A WiFi-Only Office Network? 155
periol wonders: "I'm the sysadmin for a firm in mid-town Manhattan that is moving to a larger workspace six months from now. The new space is on one floor (100+ users to begin, 200 capacity) and is completely stripped. We've been playing around with the idea of completely wireless office, with no ethernet except to the access points (probably running over VPN for security). Email and files are all accessed locally over the network, and there is a web application hosted off site. Does anyone have experience with this kind of setup? My calculations are that we would need one access point per 15 computers, but I don't know what kind of issues we'll run into along the way. Will we run into unexpected periods of network downtime with a wireless-only setup like this?"
Odd question. (Score:3, Interesting)
no.
Expect them.
200 users in a small space over wireless = problems.
Re:Odd question. (Score:4, Informative)
Also look into getting some anti radation / stealth wallpaper. [silicon.com]
Got Debt? [debtishell.com]
Re:Odd question. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Odd question. (Score:2)
Operative word: should
With things like microwave ovens being cranked out en mass in china for damn near nothing, and even "Good" brand names outsourcing to the ssme factories that make trash, there is no way of knowing the leakage rate short of buying, testing, and returning it to store on failure. It is a total crapshoot. In short, the microwave over is just an example of hundreds of common sources of interference. WiFi is damn nice, but can be u
Re:Odd question. (Score:2)
I've never had problems with microwave ovens interfering with wireless networks or phones. Then again, I've always had fairly modern ones.
The only microwave that I know of is a friends, which is 15 years old. When he walks past it with his old cordless phone, all I hear is static.
Re:Odd question. (Score:4, Interesting)
See the example screenshot on this page: http://www.thegleam.com/ke5fx/gpib/ssm.htm [thegleam.com]
The microwave that wiped out the upper reaches of the 2.4-GHz band in this spectogram is two rooms away; the WiFi antenna generating the trace on channel 6 is about eight feet away. Most microwaves seem to occupy the higher portion of the band, so if you stick with channel 1 or channel 6, you may not have a problem. Also, some routers (not mine, unfortunately) can send shorter packets that avoid the oven-interference problem altogether.
Re:Odd question. (Score:2)
Re:Odd question. (Score:2, Funny)
Oh, yes it is! [wikipedia.org]
Re:Odd question. (Score:2)
Re:Odd question. (Score:2)
Hot Coffee from coffee machine == good
Hot Coffee from microwave == bad
Re:Odd question. (Score:2, Informative)
Your calculation of 15-20 users per AP is a sound one. This will equal ~1Mbps/user of actual IP throughput. Plenty for most people.
Finally, I would recommend buying an enterprise-class
Re:Odd question. (Score:2)
they rock, and cost 1/7 the cost of a cisco one.
The GP was talking about 802.11a. The openwrt (and other third party firmwares) do not magically turn an 802.11b/g AP to 802.11a. It's a different frequency, and that different frequency is going to cost more (brand new, on eBay they are dirt cheap).
bang for your buck, linksys is your best options, nad openwrt will give you all the "enterprise" features you may need.
It gives you nice feat
Re:Odd question. (Score:2)
But they do have problems. We lost electrical power one day, for just a few seconds... and the firmware fried itself. Granted, they are built to allow for this- the TFTP server, and firmware updater, does work when the main firmware is dead, allowing you to reflash the firmware. But this is an involved process- set to 10mbps half duplex, static IP setting, and you have to use their Windows only firmware update application. Not terribly hard if you know wh
Re:Odd question. (Score:2)
The most common one is the cheapskate idiot with the home ad-hoc network connection configured turning on his laptop in the office. He walks in and 3 channels (the one configured and the two adjacent) are out.
Add to that some bad bluetooth implementations, leaky microwaves, etc and you are stuffed.
Re:Odd question. (Score:2)
It's great for being able to check your email when you are out and about but when you want to be consistantly on (or when you are on a desktop...such as many people in an office environment), you cant beat wired
and, you dont hav
The downside to wireless office: (Score:5, Insightful)
MOD PARENT UP (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The downside to wireless office: (Score:1)
DoS attacks are another thing... but if they use VPN clients on the client computers, data safety shouldn't be a problem.
