” and it’s named after a guy named don. No srs look it up.
You do know that most places use docking stations that connect laptops to multiple screens and… you guessed it… ethernet.
Not my last job with a Fortune 100 company. Nearly all of us used wifi all the time. Our engineering and software development groups did use desktop computers with Gig E though.
Not my last job with a Fortune 100 company.
Sorry to hear your company doesn’t care about productivity.
We get a second screen, power, and stable internet connection via docking stations.
Sorry to hear your company doesn’t care about productivity.
My company produces networking equipment and actually knows how to implement reliable wireless and wired networks. If your company’s wifi network is unstable perhaps hiring a competent network design and implementation company would have been more cost effective than throwing more equipment at the problem.
to be fair, they did say sales
My last job was with a Fortune 100 technical company in a sales position. No one used a docking station and no one bothered with an Ethernet cable. Neither did any of the customers we dealt with. People with desktop computers were wired up but most everyone else used wifi all the time.
Yeah if you are forced to deal with a shitty Apple
Long time since you bought a laptop, or even looked at them? Even most Dell and Thinkpad mobile workstations no longer include an Ethernet port.
They include USB-C and most docking stations have… ethernet.
Welcome to the future! Standard everywhere.
I’m enjoying ethernet on my phone too
I can tell that you’re being sarcastic. But if I’m playing ranked match on my phone, it’s always with an Ethernet dongle. Way more reliable and definitely lower latency.
People actually play competitive games in their phone? I thought that was just marketing spin so apple didn’t have to put graphics cards in their macs
It’s hilarious that you insist on the ethernet cable but not an actual computer.
I don’t have a gaming computer (i7 3770K with integrated graphics from 2012)
You don’t get cellular data? Okay, sure it’s faster for that too.
Problem solved i guess, that’s progression.
lol your comment made people salty for some reason
What do they think their precious wifi routers plug into?
An actual cloud?
When it rains are they terrified of losing their data?
And a lot of people do. Cellular and satellite internet is excellent for rural and certain business use cases. I have gigabit fiber, and I’m considering one of those in case the Internet goes out if fiber is hit or if we lose utility power (I have a battery backup system).
Yes. Those folks are scared when it rains too hard. The connection does become more unstable.
I still acknowledge that your point is valid for everyone else however.
Why do all thing need to look like these soulless glass metal and concrete blobs. Like bruh, why not build something cool lime a Roman Temple, European Castle, Viking Longhouse, Ancient Chinese Pagoda …
These are done by architects rather than designers. Usefulness isn’t a consideration, only form and aesthetics matter.
Architects are designers.
Epic (software company) has a really cool campus near Madison, WI where all of the buildings are different styles of architecture. One of them is a giant dairy barn.
Ok that is epic indeed
I think glass metal and concrete blobs are cool.
highly skilled labor shortage and time. eventually ai architects will 3D print incredible stuff that is completely unmaintainable.
Those would be far more expensive to produce, needing specific skilled craftsmen. Not that glass production is easy, but compared to hand-carved wood and stone the labor hours alone is a staggering difference.
They’re mostly soydevs, not network engineers.
“Googlers assigned to the building are making do with Ethernet cables, using phones as hotspots, or working outside, where the Wi-Fi is stronger.”
How the fuck is a person that writes articles for a living not aware of the phrase “making due”? What goes through their mind when they write out “making do”? How the fuck does that make any sense to them?
I worked for a soda company once. Not going to say which one, but every Tuesday and Thursday I did have to make dew.
Was the dew you made of the mountainous variety? Did you have to make do with what you had in order to make due on your rental payment? Am I doing this right?
Online articles frequently have an obvious error or two. I believe it’s so they can prove someone ripped off their article. It’s like a watermark, but with spelling and grammar.
Watermark AND convenient excuse for an actual typo… nice!
Confidently incorrect:
Internet culture is strong with this one
At least I learned now what an Eggcorn is
Are you from the 18th century?
