Thursday, March 18, 2010

Network Dictionary — Wi-​​Fi

April 21, 2008 by Greg Ferro · 2 Comments 

wi-​​fi

1. Marketing abbre­vi­ation for ‘wire­less fidel­ity’. Intended to con­vey a mes­sage of per­form­ance, qual­ity and excel­lence by extra­pol­at­ing con­cepts from “high fidelity”.

Of course, wi-​​fi is noth­ing of the sort. Using IEEE802.11b, there is not enough band­width to do much, and the radio spec­trum is so hope­lessly com­prom­ised and over­loaded its sur­pris­ing any­thing works.

Naturally, that never stopped us from find­ing ways to make it work just enough so that we make lots of money from selling it. Governments around the world can’t agree on a replace­ment spec­trum, and the vendors can’t agree on new stand­ards such as 802.11n so it’s going to be bus­ted for years to come. BRILLIANT

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Comments

2 Responses to “Network Dictionary — Wi-​​Fi”
  1. BrotherMaynard says:

    I think that the term wi-​​fi has lost its mean­ing; kind of like or Xerox or TiVo. I haven’t heard any­one com­plain about their .11 net­work and — with a shak­ing fist held aloft — exclaim that they were prom­ised fidel­ity because it’s in the name. I mean there are lots of tech monik­ers out there that are either non­des­cript or mor­onic. Hell, I thing if you asked aver­age con­sumers what DVD means you’d get a lot of “I don’t knows” or wrong answers. To them DVD is just the round thingy that has the latest Xeroxed Will Ferrel movie on it. The fidel­ity in wi-​​fi is more the butt of a joke for people like us than it is a prom­ise to consumers.

    Seems to me, by your reas­on­ing, any semi-​​flawed tech­no­logy should be culled. I have to won­der if you would say the same thing about IPv4 (and there­fore the inter­net). The fact of the mat­ter is that if you wait for the per­fect product or the per­fect tech­no­logy then you’re always going to be wait­ing. No one buys any­thing and the mar­ket just stops.

  2. Greg Ferro says:

    Well, I do reg­u­larly curse wire­less net­works, but you are cor­rect. The ‘Network Dictionary’ is meant to be cyn­ic­ally funny and to punc­ture the mor­onic nature of our busi­ness. My favor­ite is http://​eth​er​e​al​mind​.com/​2​0​0​8​/​0​2​/​0​8​/​n​e​t​w​o​r​k​-​d​i​c​t​i​o​n​a​r​y​-​r​e​a​s​s​u​r​i​n​g​l​y​-​expensive/

    And yes, I have always believed that any­thing less than excel­lent is worth cri­ti­cising. That does not mean that I don’t design, use and sup­port flawed tech­no­lo­gies because I cer­tainly do. But if I don’t speak up, point out the flaws and put up with sub stand­ard, then I will cer­tainly get more rub­bish to work with.

    Greg’s Fifth Law of Networking — the more cr-​​p you put up with, the more cr-​​p you will get.

    Also, you need to know the lim­it­a­tions of tech­no­logy to get the best out of it.

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