Editing 454: Rewiring

{{comic
| number    = 454
| date      = July 25, 2008
| title     = Rewiring
| image     = rewiring.png
| titletext = My friend Finn tried to mail one end of the cable to me and thread the mail system.
}}

==Explanation==
At the time this comic was written, most residential buildings in North America were wired for {{w|Analog device|analog devices}} using the old {{w|plain old telephone service|landline telephone service}}s, 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. See also {{w|Wireless telephone#Use of mobile phones|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 neighbor's home, so that they wouldn't have to resort to {{w|Wi-Fi}}, which was then slower and less reliable than a wired connection.

The title text suggests that it shows a fanciful way of converting 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}} analog content into 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|tunneling}}, whereby you can embed one kind of network access protocol within a very different protocol. Herein lies the humor: [[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 (landline 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.

The title text, which is a reference to foonetic user relsqui, was changed to correct "Elizabeth" to "Finn" after they came out as agender. (This comic was presumably inspired by [http://www.xkcdb.com/2001 this conversation] they had over IRC.)

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is feeding cable into a device on a desk labeled "fax."]
:Fax: ''zzzzzz''
:[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.]
:Fax: ''zzzzz''

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Phones]]