I just brought a new ISP into our condo building and saved a ton by repurposing the long-unused CAT3 telephone wiring for Ethernet. We get about 180 Mbps to the furthest units, which are about 80 feet out of the closet.

— Johnny Xmas® (@J0hnnyXm4s) July 3, 2019

Oh please tell me this is a joke. I want to believe it’s a jape, a jest, some drollery because if not this is horrific and a fail train. This will already be dropping packets like drunk Aunt Cora at a family reunion carrying a tub of potato salad, and will only get worse over time.

For those who aren’t familiar with Ethernet cabling, Cat 3 is made to transmit 10mbs and although it can carry more, it is unreliable — meaning it drops a lot of signal at the physical layer, thus dropping packets at the data layer, making the connection by default slow and unreliable even when it’s technically pushing more than it can actually handle.

For non-networking folks, this is like Lucy from I Love Lucy in the chocolate factory scene — that scene is exactly analogous to what is happening on this network.

This is terrible and I feel the pain of the condo owners who have to endure this inevitably shoddy connection.

Never, ever do this.