Nr. Fünf

Alright, so it’s been a while. Quite a while…. Oh well. In light of my absence, I’m going to share a few words to you about wireless networking. Now, we all know what the boxes look like, connecting our computers together and allowing internet access without a cable. But how many of us also have to deal with flaky service? Wireless networks are notoriously good at crashing for absolutely no good reason. It’s like they have a personality. “I’m just gonna stop working now, can’t say there’s anything wrong, I’m sure it’ll clear up in a bit.” And that’s all you can do, those boxes don’t tell you anything. You can’t fix them. All you can do is wait for the d*** thing to start working again. Minutes, hours… Tech services don’t know what’s wrong and customer service is worthless. Who’s going to end this madness? When will wireless routers be good enough to work or at least tell you what the problem is and allow you to attempt to fix it?

Next on the table is wireless infrastructure. Not long ago cities like mine were boasting that they would soon have free wireless networks covering the entirety of the downtown area. Now, years later, this dream has still not become a reality. What’s the hold up? Routers are relatively cheap and there’s no lack of places for the city to locate them. Router technology is ready to support this kind of system. Some systems link routers together and have signal booster stations to allow greater coverage and provide the data stream with the option to choose the fastest and most reliable route to your computer. This kind of free access should be readily available and would change the shape of cities greatly.

Finally, I’m going to do some ranting courtesy of my friend, Calvin Ling. Not long ago Calvin purchased a Netgear wireless print server. He followed the set up instructions to the word. It did not work. Computer savvy as he is, Calvin tried many things to attempt to bring the router online to no avail. He contacted Netgear’s customer services office many times and spent numerous hours trying to solve the mystery preventing the router from working. Not only was the service terrible, but no one could solve the problems. After weeks of hassle Calvin was finally forced to return the Netgear device and proceeded to purchase an Airlink print server. It worked perfectly after the first set up.

So, just to sum things up, wireless is a flawed world full of dissappointment, chance and lots of frustrated time spent waiting for nothing.

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~ by weeblerock on March 4, 2009.