Has the entire world forgotten what a hard drive is? What LANs are? Good grief! You can transfer data on a network without sending it to Dropbox first! Faster local networks have tons of uses beyond just slaving them to someone's walled garden.

Funny story (missing the point I know), the Dropbox client has provisions to automatically detect other clients on your network and then sync your files to your other computers over LAN rather than through Dropbox servers (files are still synced to the servers of course, but they don't have to make a return trip to your other computers).

Dropbox sync over wifi has never worked for me. Perhaps it's because the two clients are running on different OS's (Win/OS X).

Except the UX of that is horrible. I'd have no idea how to set-up that and I'm sure it would take me at least a couple of hours...

Windows can automatically set up a "home group". OS X can use a network for Time Machine. In Linux as well, you can typically right click a folder and choose "share". You can use a Chromecast. You can use Plex or Kodi/XBMC. You can use AeroFS, PogoPlug, Owncloud, or any of a number of commercial NASes. You can live-stream games using Nvidia tools or Steam. You can use IP cameras. Etc. ad infinitum.

None of these have a UX that is appropriately described as "horrible".

- Time Machine is a background process so network bandwidth is not super important.

- Can you even Chromecast content that isn't from the internet? I have one and use it with Netflix all the time, but that's news to me.

- Typical living-room fare is only getting into XBMC or onto a hard drive/NAS if it's been BitTorrented. Streaming rules the day for me and for most people, it seems. (Not all of it is legal, of course, but people seem to vastly prefer illicit streaming sites to torrent trackers and clients.)

- OwnCloud is substantially more useful on a VPS so that you can access it from anywhere. Time Warner blocks incoming connections to its residential cable modems, last time I checked.

- IP cameras tend to be low resolution, low framerate, or both.

Of course local networks have their uses. What I contend is that very few people are actually constrained by the ~300Mbps of 802.11n.

Maybe the real application is business networking, so that remote desktop workstations could be practicable without wired networking.

> - Can you even Chromecast content that isn't from the internet? I have one and use it with Netflix all the time, but that's news to me.

You can Chromecast local content over LAN via Videostream[0] for Google Chromecast. You can even control the Videostream host via mobile app[1].

It's the next best thing to using Kodi[2] (formerly XBMC) over HDMI with a wireless controller.

> Typical living-room fare is only getting into XBMC or onto a hard drive/NAS if it's been BitTorrented.

On a weak ISP, breaking synchronicity lets you stream content around the house at higher quality. E.g., your ISP only supports ~720p streaming speeds, so you download 1080p+ content overnight / while at work, then stream around the house later.

[0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/videostream-for-go...

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.videostrea...

[2] http://kodi.tv/

It'd be a bit strange for tab streaming to go over the internet, and there certainly are apps that stream local videos. Maybe they do go over the internet, but I wouldn't just assume it.

>You can Chromecast local content via Videostream[0] for Google Chromecast. You can even control the Videostream host via mobile app[1].

The issue with Chromecast is you still need an internet connection to get the app onto the Chromecast to stream the video to it... I was using this and it was awesome! Then things happened and I was stuck on a shaped 256kbps connection and Videostream stopped working reliably. Switched to Kodi on the Remix Mini, works well, though not as good as Videostream did...

Everytime a home group came up in windows I closed the window immediately because I had no idea what it was about. I imagined it was for some kind of file sharing but honestly it only had checkboxes for default windows documents folders. I, and also everyone I know, do not use them for storing my files. Honestly I don't know why tho.

Samba/CIF is infinitely more simple than setting up Dropbox. But people have been trained on proprietary solutions, thanks to the iPod, hence find that simpler.

Unfortunately when I tried to set up a local synchronization solution I could not find any simple guides without already knowing what the names of the protocols were. Call me a filthy plebian, but in contrast all of my friends already knew what Dropbox was.

Well no, there's way to sync files simply but accessing files is quite simple.

Regardless, even Dropbox uses local network bandwidth when syncing on two computers on the same network.

Wi-Fi is not only about Internet. How about in-home use?

I've just backed up laptop's HDD to a desktop machine the other day. Took me about 10 hours. I haven't bothered, since I slept most of that time anyway, but would still enjoy if it'd be faster. I think I've also hit bandwidth constraints, when I streamed high-definition media over the LAN.

Hard drives and protocol overhead are to blame. 1gig+ .11n wifi is common, Ethernet is always an option but in either case neither will be the bottleneck.

In my country in bigger cities, there's gigabit fiber connections available to home consumers at affordable rates. And my 802.11n can't saturate this.

Coverage is steadily increasing, too, so WiFi or 'LiFi' technologies like this will become more and more important.