What are 2 antennas being used for?

I bought this house. He is just a renter. I changed mine and then a day or two later he change to match mine. I just got tired of it. So now I'm in charge. :)

On Fri, 28 Jul 2006 01:18:17 GMT, Kevin Weaver wrote in :

If you're going to send me email, at least have the courtesy to use a valid return address; otherwise, please do not send me email -- I'll see your responses here in any event. Thanks.

My apologies to everyone else.

I did the reply to *all* If it was sent to you, my mistake.

On Fri, 28 Jul 2006 02:16:42 GMT, Kevin Weaver wrote in :

In Mozilla Thunderbird, hit Reply to just follow-up on the newsgroup -- Reply All also copies the poster by email, as can be seen in the displayed reply addressing.

John Navas hath wroth:

That depends on the value of the product. I've been told that the handling and testing costs far exceeds the value of the hardware and that it is cheaper to toss the returns. One manufacturer breaks open the boxes, yanks the boards, tosses the plastic, and runs the boards back through the manufacturing and test lines.

Certainly, the higher value products will probably have some method of refurbishing or remanufacturing the returns. In the case of routers, my guess is only about 80% are functional. The failures are predominantly flash upgrade failures and power supply induced damage (reverse polarity, too much voltage, AC instead of DC, etc). However, the bottom of the line products go straight into the trash.

True. However, the manufactories make it worse by substituting inferior revisions for existing products with the same product name and packaging. The WRT54G v5 is a great example. Retailers had little problems with the WRT54G v1.1 thru v4 until the v5 arrived. This substitution of products under the name and packaging is done specifically so that the retailers will not have a good excuse to return the unsellable "old" products en masse when replaced by a better new product. However, with the WRT54G v5, the replacement product was defective and trashed the long history of Linksys selling a superior product. In marketing, this is commonly called "pissing in the soup". The customer can't tell the difference until they try it.

I just reworded your premise. If they don't know the exact reason they're doing something, they're basing their decision on perception, not logic, reason, research, or even opinion. It just "feels" like the right product with two antennas, or something similar.

True. I should be more diplomatic and respectful of the American consumer. However, that's no fun. Whether I'm cynical or not has little to do with the validity of my assertions.

I spent a few years working in marketing solely on trying to understand those reasons. It was difficult because many reasons were apparently irrational and illogical. Those that paid me found it very important to know those reasons.

Brand loyalty is a great replacement for knowledgeable buying. It takes way too much effort to educate the customer. It's much easier to create a good impression for the company or to reassure the customer that they bought the right product.

Generally true but there are a few odd exceptions. Many people will latch onto a brand and continue to buy the brand, even though they have had a less than desirable experience with its products. The problem is that people just don't want to admit that they made a mistake. I can rattle off some examples, but I don't wanna get diverted there.

Really? DLink has a history of regularly repackaging existing products. In all cases, it represented a demonstrable increase in sales. It isn't always a case of finding the right color. It's often just a packaging change in order to get a "fresh" look on the shelves. Color and packaging may not make the product, but it certainly can ruin a good product if improperly selected.

OK, I'll accept that. It's a fair assumption that the salesman will push the products he has in stock, not something that the customer has to buy elsewhere.

Try not to read too much between my lines. I have no specific opinion of people in general. I try to understand them, accept what I find, and sometime offer my observations for those that might profit from the experience. Joe Sixpack certainly has different priorities. However, I suspect when faced with unfamiliar territory, we all can fall into one of the aforementioned observations, rather than doing the proper research. I've make a few spectacular purchasing mistakes so I'm also not immune.

On Thu, 27 Jul 2006 21:05:40 -0700, Jeff Liebermann wrote in :

That sounds to me like urban legend. For a $50 retail router in today's competitive market we probably have a loaded manufacturing cost on the order of $15. Testing is probably no more than 20% of that, or about $3. Scrapping probably results in no more than $1.50 of returned net value. At an NTF (no trouble found) rate of 90%, and a refurb value of even 50%, retesting is a no brainer, with a net gain of (50% x $15) - ($3 / 90%) - $1.50 = $2.67 per return. These are conservative assumptions -- the recovery benefit is usually better than that.

Possibly, because; (1) the great majority of the value is in the boards; (2) cases often need to be replaced due to cosmetic defects; (3) testing of bare boards is highly automated and efficient; and (4) the result might then qualify as "new" rather than "refurb".

My guess, based on lots of direct experience, is that more than 90% are fully functional, probably more like 95%, and that few successful companies simply trash their returns. I've bought quite a few Netgear refurbs at Frys Electronics. Where do you think they came from?

I think you actually changed it. ;)

That matters not IM(no)HO(C) if the decision is valid, as I think it is here. The market clearly works, consumer issues notwithstanding.

