What are 2 antennas being used for?

On Sun, 30 Jul 2006 18:34:28 GMT John Navas wrote: | On 29 Jul 2006 17:40:24 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@ipal.net wrote in | : | |>On Sat, 29 Jul 2006 09:32:08 -0400 Bill Kearney wrote: |>

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

Or maybe return a key piece of the item to prove the store cannot resell it in working condition.

| 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.

How much discount would be typical of these low end (under $100) type devices for a refurb unit?

I'm assuming a retail store gets full credit on the price they pay for the device on a return. But if that price is less than refurb pricing, what if the store decides, because they believe the device is working, that they can sell it as an "open box" item (e.g. being honest that it is a "customer return", so it isn't all packaged right, has maybe been used a bit), at a price that is still a markup over their wholesale pricing, but more competitive with refurb pricing?

On 30 Jul 2006 18:42:29 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@ipal.net wrote in :

That would be pretty hard to do with a low-end router, and pointless since it makes sense to recycle them.

On 30 Jul 2006 18:48:45 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@ipal.net wrote in :

Typically in the range of 15-30% off for current items, more for older items.

Correct, usually as a replacement in or credit against a future shipment.

Some will do that, but it's a pure margin hit to the retailer versus the cost of handling the return, which is the usual tradeoff.

On Sun, 30 Jul 2006 18:41:15 GMT John Navas wrote: | On 29 Jul 2006 16:55:23 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@ipal.net wrote in | : |>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. | | I think light activity is a quite useful indicator of functional | activity, especially when troubleshooting.

I'd rather have a light that is exactly on when data is actually in the process of being sent and/or received (maybe different color for send vs. receive). That would be more useful as I could then see exactly how busy a port is, etc. Trouble is, too many people cannot see things blink at such rates (I usually can).

Well John,

This is off topic but you should read it to understand what is happening to RNess on the cross posting post you replied to in another NG I saw you in on the cross post, in particularly when you see AUK the Kook NG on a cross post.

RNess is being impersonated and it wasn't the person making the post.

Duane :)

You can see a single packet go by? Really?

On 31 Jul 2006 01:50:00 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@ipal.net wrote in :

Your eyes are good for perhaps 50 Hz. Broadband download rates can be much higher than that.

On Mon, 31 Jul 2006 13:46:24 -0400 William P.N. Smith wrote: | snipped-for-privacy@ipal.net wrote: |>I'd rather have a light that is exactly on when data is actually in the |>process of being sent and/or received (maybe different color for send vs. |>receive). That would be more useful as I could then see exactly how busy |>a port is, etc. Trouble is, too many people cannot see things blink at |>such rates (I usually can). | | You can see a single packet go by? Really?

If it comes by itself, yes. Definitely at 10 mbps where I've actually tested this with a device I know was lighting only when the frames was being shifted out the serializer. At 100 mbps, I can't be certain, but I suspect I can at least for long frames as I could see ACK length at

Now, jam all the frames together and that gets harder to do. I can still see something at 10 mbps. At 100 mbps I think probably not as the rate is way too high. But I think I will be able to see a single frame of 1500 bytes.

The objective isn't to see every frame. It's to see if anything is upsetting an otherwise steady stream of frames.

There was a T1 modem we had at a previous job I was at which had TX and RX lights that were blinking with the actual packets. I later found out that they were actually blinking on just the 1's, not the 0's, and doing so in a way the data could have been monitored via some pickup devices I did not happen to have. It was at the time considered a security exposure because someone could peek at that light and see the data. Fortunately ours was in a closed room. I don't want to go so far as have that ability on the LEDs, but having them come on during the data part of the frame, and go back off at the end of the data part, in one color for RX and another color for TX (or split LEDs) would definitely be useful to me, even if can't see the time gap between frames.

FYI, I see fluorescent lights blinking at 120 Hz. The red phosphor lags more than the others and I can see that, too.

On Mon, 31 Jul 2006 19:26:52 GMT John Navas wrote: | On 31 Jul 2006 01:50:00 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@ipal.net wrote in | : | |>On Sun, 30 Jul 2006 18:41:15 GMT John Navas wrote: |>| On 29 Jul 2006 16:55:23 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@ipal.net wrote in |>| : |>|>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. |>| |>| I think light activity is a quite useful indicator of functional |>| activity, especially when troubleshooting. |>

|>I'd rather have a light that is exactly on when data is actually in the |>process of being sent and/or received (maybe different color for send vs. |>receive). That would be more useful as I could then see exactly how busy |>a port is, etc. Trouble is, too many people cannot see things blink at |>such rates (I usually can). | | Your eyes are good for perhaps 50 Hz. Broadband download rates can be | much higher than that.

On 31 Jul 2006 21:10:12 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@ipal.net wrote in :

I'd be willing to bet you can't, and that's still not fast enough in any event.

On 31 Jul 2006 21:08:32 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@ipal.net wrote in :

No way. 10 Mbps is over 800 1500-byte frames per second.

That's a far cry from broadband frame rates.