It’s the Christmas break for 2021, which means lots of time spent doing very little work-related stuff. I’m currently putting together a Lego set, playing Metroid Dread and working on beating Ocarina of Time again.

As I waited for updates to download on Christmas morning I remembered how many packets must be flying across the wire to update software and operating systems for consoles. Even having done a few of the updates the night before I could see the traffic to those servers started to get a bit congested. It’s like Black Friday but for the latest patches to keep your games running. Add in the content that needs to be installed now in order to make that game disc work, or the download-only consoles for sale, and you can see that network engineers aren’t going to be a dying profession any time soon.

I’m a bit jaded because I come from a time when you didn’t need to be constantly connected to use software or need to download an update every few days. Heck, some of the bugs in Ocarina of Time have been there for over twenty years because those cartridges are not designed to be patched, having been created before a time when you could barely get online with a modem, let alone wirelessly connect a console.

I also am happy that upgrading devices in the house means fewer and fewer older units performing poorly on the wireless network. As more devices require me to connect them to the network for updates or app connectivity, I’m reminded that things like the Xbox 360 need low data rates enabled to work properly and that makes me sad. But I also can’t turn them off for fear that nothing will work and my children will scream. I don’t think spending a ton of money to get rid of an 802.11b client is really that big of a deal but I’m happy to see them go when I get the chance.

Likewise, I’m going to need to upgrade my APs a bit now that I have clients that can actually use 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6). Even the older clients will get a performance boost. So It’s a matter of catching a good AP on sale and getting it done. Since I don’t use big box APs I just have to look a bit harder.

Tom’s Take

Make sure you give a shoutout to your friendly neighborhood network engineer for all their hard work making sure the services we’re currently consuming stayed up while the skeleton crew was carrying the pager this weekend. We’ve seen a lot of services crash on Christmas morning in recent years because of unexpected load. Also, give yourselves a hand for keeping your own network up long enough to download the latest DLC for a game or ensure that your new smart appliance can talk to the fancy app you need to use to control it. Let’s make it through the rest of the year with the change freeze intact and start 2022 off on the right foot with no outages.