Lol yes. This modern spelling and technology is too much for me.
hate to be that guy…
Are you sure?
Yep, still hate it… I realized now that make make do is the accepted agreed upon spelling.
While writing this angry comment, did you stop to consider that maybe they did their job right and you’re wrong?
https://www.grammar.com/make_do_vs._make_due
Unless you’re living in the early 1900s, “make do” is correct for today’s English.
Yeah looks like I may be wrong about “make do” being incorrect. Didn’t know the spelling was changed in the 40s. I’ve always seen it written as “due”. Seems like an odd word to use though. Wouldn’t due make more sense? Like you’re able to meet the dues that are required?
Conversely, I’ve only ever seen “make do” used.
“Make due” would make sense to me in the context where debt is a factor, for example, “make due on rent”.
It doesn’t make sense when you apply that meaning to how the sentence was written in this article.
Good point on the difference in context. I guess that’s how I’ve seen it used mostly.
I see the correct form as ‘make-do’, which implies makeshift solutions or workarounds.
make it do the thing it’s supposed to do.
Ironically, they spelled Internet as internet.
Oh Geez. I didn’t know this until just now?
I learned so much by reading literature… but I guess the idioms and spellings have moved on since they were written and I need to keep up.
Frustrating, but thank you for the link.
You think that’s bad, you should take a gander at the official news sources in Jacksonville Florida. I don’t know if they’re still this bad, but as I recall they have not one, but at least two big news publications, both produce articles that look like they were written by grade schoolers. Anything that wasn’t copy/pasted from the AP seems to be written hastily by somebody who dropped out before understanding English. I’m sure many other cities have the same issue. The one is called news five or Jax 5 news, and the other is first coast news. They’ll hire anybody to write apparently.
Oof. Yeah, I’d doubt they pay very much there, probably have to take what they can get. Maybe I should apply🤪
lmao
The moral is – Wi-fi intensity should be part of modern architecture.
I’m all for 👍 architecture. Just consider Wi-fi before building it.
For this structure, I wonder if the best solution is just to add more mesh points. Not elegant but what if there’s no better way?
The ideal way to handle this would be to add an EM absorbing material to the ceilings. The reflections off the ceilings are causing self-interference, and because it’s curved and complex, standard noise correction doesn’t work.
To support MU-MIMO / beamforming (multipath signals for multiple devices) they could also just add more flat surfaces inside the ceilings to make radio reflections/echoes less complex so that the signal processing doesn’t get overwhelmed when the source is some distance away.
Plain absorbing material removes interference but doesn’t let you use MIMO tech as effectively, because the newer higher end routers can use those reflections to boost the signal
That was my interest in the story. Technology is so ingrained in our lives. It’s weird more furniture doesn’t have power chargers and other cords better designed into them. It’s weird our houses and electrical codes haven’t caught up.
But this is just a huge step back. Unless I’m unaware of lots of other new and old buildings with similar issues.
No, please do not start adding electrical components to furniture en mass.
If you do, I give it 1, maybe 2 generations, until furniture is partially subsidized by tech companies and it becomes niche to NOT have a “smart couch”.
Funny you mention the smart couch because that’s the type of furniture that seems to come with USB charging stations a lot nowadays. But I hope most smart home devices remain a niche for a while. The open source and crafting community around them is pretty amazing and I’d hate to see it getting literally sideshelved for smart home prefabs.
In my country, from what I observed, not many study tables and work tables with power outlets. 1 may say, “Add usb-c sockets too.” But the future is hard to predict. Will there be usb-d? Will 150-watt charging be the norm? The safe thing to do is just outlets. Power bricks for phones are cheap anyway.
Agreed. My work desk is barely four years old, and already its integrated USB-A ports and Qi 1 charger are outdated and basically useless to me. I’d prefer not having them. The power outlet is still fine though.
Your batteries last longer with trickle charging. If you’re at the desk most of the day, USB-A and Qi 1 is perfect, and should be adequate for another 5-10.
