Some IT guy, IDK.

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 5th, 2023

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  • As someone who works in tech, I’m surprised it hasn’t happened already.

    Part of my job is to oversee and arrange in some capacity for licensing of digital products, especially office 365, and I can count the number of people who have a copilot subscription on one hand, out of nearly, if not more than 1000 users across various clients.

    I know some are using competing products, mainly chat GPT, and I don’t always have visibility to that, but still… The rate of adoption and the speed at which all of this is being developed and invested into… Does not bode well.










  • You are the subset of people who happen to be in a situation where they’re working as they should. I’m going to guess that you’re not in North America, and live somewhere with 240v power outlets.

    In any country that uses 120v, usually it’s split phase power, and if your powerline adapters are sharing a phase with something that’s inductive or crossing the split in the phase, generally they’re going to be rubbish. So you basically need a degree in electrical engineering to figure out what circuits are on what side of the split phase, and what is on each circuit that may be an inductive load, and could interfere, just for them to perform like they should.

    There’s a whole lot more to it, and I’m simplifying a lot here, but that’s the overview of the problem.

    With UK power circuits, there are fewer breakers and everything is fed from a single phase of 240v. That makes it much more likely that you’ll have a good experience with powerline. Just have to avoid the circuit with stuff like your air conditioner (if you have one) and stuff like the fridge, and generally you do quite well with powerline.

    Ethernet is still better tho. Heh.



  • This is correct. You might want to look into a point of entry filter for MoCA, since you don’t want to share your Internet with your neighbors.

    Last time I looked, which was a while ago, I couldn’t really find any, but hopefully that’s been sorted out in your area.

    Basically the point of entry filter stops the signals from the MoCA link from crossing, so you would want to put that between the outside box and the first splitter.


  • Wi-Fi is convenient more than anything. You just have to know the right passphrase and as long as you are in range, you can get in… In most cases.

    When it comes to WiFi, I’m a fan of many smaller and lower power access points vs a few high powered ones. This is rarely the case in residential situations though. Most people buy a single, high powered Wi-Fi in the form of a all-in-one wireless router, and call it a day, then almost exclusively use Wi-Fi and wonder why it sucks, then go buy a newer more powerful unit once one is available.

    My motto is: wire when you can, wireless when you have to. Devices like laptops, tablets and phones, usually do not have Ethernet built in, or are too mobile to make it practical to use. Meanwhile anything that doesn’t move, like TVs, desktops, etc, need a wire run once, and it will work perfectly until the building falls over.

    That’s a lot of return on the investment of running the cable once.

    I usually prefer all home runs (everything going back to a central point) but networking is diverse, so using a cable to get to an area, then using a switch to serve that area is entirely valid. Just don’t Daisy chain too many switches or your going to have a bad time. Whether that link is copper, fiber, MoCA/coax, doesn’t matter… As long as it’s reliable and fast.

    In any case, I have at least 8 access points serving my home, and they need to be moved, since I still have one spot that’s a dead zone.



  • Alien can be boiled down to simply meaning “foreign”. As in, not coming from the wire bundle that is used for the connection.

    Crosstalk is the term usually used for interference coming from other pairs in the same bundle, which should be minimal due to the electrical/magnetic properties associated with twisted pair.

    Alien interference is any inference from an outside source, usually by inducing a current on the Ethernet pairs, that shouldn’t be present. Usually this results in corruption of the data in transit or a failure to sync (and establish a connection at all).

    No extra terrestrial interference was meant to be implied; though, I’m not excluding the extra terrestrials from creating interference; I’m sure if such beings exist and are here, they could interfere, but that wasn’t the intention of my statement.

    Alien inference is a very common term in wireline networking. I’m surprised you haven’t heard it.




  • As a network guy: Ethernet over power lines can be fine, but you basically need to be an electrician, and have a working knowledge of how powerline Ethernet works before you can get there.

    Even if you do, or stumble into a working setup by accident, you can absolutely end up with all kinds of bad things happening because power lines are notoriously bad with crosstalk and EMI, both on the wire and emitted from it.

    If you absolutely cannot do rj45/Ethernet runs, and WiFi isn’t viable for whatever reason (or even if it is), look into MoCA. Thank me later.

    It won’t cost you any more than powerline, and you’ll get a cleaner signal, more consistent performance, and overall a better experience.

    In order of preference, I prefer the following connection options:

    • fiber
    • Ethernet
    • MoCA
    • Wi-Fi
    • powerline

    Fiber, not because it’s faster or better (there are many ways it’s actually worse than Ethernet), but because it’s almost impossible to interfere with, unless someone physically disconnects the cable (or breaks/cuts it). As long as the line is protected from damage, it will give the most consistent performance.

    Ethernet, more robust than fiber in terms of physical disability, can be faster at propagating data (the time it takes to get from one end of the cable to the other), but only works over relatively short runs (100m or less, by spec), and it’s susceptible to alien interference and crosstalk. However, it is far more rugged than fiber.

    MoCA is half duplex but shares a lot of the benefits of Ethernet. The main improvement here is that coax is commonly present in most homes already, while Ethernet is relatively uncommon in homes, so many homes are already wired in a way that works with MoCA.

    Wi-Fi is also half duplex, it can go faster than Ethernet under the right conditions (which are almost impossible to achieve in real world conditions). Propagation is as fast as Ethernet but it has more overhead, and it is much more prone to interference from other Wi-Fi networks or other things operating on the same, unlicensed, bands.

    Powerline should only be considered if all of the other options are disqualified for some reason.

    Also, anyone using wifi extenders (not talking about mesh or anything, just actual Wi-Fi extenders), should probably not be doing that. Wi-Fi extenders are often just retransmitting the packets on the same wifi channel, which dramatically cuts the available bandwidth. You’ll end up with a stronger connection, but a much slower one.

    Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.