Re:The downside to wireless office: (Score:1, Interesting)
An insecure wireless netw
Re:The downside to wireless office: (Score:5, Informative)
How long do you think it will take me to crack the WPA/EAP key,
Which one?
Assuming EAP-TLS, each authentication is a mutual authentication using public/private key pairs on both access point and device. You'll need to crack the client's auth key to get in. So how long will it take you to crack a 2048-bit RSA key?
Or, assuming you want to sniff the data, rather than join the network, you need to crack the packet encryption keys. With WPA, that means you have to defeat TKIP, which changes the RC4 key on every packet transmitted, and isn't vulnerable to the related-key attacks that sunk WEP's stupid design. But if this is a new office, there's no reason for them to use the backward compatibility hack that is WPA, they should deploy WPA2, which uses AES for the packet-level encryption. Although both WEP and WPA/TKIP misuse RC4 in a way that enabled the WEP attacks (neither of them discard the first few hundred bytes of the keystream after a rekey operation), AES doesn't have the same potential weakness as RC4. Since the best known attack against AES is brute force, you're going to have to search a 128-bit keyspace. How long will that take you?
Given WPA2 and, say, EAP-TLS, the best known attacks on the WiFi security require breaking either RSA or AES. Good luck with that.
Re:The downside to wireless office: (Score:2)
The best known attacks to WPA2 are social engineering - cleverly posing as tech support, or flat out stealing someone's laptop.
That goes without saying. However, it should be pointed out that social engineering your way onto a wired network is much easier. Than obtaining someone's computer and/or smart card and their password.
Re:The downside to wireless office: (Score:2)
The difference is that when you come into a wired network you either need to leave something behind, or you lose your access as soon as you leave the location.
If you manage to get the wireless key off of a laptop, you continue to have access (as long as the key is not revoked).
Re:The downside to wireless office: (Score:2)
If you manage to get the wireless key off of a laptop, you continue to have access (as long as the key is not revoked).
Which is one of the big advantages of using keys on smart cards. The card's absence will be noted, and the key revoked. Note that having the user's key isn't enough, either. You also need their password.
Re:The downside to wireless office: (Score:2)
And what's nice is that the smart card melts itself if you type the password wrong 3 times. So unless you can brute-force the password in 3 tries, you're not getting the key. (Actually, the smart card never gives you the key. It handles all the crypto operations itself.)
Re:The downside to wireless office: (Score:2)
You have obviously never been in an environment that uses 802.1x authentication for wired ports.
Nope. I know it can be done, but I've never seen it.
Re:The downside to wireless office: (Score:2)
I'm trying to picture a medicine cabinet with 50 ethernet jacks. Thank you for making me laugh!
So, what is a medical cabinet?
Just be sure (Score:2, Funny)
Sure, why not? (Score:2)
It depends.... (Score:1)
Wireless be warned. (Score:5, Funny)
Allow me sum this idea up in one word... (Score:1)
Maybe unreliable :-) (Score:5, Informative)
We put in 100% wireless at one when we moved. Saved us a bundle of time, but there were dead spots all over the place. Lots of people had laptops and moved around with them - some offices had good connectivity, some didn't. In hindsight, we didn't have enough access points to provide good coverage. We eventually switched to wired due to user frustration.
In the next office we learnt. Fewer people have laptops and move around. Everyone fixed is wired. Laptops have the option and using IBM's s/w on the thinkpads, they seamlessly switch when you unplug to move (in fact, some choose to stay wireless all the time). We carefully chose the locations of the APs by testing. Throughput is down but not noticeably so.
What to learn:
Think of access points in terms of distance between them and coverage as well as number of people connecting. And figure this out by testing, not by reading manuals. Walk the floor with a laptop and test every office, nook and cranny - there are lots of unexpected dead spots.
Security is not a problem - WPA is a piece of cake to set up and (as yet) unbroken.
So it can work.
Re:LOL - You Effing N00B!!!! (Score:2)
What are you, 13 years old?
Wifi Done Right (Score:3, Funny)
Needs more homework... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope, for workstations in the double digits, with no walls yet in your way, you'd be silly to try wireless for anything but phones. If you do decide to bet the farm on wireless, make sure it's in licensed spectrum that you have all to yourself.
