Blake [he/him] @ Blake @feddit.uk

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3

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704

Joined

2 yr. ago

A few reasons - preservation is one of them

The problem that I’m having (and why I asked that) is because I was assuming that you would have some knowledge which you don’t seem to have with a lot of my comments. I’m really not trying to be rude, but it makes it a lot more difficult to explain the flaws in your reasoning when you’re talking about topics that are beyond your knowledge as if you know them well.

I have explained the realities of the situation to you, if you don’t want to accept them, that’s fine, but you’re basically arguing with an expert about something you don’t really understand very well. I’m happy to explain stuff but you should just ask rather than assume you know better because it makes it much more difficult for me to understand the gaps in your understanding/knowledge.

So ultimately, for routers, we have a number of limited resources. Firstly, yes, interfaces, but also the usual stuff - CPU, RAM, etc.

Now, I mentioned before that routing protocols are very complex - they have many metrics which are taken into account to determine what path is ultimately best for each packet. This is a process which can be quite intensive on CPU and RAM - because the router needs to “remember” all of the possible routes/destinations a packet can travel, as well as all of the metrics for each destination - distance, delays, administrative distance, TTL, dropped packets, etc. and then make a decision about processing it. And it needs to make these decisions billions of times a second. Slowing it down, even a tiny bit, can hugely impact the total throughout of the router.

When you add another connection to a router, you’re not just increasing the load for that one router, but for the routers which connect to the routers which connect to those routers which route to the routers that route to that router… you get the idea. It increases the number of options available, and so it places additional burden on memory and processing. When the ultimate difference in distance even an extra 100 miles, that’s less than a millisecond of travelling time. It’s not worth the added complexity.

That’s what I meant when I said that an extra hop isn’t worth worrying about, but adding additional connections is inefficient.

There really should be a law requiring companies which provide online services to be required to release self-hosted server software once they discontinue the provision of the service.

I’m becoming more and more convinced that you don’t really know what you’re talking about. Are you a professional network engineer or are you just a hobbyist?

When many people say socialism, what they mean is capitalist democracy

Lol. Lmao, even

I just wanted to let you know that I really enjoyed this comment. I think it has some good advice but the writing style is kind of unique, it’s almost alien in a way that I can’t quite explain, I liked it!

Won’t be a future unless we fund renewables instead of this junk.

Doesn’t bother me, just means there will be fewer fools arguing with me!

Yep, I mean, the comment you’re replying to literally contains the phrase, “the biggest issues are interference…” haha

Likewise, it’s something that’s likely to improve as we tend to move away from the 2.4GHz band.

Dropping packets is definitely more of a problem for streaming in particular, rather than anything else, because like you said, if you drop packets you’re going to get degraded quality video. If you were gaming locally, it wouldn’t really affect you as much. Online games have extremely good, well designed methods of compensating for dropped packets in a way that streaming will never be able to match.

I’m honestly quite surprised - this is very, very close to my view of how things should work - much closer than anyone else has come to expressing the same views as I have.

I think the only gap between us is generally the details of how it would work, but also, how we get there. For the latter, I have a few suggestions which I have shared on Lemmy before. For the former - the only real difference is I kind of don’t trust the concept of “digital” direct democracy, I’m far more inclined towards delegates representing much, much smaller groups (100-150ish people) whom can be recalled immediately. I wrote a bit about how I think it should work elsewhere.

Anyways, I think we probably have quite a bit in common, you should drop me a message so we can chat more. :)

Nah, that wouldn’t work as well, because people wouldn’t necessarily click through into the thread, and also there’s often different context, depending on the specific article that I post it in.

IMO, the comment adds plenty of value whenever I share it and it certainly inspires plenty of engagement every time, so I see no reason to change what I do.

I’m ignoring fossil fuels because they’re obviously fucking terrible and both renewables and nuclear are an improvement over them, nobody questions that. The pro-nuclear lobby loves saying “it’s so much better than fossil fuels!” which is like explaining that a helicopter is faster than a car. Fossil fuels aren’t the competition for nuclear, renewables are.

I already discredited the “Germany swapped nuclear for coal!” argument in the other thread which I’m guessing you already found since you’re claiming I’m German, for some reason. It’s not really an honest claim.

Obviously, it’s bad that Germany is using coal, and nuclear would be better. You’ll get no argument from me about that. But when it comes to building new power plants there’s no good reason to use nuclear.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that topology - the fact that you seem to think that the design is a bad thing really demonstrates your lack of understanding here.

For example, have you never wondered why we don’t just connect every device in a network all together like a big daisy chain? Or why we don’t use a mesh network? There is a large number of reasons why we don’t really use those topologies anymore.

I don’t want to get into the specifics, but in general, the more networks a router is connected to, the less efficient it is overall.

The propagation delay is pretty insignificant for most routers. Carrier grade routers like those at the core of the internet can handle up to 43 billion packets per second, another hop is absolutely nothing in terms of delay.

claiming there’s no downsides

Compared to nuclear? Yes, no downsides. In general? It’s not perfect of course but the best option we have.

having to invent solutions for the issue of production hours versus time of max useage

That’s like saying “nuclear has to invent solutions for the issues of meltdowns, and getting nuclear fuel, and dealing with waste material, and dealing with extremely high risk targets, and risks of earthquakes, and risks of flooding, and the need to have extremely highly qualified operators, and extreme building costs”…. I could go on.

Nuclear is the only reliable form of energy for humanity’s inevitable outward expansion

Ah yes, because nuclear fissile material is more ubiquitous in the galaxy than light.

