Bench Talk

Have you ever tried to set up a home wireless network? Was it easy? You’ve probably heard of Plug-and-Play (PnP). Does PnP work for you every time?

Look familiar?

During the recent holiday I had to vacate my home office to turn it into a temporary guest room. I left my cable modem and wireless router in the room but I had to move my printer (not wireless) and my desktop PC to my bedroom.

One issue I ran into was how to convert my existing LAN printer to a wireless printer. “Easy,” I thought, remembering I had an old 2003-model print server. I decided to give it a try. I’m no expert at networking computers, but I know enough to be dangerous, which usually ends up as extended internet down time (which riles up the whole family). In the '80s everyone wanted their MTV, today everyone want’s their internet. The internet is the family umbilical cord.

From time to time I’ve had to setup or modify my home wireless network, but it seems like every time I do, I have to relearn the process. Inevitably, what is supposed to be an easy 15 minute job ends up turning into a whole weekend and at least 3 trips to a store.

Here’s a brief history of PnP (or plug and pray, as I now call it). In the beginning there were IBM punch cards, followed by computers like the Apple II which needed to be configured by the end user by cutting and soldering various wires in order to make configuration changes. Eventually, configuring changes to computers became as easy as manually setting jumper wires or, as an improvement, DIP switches. I remember having to set jumpers in order to add an additional hard drive to my desktop computer. (Remember the master /slave combination?) Let’s not forget having to deal with interrupts (IRQs). What a plodding nightmare all that was...

And then in 1995 something that was going to revolutionize the way the end-user was going to be able to upgrade their computers was introduced by Microsoft’s Win 95! A new dawn in personal computing had begun and Plug and Play was going to be the end-all, be-all solution.

Fast forward 20 years into the future to 2015! Why are we still dealing with the manual configuration of our WiFi networks? What happened to the Plug and Play concept? I know PnP was meant more for peripherals connecting to PCs, but come on, it’s 2015…! Your home network should configure or reconfigure itself regardless of what you connect to it (r-i-g-h-t)!

My home network has:

• A dual band 2.5GHz and 5GHZ router connected to an existing wireless cable modem (that I was not aware was radiating by default…but this is another blog in itself.)

• A wireless repeater (converted to be a repeater from a router. Took only one weekend!)

• an outdated wireless print server (to add a non-wireless printer)

• an Apple TV, Chromecast, and Chromebook

• 4 different android phones and tablets

• an Amazon Kindle Fire HD

All of the above have the same security level (wpa2-psk/AES), are web-print capable, and share mass storage; all from differing brands. Ok, maybe mobile computing has created a more complicated scenario than what PnP was for us in 1995. At least I don’t have to set jumpers, Dip switches, or IRQs for everything any more. But seriously, there are self-driving cars. Why not a self-set-up wireless job?

I know I am not the only one who often has a 15 minute wireless job blow up to cover an entire weekend, with an upset family, so by all means share your horror stories. I need to know that I am not alone in thinking that there’s something wrong with this picture now that we’re in 2015.