I don’t think so. I definitely know tech people who get a particular idea in their head and will debug it to hell and back before taking a step back and realizing the obvious thing they missed. I’ve definitely done it before myself.
> Also why not lay a cable.
It sounds like they were trying to run a network between two properties that weren’t adjacent. They may not have had permission from the neighbor in the middle to lay cable on their property, or it might’ve required laying a cable across a street.
(Author here) Across several city blocks, in fact, and longer than the max range of Ethernet on normal (Cat 5/5e/6) cables.
Past ~300ft/100m, you need a repeater even for Ethernet. We would have needed at least one repeater somewhere along the line, which adds even more cost and complexity on top of needing to get permits from the city and approvals from all the neighbors in between. Anyone that says "just go get a permit from the city" has never tried doing it.
As for cable, you'd use fiber optic. There is really no need to go with copper in such a case.
Other than that I'd agree about your solution being optimal back then, and now. Btw how did you check the power brick, peak to peak voltage measurements? Bad capacitors is likely the single most common failure.
I don’t think so. I definitely know tech people who get a particular idea in their head and will debug it to hell and back before taking a step back and realizing the obvious thing they missed. I’ve definitely done it before myself.
> Also why not lay a cable.
It sounds like they were trying to run a network between two properties that weren’t adjacent. They may not have had permission from the neighbor in the middle to lay cable on their property, or it might’ve required laying a cable across a street.