Re:Needs more homework... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Needs more homework... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Needs more homework... (Score:2)
Of course, that involved Access Points on a stick (up through drop ceiling) and the vendor marking up prints of the buildings that we wanted quotes on to show bleed-over, total coverage area (>80% bandwidth) etc. From those, they recommended where each access point should be on each floor.
We're not doing it for user access at the desktop level; just for conference room and other gatheri
Re:Needs more homework... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Needs more homework... (Score:2)
You're at the high end of my price estimate. $70 per jack in bulk is robbery.
Wireless LAN (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, you can do it.
Should you do it? Probably not.
I'm guessing your users have some sort of expectation of security. By going wireless, you should treat every user as if they are working remotely. Every connection should be treated as if it was compromised.
If you are doing anything with security in mind, assume I'm sitting on the next floor down, packet sniffing everything. I'll eventually masquerade as one of your users, and I will get through whatever layers of security you think you have in place. As far as that goes, I may on the next floor up, or in the next building with a high gain antenna pointed at one of your AP's.
For a secure corporate network, wired is the only way to go.
For a home network, where it's your kids chatting with their friends about who's dating who at school, and you browsing porn sites at night, sure wireless fine. Who cares if someone breaks into your network there.
Spend the extra bucks. Hire someone to drop lines to all the desks, and hook everything up to a good switch. Double check their work to make sure there was nothing added to your network.
Re:Wireless LAN (Score:2)
By going wireless, you should treat every user as if they are working remotely. Every connection should be treated as if it was compromised.
Wrong.
There are other reasons not to use WiFi, but security is not one of them, not any more. Security of a WiFi network using WPA2 with an authentication server (don't use PSK mode -- not that it's weak, but it's hard to manage) is significantly more secure than a wired network. With a wired network anyone that comes into your building and finds an open port can
Re:Wireless LAN (Score:2)
Re:Wireless LAN (Score:2)
You still have an external access to your network. If someone drops their smart card, or whatever they're using for security (or it's lifted off them in the garage or elevator), your hacker could have free roam of the network for the night.
Physical access always has it's concerns. Without physical security, you have nothign. Besides finding a free port (you didn't disable all the unused ports?), someone could wander in and find a PC that was left on and logged in
Re:Wireless LAN (Score:2)
If someone drops their smart card, or whatever they're using for security (or it's lifted off them in the garage or elevator), your hacker could have free roam of the network for the night.
As long as they also dropped their password, yes. The card's no good without that. And the hacker would have free roam until the card was reported missing and the certificate revoked which is likely more than one night.
Besides finding a free port (you didn't disable all the unused ports?),
I'm a security consulta
Re:Wireless LAN (Score:2)
With a wired network anyone that comes into your building and finds an open port can hop on your LAN and go roaming around.
Not if you take the same measures to secure your wired network that you do your wireless network. Most enterprise switches can do 802.1x authentication via certificates to a RADIUS server, which is more than secure enough. However, even without port-based security, a switched wired network is still more secure than wireless. It's almost impossible to sniff traffic off a switched n
Re:Wireless LAN (Score:2)
Most enterprise switches can do 802.1x authentication via certificates to a RADIUS server, which is more than secure enough.
Yes, they can, and it's a good idea that I've never seen implemented.
It's almost impossible to sniff traffic off a switched network beyond broadcast information.
That depends on the switch, and it's fairly easy to put most switches in broadcast mode simply by spamming them with packets from multiple MAC addresses.
Wifi, due to its shared nature, is a traffic sniffers dream, mu
Re:Wireless LAN (Score:2)
I agree with what you're saying in your post, but this part is wrong. Wireless communications using anything other than WEP is curre
Why Fi? (Score:1)
WiFi is shared ..... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:WiFi is shared ..... (Score:2)
With wired, you can break up segments of the network and run routers, so individual work groups can have 1Gbps between their machines, shunt huge files around, but not impact the rest of the network.
With wireless, you've got 54mbps potentially shared across the entire userbase. And as soon as anyone tries to use an 11b card, the entire network gets slower.
Really, this is the dumbest idea I've read about since I last read comp.risks.
Delivery Trends (Score:4, Interesting)
Telephones started out wired and are now wireless.
Wireless networking is a step backwards from a switched hardware fabric. Productivity will be much faster when a file, such as a large presentation, can be trasmitted and delivered in gigabits a second, instead of potentially single digit megabits.
