Editing 454: Rewiring
Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
The edit can be undone.
Please check the comparison below to verify that this is what you want to do, and then save the changes below to finish undoing the edit.
Latest revision | Your text | ||
Line 4: | Line 4: | ||
| title = Rewiring | | title = Rewiring | ||
| image = rewiring.png | | image = rewiring.png | ||
− | | titletext = My friend | + | | titletext = My friend Elizabeth tried to mail one end of the cable to me and thread the mail system. |
}} | }} | ||
==Explanation== | ==Explanation== | ||
− | |||
− | At the time, | + | At the time this comic was written, most residential buildings in North America were wired for {{w|analog}} {{w|plain old telephone service|landline telephone service}}, although thanks to the growth of {{w|internet telephone}} and wireless telephone technologies, including {{w|cordless telephone|cordless}} and {{w|mobile phone|mobile}} phones, this in-house wiring was increasingly redundant.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_telephone#Use_of_mobile_phones] |
− | + | At the time, people who took their internet access seriously would have preferred that at least some of the phone wiring and phone jacks in their residences were {{w|Ethernet}} ({{w|Cat-5}} or {{w|Cat-6}}) wiring and ({{w|Modular_connector#8P8C|RJ45}}) jacks for providing wired internet access throughout their home, or in this case, to their neighbour's home, so that they wouldn't have to resort to {{w|wifi}}, which | |
+ | was[http://www.google.ca/trends/explore?q=wireless+g%2C+wireless+n#q=wireless%20g%2C%20wireless%20n&cmpt=q] | ||
+ | slower and less reliable than a wired connection. | ||
− | + | The comic's title suggests it shows a fanciful way of converting {{w|analog}} phone lines to {{w|digital}} ethernet lines by simply faxing an ethernet cable, since a fax machine is a tool for {{w|digitizing|converting}} something {{w|analog}} into something {{w|digital}}. | |
− | + | Since the faxing of the ethernet cable is apparently successful, the comic is not really about the conversion, but is instead a subtle {{w|computer network}} joke about {{w|Tunneling protocol|tunnelling}}, whereby you can embed one kind of network access protocol within a very different protocol. Herein lies the humour: [[Cueball]] and [[Megan]] are apparently under the impression that they can achieve a faster connection by tunneling a high-speed protocol (ethernet) through a slower ({{w|plain old telephone service}}) one. Generally speaking, this is not true. The only exception is when embedding a compressed data stream within a non-compressed standard. The performance boosts, however, are typically modest for {{w|lossless compression}}, and not the orders of magnitude difference our novices apparently hope for. | |
==Transcript== | ==Transcript== | ||
− | :[Cueball is feeding cable into a device on a desk labeled "fax. | + | :[Cueball is feeding cable into a device on a desk labeled "fax".] |
− | :Fax: '' | + | :Fax: ''zzz zzz'' |
:[Outdoors, showing a plant and a lamp (indicates panels 1 and 3 are separate locations).] | :[Outdoors, showing a plant and a lamp (indicates panels 1 and 3 are separate locations).] | ||
:[Megan, laptop behind her, is pulling a cable out of a fax machine.] | :[Megan, laptop behind her, is pulling a cable out of a fax machine.] | ||
Line 28: | Line 29: | ||
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]] | [[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]] | ||
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]] | [[Category:Comics featuring Megan]] | ||
− |