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Google’s self-designed office swallows Wi-Fi “like the Bermuda Triangle”
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2024
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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. Offices aren't designed for it.
That's when you make do with WiFi.
You do know that laptops no longer even come with those Ethernet ports, right?
You do know that most places use docking stations that connect laptops to multiple screens and... you guessed it... ethernet.
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.
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.
Sorry to hear your company doesn't care about productivity.
We get a second screen, power, and stable internet connection via docking stations.
to be fair, they did say sales
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.
Yeah, go ahead and tell me (a sysadmin) how wired network which is just switches and cables is 'throwing more equipment at the problem' compared to hundreds of wifi access points.
Wireless gives you portability but if you're going to sit down and work then wired network is always better than wireless. That's a physics thing.
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.
And in the offices I worked in nobody had a docking station. They aren't everywhere.
Welcome to the future! Standard everywhere.
it's called a "dongle" and it's named after a guy named don. No srs look it up.
Lordy, I ain't never heard about one of them before. You're a genius!
Now look around your office and see how many people are using them. There's not a single person in my sales office, whether sales or engineering that bothers with a dongle because we actually have a well designed, fast wifi network. It's called "reliability" and you and your company should look that up.
From the responses here it sounds like many companies need to do the same.
Wireless sucks. Wired is always better.
Just gonna ignore those real-world examples and insist on fantasy land, eh?
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.
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.
Assumptions, assumptions... My company is a communications company and actually produces networking equipment. Almost no one uses Ethernet because we have the knowledge and experience to implement reliable wifi. Perhaps your company should hire us since they've done such a bad job with their own implementation.
Wireless is always better than no connection at all if you need a connection and you’re not wired.
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
That's true, which is why the article mentions one of the things googlers are doing is using their phone as a hotspot.
Y'see the phone gets it's internet from the cell tower. It then passes the internet to the laptop via a local (i.e. 2 feet) wifi or bluetooth connection.
That's an entirely different thing than enterprise-wide wifi. And if the building was blocking cell phone signals - well, first of all I'd be impressed, and secondly they would tear it down.
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?