Wired vs. Wireless (Score:2)
I think the original question needs to have a bit more specificity: what kin
Re:Wired vs. Wireless (Score:3, Insightful)
Wireless phones have been a step forward only in convenience. The quality of the service they provide is a huge step backward. Back in olden days, there was a huge marketing campaign credibly focused on the promise that you could even hear a pin drop at the other end of the (fiber) line. Today one of the biggest telecom campaigns is built around a guy repeatedly asking if the person on the other end of a wireless connection can h
Ethernet (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolutely not. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Absolutely not. (Score:1)
Bad Idea (Score:2, Informative)
1) Reliability. I have yet to find a decent AP that doesn't need to be power cycled every so often to get things working again (although I haven't ever used a business quality AP)
2) Speed. As far as I know, pre-N technology hasn't been fully adopted and the best you can do is 802.11g (54Mbps) basically half of what you would get with wired (100Mbps). Granted you rarely ever get the full 100Mbps, but you rarely ever get the full 54Mbps eithe
Cisco (Score:1)
Maybe you should [pcmag.com]. There's quite a difference.
Re:Cisco (Score:1)
I'd love to get my hands on one.
Re:Bad Idea (Score:2)
It's worse than that. The CSMA/CA collision management protocol used by 802.11 is inherently less efficient than CSMA/CD used by wired Ethernet. The throughput of an 802.11 system will always be a lower fraction of the signaling rate than even
Cost of VPN client licensing vs. wired network? (Score:3, Insightful)
Your also never going to get the throughput that a wired connection can provide. Another thing to consider is the cost of going wireless will be wasted money just as soon as your company realizes that doing so was a big mistake. I'd bet that they would eventually come to this conclusion.
Just use wireless where it makes sense like conference rooms and common areas and then secure the hell out of it.
Later,
-Slashdot Junky
Best Buy did it (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Best Buy did it (Score:2, Informative)
Expect congestion, but not necessarily outages (Score:5, Insightful)
The main consideration in your plan is the 802.11 host density. The 802.11 spectrum is divided into 14 partially-overlapping channels. Each channel in 802.11g provides a maximum of 54Mbps (this is theoretical- actual throughput is closer to 25-40Mbps on a good day). Even by configuring channel selection for an even distribution, you'd still end up with at least 7 hosts per channel. Because 13 of those 15 channels would be surrounded by channels with statistically-equal amounts of traffic, you can't guarantee more than 3.8MBps per host (perfect theoretical world), or closer to 1-2MBps in practice.
While 2MBps is fine for internet downloads, you'll experience a noticable delay accessing any sizeable files on network shares, or moving email attachments around.
Additionally, because of the overlapping nature of the 802.11 channels, and the leaving-much-to-be-desired spectral filters in most 802.11 stations, when any one user is transferring a large file and maxes out their channel x, expect all the users on channel x-1, x, and x+1 to experience sluggish performance. Given at least 7 hosts per channel, and at least 2-3 channels affected per burst, any burst large traffic will impact no fewer than 21 users on the network.
In short, yes, you could do it, but count on substantially poorer performance than a wired solution.
And as with all professional-grade wireless networks, accept absolutely nothing less than a strong per-host-authenticated VPN tunnel.
Good luck!
Re:Expect congestion, but not necessarily outages (Score:2)
Unless, of course, someone wants you to have outages. It's relatively easy to spit out enough garbage RF to disrupt a wireless network. I don't know if your company is the kind of company that might have that kind of problem, but wired solutions are a lot more difficult to disrupt.
Re:Expect congestion, but not necessarily outages (Score:2)
Well, that is unless you get a lot of noise inside the 2.4Ghz band, either inadvertantly or on purpose from a malicious entity. 2.4Ghz cordless phones are notorious for using way too much of the spectrum, and polluting it with all sorts of traffic that interferes with WiFi 802.11b/g signals. Plus there is always to possibility of an attacker simply injecting all sorts of high-powered noise in the
Re:Expect congestion, but not necessarily outages (Score:2)
Honestly, go mostly if not all wired.
The office is stripped. Running new wire and setting up ports is super easy if take the time to plan it all out first. When you have the office setup, it's more of a pain.
BTW, is your electrical already setup for 200 users? Otherwise, you'll be doing that too.