Really.

Again, I think you're being way too harsh -- D-Link products have performed very well in the market (a few harsh critics here notwithstanding).

And then sells them as new? That's very disconcerting, if not illegal. I'm _sure_ their test coverage isn't 100%, and those esoteric failures that aren't discovered will end up causing them a _lot_ of trouble.

On Fri, 28 Jul 2006 09:35:00 -0400, William P.N. Smith wrote in :

While such worries are understandable, there's considerable evidence that recovered parts tend to actually be better than all new parts, which are themselves subject to hard-to-find problems. The remanufacturing test process is typically more (not less) thorough and stringent than the testing of new production, and the great majority of returned products actually have nothing wrong with them. Companies I've worked for have carefully tracked recovered parts, and subsequent failure rates have been as good or better than all new parts.

Which companies? What units? What price point? What delivery channel? Experience gained in one does not necessary translate to another. I spent a decade being a manufacturer's rep so I'm more than a little familiar with supply chain dynamics.

You entirely neglect the cost of wages involved. To have even the typical retail clerk handle it would incur at least an hour's time. If not just by one person, aggregated across several in the process. At market rates that's certainly going to be $10 or more. Then look at the margins and actual cost to the retailer for said product. That $50 router, even laden with rebates, might be as little as $30 at cost. Going a step further and calculating any costs to actually house space to test it, or ship it to somewhere that can, and you rapidly start to exceed the actual cost of the unit. Cheaper to pitch it becomes quite sensible from a short-term economic standpoint.

There's nothing wrong with being cynical, and it certainly doesn't deserve being called "sad". To say nothing of copping some sort of inversely political correct attitude. If you're in over you head, don't trying blustering out of it by insulting people.

| There's a bit more going on with diversity than is obvious. The | manufacturers would have eliminated the 2nd antenna long ago if they | thought they could save a few pennies. Diversity significantly | improves the reflection immunity of an indoor system, but such | improvements are not what sells commodity routers. Price is what | sells commodity routers. | | One manufacturer did try to remove the 2nd antenna. The Dlink DI-614+ | and DI-624 went from two antennas to one antenna in later mutations. I | was told that retail sales immediately dropped. It wasn't a | performance issue. Customers perceived that two antennas are somehow | better than one and considered a single antenna router to be inferior. | DLink still sells some older products with one antenna, but all the | new DLink routers have two (or three).

Would the cunsumers know if the 2nd antenna isn't connected to anything? I wonder what they really think happens with 2 antennas. I'll ask around of some non-techie friends and see what kinds of responses I get. I had some Netgear one antenna routers here (now returned to store for credit) and will be getting Linksys WRT54GL that have two antennas. People will ask why I changed and I'll ask them to see if they can tell the difference.

On Thu, 27 Jul 2006 12:40:08 -0700 Wolfgang S. Rupprecht wrote: | | Jeff Liebermann writes: |> Customers perceived that two antennas are somehow better than one |> and considered a single antenna router to be inferior. | | "Look at the tail fins on that baby. It must be fast or else why | would they put tail fins on it???" | | I've always suspected that the whole two antenna hack started by | someone wanting to differentiate their offerings from the crowd.

If I had designed a 2 band (A/G) radio, I might have been inclined to make separate antennas for each band. Depends on if the duckie antennas can be made dual band.

| Chuckle. Return rate is a problem but not for the obvious reason that | it affects the bottom line. The return rate on commodity wireless is | sufficiently small that at least one manufacturer just throws them | away and only retests them if a major distributor returns them en | masse. They also unload them with large rebates, which requires | destroying the packaging to collect, which therefore reduces the | return rate. Return rate is a killer only because it trashes brand | name recognition, which is the major reason consumers buy any | particular device. If you look carefully at the advertising in the | consumer magazines (not the trade journals), you'll probably notice | that much of starts by congratulating the consumer on having made an | intelligent choice and goes on to assure the consumer that the company | is behind its products 150%. In other words, they're going for the | repeat business based on name recognition.

When I returned the two Netgear WGT624 routers to Staples, I tried to go out of my way to explain to the clerk that was taking them that they actually worked fine as designed. I did figure if I had said that they were not working right, a scenario like you describe could happen. Since they had been unpackaged, they couldn't sell them as new very easily, but I was trying to give them as much of a chance to be sold, maybe cheap, to someone as I could. So I told the clerk, and this was literally true, too, that they were "access points" (they truly are) and as such, they cannot talk to each other by design, and that Netgear failed to disclose this on their web page, PDF file, or even on the box ... which they did not ... nowhere did they state that these are access points. So I didn't lie. I just emphasized the more favorable truth.

| Sure. Perception is everything. Few can explain why two antennas are | better, but intelligence and technology doesn't count with decisions | based on perception.