The reason we haven’t invented a fusion plant that can pass the Q limit is because fusion never got funded for shit

Absolute nonsense, you just made that up completely. Post a source.

Calling nuclear wealthy is hilarious, neither group has oil & gas beat

“Calling a billionaire wealthy is hilarious, that’s not even in the top 500 richest people”

The nuclear industry is massively overfunded, they’ve consistently received billions in public money for years, and there’s basically nothing to show for it. It’s the carbon capture of electricity generation: cute idea, let’s keep researching it in hopes of a breakthrough, but in practice just a total waste of money at our current level of tech.

Lmfao are you serious? Supporting renewables makes me a shill for fossil fuel companies? You’re stretching so far you’re going to split.

Sorry, what I wrote here was unclear, I wrote it needs less boosting in another comment, but re-reading this one, it does sound like I’m claiming it needs no boosting over any distance - that’s not what I meant though! I just meant that you can run an equivalent link without any boosting further than you could with copper.

Interference isn’t actually that big of a deal for Ethernet over copper, unless the installer does something silly like run UTP alongside high power electrical lines, or next to a diesel generator, or something. Between shielding, the use of balanced signals, and the design of twisted pair, most interference is eliminated.

Way more people and animals are harmed by it than by nuclear.

Absolute and complete bullshit. Even if you take the very, very low estimate for the number of deaths caused by nuclear accidents such as Chernobyl, wind and nuclear have a similar number of deaths, but when it comes to “people and animals harmed”, nuclear is HUGELY more harmful, it’s not even a contest.

Just look up all of the people with horrible health issues caused by nuclear.

But go ahead and source your claim lmfao.

Hahahahaha okay then

Of course it is, I'm not going to write it out anew every time, am I? That would be a big waste of time and would result in a less effective message. I think this is the fourth or maybe fifth incarnation - I have added to it every time someone has asked me about some specific issue, so it just gets progressively more and more complete.

I encourage everyone who wishes to argue against the wasteful deployment of nuclear power, please redistribute this comment as much as you'd like to.

Thanks for the response, it's nice to chat with you :)

latency of the medium is so equivalent as to be practically unmeasureable

More or less, yup. There are some cool uses of RF to achieve very high bandwidth, low latency connections (5G as a common example, but Wi-Fi 7 has a theoretical maximum speed of 46Gbps - while this is still far behind the maximum speed of Ethernet (We have 400Gbps Ethernet in use, with 800Gbps in development), it's catching up very fast - and since most households and businesses with copper cabling will be using mostly CAT5e or 6a Ethernet (1Gbps/100m and 10Gbps/100m respectively), Wi-Fi will soon likely be faster than most copper Ethernet networks. It's also very likely that 5G internet will all but supplant ADSL and VDSL connections in the coming years. I think twisted-pair copper cabling is following in the footsteps of coax :)

Even with in-home fiber

The minimum latency of a connection through fiber is about the same (actually, slightly less, but not enough to matter) than the same connection made through copper. Signal propagation speed is not a benefit of fiber over copper - the benefits of fiber are that you can have many, many more connections in the same diameter of cable than with copper, it's immune to electromagnetic interference, and it can run much further distances without needing signal boosting.

most WiFi routers don’t have particularly fast CPUs, or high-performance buses.

That's one of the main issues, yeah - consumer grade electronics are usually total junk, especially the free routers provided by ISPs, but I'm also thinking of those absolutely horrible "gaming" Wi-Fi routers provided by the likes of ASUS - they have decent specs, but they're just absolutely overloaded with features that gobble RAM and CPU. Dear consumer electronics manufacturers, please just let the router be a router, and let the Wi-Fi APs be Wi-Fi APs. Combine the router and the Wi-Fi AP if you must, but absolutely please stop suggesting that people can run a hundred services from routers. You should totally upsell that feature in a separate node appliance or something! Sorry, I got distracted.

it’s cheaper and easier to get a fast ethernet switch than a fast WiFi router

I agree, but I also don't - most consumers don't really know what a switch is or why they might need one. Most switches found in houses are either integrated with a router, power line adapter, or Wi-Fi access point. While a good switch is absolutely going to be much cheaper than a good Wi-Fi AP, most people wouldn't really look to buy one. They might search for "Ethernet hub" on Amazon and luck into buying a decent switch, but I think most people think in terms of Wi-Fi these days, so it's probably easier to get a Wi-Fi AP than a switch.

Also, just a minor nitpick: "fast Ethernet" is a little confusing, as terminology, because that's the marketing name used to refer to 100mbps Ethernet connections (often indicated on network devices as FE) - so named because it was the successor to 10mbps (regular) Ethernet. (damn you, marketing people! I blame y'all for what you did to USB) When we discuss this kind of thing, it's clearer to refer to 'high speed Ethernet' or refer specifically to line speed (e.g. 10GbE) - unless we're talking about 100mbps Ethernet! Although, even then, it's probably a bit confusing these days - I'd call it 10/100 Ethernet usually, rather than fast Ethernet, unless I was being really lazy ("yeah just stick it in the f/e port")

I doubt any of this has as much of a latency impact as WAN factors

It definitely can do, but in a properly functioning network, I'd agree. If you have a faulty connection or significant source of interference or impedance, then that would be much more of an issue than anything else - otherwise, yeah, it's going to be the Internet where most of the latency comes in to play. I would estimate that probably 75% of people could get big improvements to their online experience by making changes to their home network, but at a certain point, yes, contention becomes the bottleneck, which is not so easily solved :)