Don't forget the cost of NICs (Score:3, Insightful)
In contrast, there's probably no need for more than 100 Mbps switched Ethernet in a typical office setting. It's also easier to deploy such an upgrade piecemeal if it does become necessary. Wireless solutions usually have backward compatibility modes for your legacy devices, but they tend to really drag down performance, too.
Another thing to consider is to not only consider interference with other networks, but within your own network. Since 802.11 is a CSMA-based protocol using a single shared medium, it really only works well for communication to/from the wired LAN. Communications between wireless nodes runs into the same problems unswitched Ethernet LANs run into with access contention, even if you blanket the floor with access points.
In particular, communications between two nodes using the same access point will usually be more than twice as fast in ad hoc mode than having the access point relay the packets. A smarter WiFi standard would be able to command stations to communicate directly, or use alternate channels for send/receive to avoid contention, but that's apparently not being considered.
Yup, bad idea (Score:5, Informative)
The other issue that people have mentioned is outside interference. Microwave ovens can be a real bummer. So can the little cordless 2.4GHz headsets executives seem to like. And you better hope nobody sets up a 2.4Ghz video sender for their security system in the vicinity. Or a nearby cell tower, or radio station. You could be working perfectly for a year, and then suddenly have your network permanently broken by something completely outside your control or ability to change.
There's a reason you don't hear of many people doing this.
-R
Re:Yup, bad idea (Score:2)
Yes and no. There are ways to do incredibly high density deployment of Wi-Fi. You have to get the channels spread just right (I don't remember the exact configuration, but the channels do overlap, and if memory serves, the advice was something like no adjacent channels closer than 3 APs away, and no second-adjacent channels less than 2 APs away... or something like that.
More than that, you have to reduce the transmitter power on the base station's radio to such an extent that each user can only see a ve
Re:Yup, bad idea (Score:2)
I can't em
Horrors of wireless laptop support (Score:2, Informative)
Hey, no problem, you can connect using the IP assigned to the wired NIC, right? Good luck when the script only accep
Running wires (Score:5, Insightful)
1. The ooh factor
2. Ease of installation
Reason #1 is of course no reason to do anything in a business environment, although it is often tempting. Think about things realistically, don't get too fancy and regret it later. New wireless standards will come out, and you'll want to upgrade to them. Since there is a new wireless standard brewing right now, and there is not likely to be a new wired standard for some time (10GB is probably 3-5 years away from being affordable), it would be wiser to invest your money in a stationary target.
Reason #2 is also not a good reason for doing this. You have a totally empty floor, so everything needs to be run to the various cubicles or offices that are you going to erect. That means at least power, maybe phone lines, and who knows what else. It is very little extra effort to do the networking at the same time, even taking into account that the lines shouldn't run in the same conduit. As long as a computer has to plug into a power source, which they always will, they may as well plug into a network interface as well. Sure you could also put wireless in here and there, but using it exclusively just to save on the effort of cabling is a bad move. I predict that you'll wind up buying wireless bridges for lots of things (printers?)
we're using wireless for client/visitor internet (Score:2, Informative)
The wireless is working fine for now with only me (vpn to our network) and a few clients and two printers. I'm adding two d-link range extenders this weekend to test for awhile befo
Re:we're using wireless for client/visitor interne (Score:2, Interesting)
You'll care when your ISP suspends your DSL line because of excessive spamming activity.
No. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No. (Score:2)
Remembering the limitations on bandwaidth and users that previous posters have mentioned, realize that you may nto even have complete control of the spectrum in your vacinity. When I power up my laptop in a relatively light residential area in manhattan I see 6 to 7 networks that I can reach (I assume a fair number of my neighbors have APs set up
Assume that buisness de
Reliable, Secure Wireless = $$$ (Score:2)
Probably not a good idea. (Score:5, Insightful)
1.
2. The new space is on one floor...
3.
4.
5.
Issue 1: RF Interference
Addressing item #1, how much square footage do you anticipate these 100+ people using? According to item #2, you intend to accomplish this on one floor, and given that you are in mid-town Manhattan, I imagine a small office footprint.