Two light bulbs are brighter. Brighter light means the light can be seen further away. Non-techies would probably think in ways similar to that.

| There are other things that are amazingly important for retail sales. | Color is one. Colors all have subliminal meanings. I walked in to a | customer with a Watchguard SOHO router. It's in a bright red plastic | box, apparently to capitalize on the firewall features. My customer | asked if I had something in a different color? Huh? She said that it | reminded her of blood, which made her feel awkward. I replaced it | with an antiseptic white Netgear WG-614, which was deemed acceptable.

I tend to prefer devices with a metallic case, like Netgear USED TO make. They seem to be migrating to the cheap plastic, now.

| Weight is also an important feature. Given two almost identical | products, the average consumer will usually pick the heaviest product. | There's a perception that you get more for your money if it's heavier. | I learned this the hard way when designing marine radios. We | literally put a lead brick inside the box and sales immediately | improved. | | Criteria for commodity router selection (most important on top): | 1. It's cheap. | 2. A friend has one that works.

Is your friend a geek?

| 3. I've heard of the manufacturer from somewhere. | 4. The box and color look cool.

Be sure to open it carefully so you can keep the cool box.

| 5. It weighs like something that should work. | 6. The literature is incomprehensible, so it must be powerful.

The Chinese part? Or the Taiwanese part?

| 7. Larger numbers are always better. | 108Mbits/sec instead of 54Mbits/sec. | Is 802.11z later than 802.11b? 5.7GHz is bigger than 2.4Ghz.

Then they should advertize them as 54000kbits/sec and 2400 MHz.

| 8. The flashing lights sure look nice. What do they mean?

They stopped making lights actually show exactly when data is being sent as that's so fast these days no one could tell unless they are flooding it real fast. So the circuits have their own blinking rate and hold on for a few seconds. Almost worthless to geeks. Cool to non-techies.

| 9. This box has more acronyms than the other box.

Oh. I'll have to try that on my brother. "Make sure it has SMTP in it". "What's SMTP?" "It's how email is sent" "Oh, thanks, that's exactly what I need it for". :-)

| 10. I read a review that said all I had to do is plug in the | wireless router and it's ready to go.

Such a reviewer should be chastized for causing so much insecurity.

| Optional: | 11. Jeff L said it sucked so I guess I'll try it.

Who?

| I didn't say that. With all due respect, I think you're being way too | harsh and cynical. Knowing the exact reason is unimportant when the | market mechanism is working, as it is here. That's why branding is so | important. Consumers will mercilessly desert a brand that betrays them, | and loyally support safe brands even when a guru thinks some other | product might be better, because it really isn't better, since it hasn't | earned their market trust. What makes trust such a powerful force is | that it's so hard to earn and so easy to lose.

Now if only I could figure out why it is that everyone I know who uses Windows (and all of them swear at it for many reasons all the time) still treat it as the brand they trust. Linux? Where is that company located? How come I don't see it in the store?

| You entirely neglect the cost of wages involved. To have even the typical | retail clerk handle it would incur at least an hour's time. If not just by | one person, aggregated across several in the process. At market rates | that's certainly going to be $10 or more. Then look at the margins and | actual cost to the retailer for said product. That $50 router, even laden | with rebates, might be as little as $30 at cost. Going a step further and | calculating any costs to actually house space to test it, or ship it to | somewhere that can, and you rapidly start to exceed the actual cost of the | unit. Cheaper to pitch it becomes quite sensible from a short-term economic | standpoint.

How many of the staff would instead just take it home?

On Sat, 29 Jul 2006 09:32:08 -0400, "Bill Kearney" wrote in :

Doesn't change the balance because the retailer has to absorb that as part of the cost of doing business -- no return, no credit.

Not once it arrives back at a recycling center, which run quite efficiently. Disassembly is a low wage job, and testing is highly automated. Given the low margins and high NTF rate, it's important to recover value from returns. Both professional experience and actual conduct confirms this -- it's easy to find refurb products of this kind from major manfs -- I personally have a number of Netgear Wi-Fi refurbs that have all worked as well or better than new items.

Grow up.

On 29 Jul 2006 17:40:24 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@ipal.net wrote in :

Or sell it. Which is why retailers usually have to return items to get credit.

On Sat, 29 Jul 2006 09:31:26 -0400, "Bill Kearney" wrote in :

All products of a major PC manufacturer and a major PC peripheral company, plus a number of clients.

On 29 Jul 2006 16:55:23 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@ipal.net wrote in :

Me too, but the market is happy with plastic, and isn't willing to pay more for metal.Metal boxes are still available, albeit in higher tier that cost quite a bit more. Plastic is arguably less wasteful of resources.

I think light activity is a quite useful indicator of functional activity, especially when troubleshooting.