Smoke Signals

This morning I received an email requesting that we put a "wifi" hotspot in a common room on the first floor of our building. The room is also located on a different side of the building than our office. Apparently we sometimes use the room for presentations and network access would be helpful. I'd like to point out that we don't own the building and our office is on the third floor.

My response was that it is not really possible. A long series of emails ensued where I answered questions like why can't we run a cable from the 3rd floor down to that room? Yes, let's put a direct connection to our network in a public area, so anyone can come in and get onto our LAN. Maybe we could send an email to our competitors telling them that we've made a connection available for the public use. Or we could just put a sign in the lobby of the building that says "Hack Us".

If completely necessary, we could actually put a series of repeaters throughout the building, but since we don't own it and we are talking about 2 floors and a long distance... In the end, I had to explain the wireless is like a cordless phone.

Yes. A cordless phone doesn't need a wire, but the base still plugs into the phone jack. The wireless router is the base and requires a physical network connection. The phone doesn't need a wire, but you can only walk so far from the base before the signal is too weak. Your laptop can only be so far from the base before you can't connect.

I realize that sometimes wireless is a difficult concept to grasp, but do people really think that connections just materialize out of thin air. Plug in a wireless box anywhere and you can connect? ---Like smoke signals, light it up and everyone can see it. The Indians had it right, I think. Wireless is just too dang difficult.