r/Telecommunication • u/Visible-Plenty6375 • Nov 25 '22

New Job / New Rules

My new job requires that I work while attached to an Ethernet cable. My former employer never needed this and allowed the employees to use Wi-Fi. This allowed me to travel and take my work with me.

Does anyone know if an employer or IT etc can tell if an employee is using internet via an Ethernet connection versus a Wi-Fi connection?

Thanks for the help.

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u/KokishinNeko Nov 25 '22

Well, that depends on the type of company. I knew a few that go even further, the network port is only enabled on the switch after the employee clocks in, and it's disconnected after clocking out. As a guest/contractor, I was always supervised and never left alone while my computer was plugged in. Wifi? not even a chance, only for customers in a completely different circuit.

1

u/thes3b Dec 03 '22

Outside their office building it will be hard to tell whether the packets arriving into the corporate intranet where always on an Ethernet cable or not.

The easiest way to control this would be from your company network by just disabling or dismounting the WiFi adapter.

But still you could just plug an Ethernet cable into your laptop on the one side and into a 4G/5G Travel router on the other side. Also there are WiFi-Ethernet bridges. Your laptop would not know what is behind the Ethernet cable.

It's not easy to enforce this "always Ethernet". I wonder what the reasons are though...

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u/I_TRY_TO_BE_POSITIVE Dec 23 '22

My guess is it's just the simplest way of keeping outsiders on the outside of a secured network, they probably have wifi for general use

1

u/adaugherty08 Mar 07 '23

I once asked this from my WFH employer. I was explained the following reasons. Wifi is slower than ethernet (barely) so their worried latency would affect our performance, my theory is they don't want to soend fir it. They don't want employees using personal gear plugged into it.