I fucking love 👍🏻 architecture, gotta be one of my favorite genders
The two genders: engineers and architects
It’s a Google office building, they definitely considered Wi-Fi before building it but they made a mistake. Compared to that building in England that turned into a glass death ray I think this was a less obvious mistake.
Obviously they didn’t do a Wi-fi intensity study.
Oh they for sure fucked up, I just mean that it was likely a mistake as opposed to them not caring. Pretty crazy for a huge corporation to overlook it though.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Reuters reports that Google’s first self-designed office building has “been plagued for months by inoperable or, at best, spotty Wi-Fi, according to six people familiar with the matter.”
At launch, Google’s VP of Real Estate & Workplace Services, David Radcliffe, said the site “marks the first time we developed one of our own major campuses, and the process gave us the chance to rethink the very idea of an office.”
The roof is covered in solar cells and collects rainwater while also letting in natural light, and Google calls it the “Gradient Canopy.”
All those peaks and parabolic ceiling sections apparently aren’t great for Wi-Fi propagation, with the Reuters report saying that the roof “swallows broadband like the Bermuda Triangle.”
Googlers assigned to the building are making do with Ethernet cables, using phones as hotspots, or working outside, where the Wi-Fi is stronger.
A Google spokesperson told Reuters the company has already made several improvements and hopes to have a fix in the coming weeks.
The original article contains 301 words, the summary contains 165 words. Saved 45%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I’ll take access point bombing for 1000 Alex. I see several in wall and wall-mounted varieties in the immediate future of that place… 😂
Glad to see Google is embracing evil even with it’s architecture now
I guess they’ll have to cancel their building like they cancel everything else they do.
They have to build it first and then use it for a few months and then demolish it
First they have to kick out the people who were enjoying it
That’s the most fun part! We know you have been enjoying your new office and benefits (because we read your email), but please note in two months we will be discontinuing a this. We are releasing a new service you might want to try though, Google unemployment!
Didn’t forget renaming
Nah, they’ll just add a chat app. Then destroy it.
But unlike a lot of the other products they cancel, I’ll have actually known that this existed first.
I actually rather prefer ethernet. Much more stable.
Don’t be evilTell me again why are C-level and VPs paid so much? 🤣
Its funny that one of the monuments of capitalism has bad WiFi because the roof had to be very fancy and imposing.
Funny how there’s a lot of wired vs wireless hate in the comments, can’t really pin down the reason. Generational?
Wired will always be more stable and faster, whereas wireless is more ubiquitous. If you work at a fixed position, prefer wired. If wired is unavailable, well, you’ll have to make do with wireless. USB-C dongles and docking stations are a thing, so the laptop doesn’t have it argument doesn’t hold.
Thank god for a lick of sense. I literally do low voltage and controls design, they both have their place. Building a cluster of cubicles for accounting? Yeah, run some Ethernet to their docks. Building a warehouse production floor? You better have enough WAPs to confuse Cardi B installed so the little manager with his iPad can edit processes on the fly.
Wired is not always faster. I have a WiFi 6 router at home that (only) has gigabit ports, and wireless speeds are often faster than wired. WiFi 6 is quite common in consumer electronics, but 2.5gbit is not.
Then that’s the fault of the device design, or using incorrect cables, and not of the communication standard. Using cheap CAT 5 cables that max out at 100Mbit instead of good quality 6a cables is going to mess up speeds too.
WiFi 6 offers ~9Gbps under ideal conditions, and that deteriorates with all the usual reasons for WiFi, and wired is 10 Gbps for whatever distance. The standard says wired is faster. Your particular device failing to meet those speeds doesn’t represent the communication methods.
Wireless is only faster if wired is using outdated or underdeveloped gear. If a box has faster wireless than wired connection, then it was clearly designed to cater to wireless. GbE can hit up to 100gb.
Show me one home that is wired with cat8 cables lol. Then I’m going to show you the millions of homes that have an isp provided wifi 6 router.
Guessing the building was designed by an artist and not an engineer.
The architecture world is crazy