At first blush, this sounds like a recipe for disaster--at least as far as I understand what you are doing. First of all, just being able to service X number of wireless users per access points is not enough. You have to consider how the RF field being put out by each AP will overlap others. In the US there are 11 channels for 802.11b/g and only 3 do not overlap (at least enough for it to matter practically); too much inter-accesspoint overlap will cause a sever drop in throughput--APs will be fighting each other's RF output. You may find yourself at the very least having to dial back each AP's power output significantly just to get clients to associate reliably. Also bear in mind that given you will be on a single floor, your RF output will extend three dimensionally to upper and lower floors if you are using directional antennas. This is not just an issue for your neighbors, but also with multipath distortion.
Issue 2: Latency
You mention that your network will "probably running over VPN for security" which will add to the already high latency of a wireless network. The overhead involved in setting up a connection on a wireless network and transmitting in a timely manner is exhorbitant by comparison to Ethernet. Add to that an even higher overhead for a VPN (even hardware accelerated) and you've got a recipe for disaster on all but the most tolerant user base. Item #5--your off-site web app--is likely to cause serious headache.
Latency will be a major factor if you intend on doing any amount of VoIP or video conferencing, and this traffic will require traffic shaping too.
Issue 3: Throughput
The reality is that we are still in a "Pre N" world. The very maximum you can squeeze out of your 802.11g network is around 22Mbps overall. And here's another fact that a lot of admins don't know: as soon as you associate 1--just 1--802.11b client to that g network, your total maximum throughput drops immediately to 8Mbps. Compare this to Gigabit Ethernet in performance vs. cost.
My suggestion is to design a wireless network that will properly cover the office space, but cable Ethernet drops for key locations such as stationary offices and conference areas that are likely to see a lot of consistent use. Users should be able to roam about the office, but have a drop at their disposal if their application demands it. Your users will be happier, you will be happier, and you won't run the risk of cooking your staff with all those microwaves.
Go copper. Or at least go with good WiFi. (Score:3, Informative)
I'm assuming that you want to do this because the userbase is mostly laptop-based.
You definitely will spend a lot of money on getting real wifi equipment to do this roll-out. At the very least, you will want to have access points that will handle WDS correctly so that people can roam around from AP to AP. You will want to have central configuration management, performance/usage monitoring, and security management. (One product off the top of my head that might be useful: WiFi WorkPlace [newburynetworks.com].)
Note that with wifi, each access point acts essentially like a shared hub -- and the throughput is less than half ot the signaling speed -- so your 10 users on the same 54-Mbps AP will be on an effetive "20 Mbps" hub... Latency is higher, too. Yuck.
In order to keep the footprint of each "hub" (AP) small to ensure reasonable performance, you will need a lots of low-powered access points. And hope that your client machines are running bug free drivers --- back when I used to play with linux wlan drivers, we sometimes had a client go crazy and pump up the transmitter to max power in order to associate with the AP on the other side of the building -- and stepping on a lot of traffic in the process.
Good luck!
Re:Go copper. Or at least go with good WiFi. (Score:2)
Actually, we (the college where I do tech support) do have an environment with a lot of laptop users, and we're in the process of making them almost ubiquitous. But we still have a fully wired network and have no intention of changing that. When a student sits down in a classroom and hauls out his 'Book, he plugs it into the wall. We might have to settle for wireless in the antique granite building we're expanding into n
1 AP per 15 users? (Score:3, Informative)
The second question is the physical layout of the place. If it's a big empty warehouse type of place, there will be very little physical interference in the form of walls and such. If you are setting up a cube farm there will be even less, and the people will be packed fairly tightly into that space. If the APs are that close together, you're going to have lots of coverage area overlap, and with only three non-overlapping frequency ranges you will undoubtedly have roaming and AP association issues. You may plan on 15 users per AP, but that's just an average. If 30 of your users associate with one particular AP because it has the strongest signal, you will get lots of complaints very quickly.
Then there's the numerous security and cost issues which have been covered in other posts.
Worst-case scenario (Score:1)
Terrible idea! (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't care what kind super-duper-double-data wireless standard you run, it'll never perform like a good ol' fashioned 100Mbit full duplex switched network. And you won't have the option to go 1000Mbit where you need it unless you do some ad hoc wiring, which always turns out bad.
Just spend the cash to wire the office properly with good labeling and patch panels. You won't regret it. There really isn't any room for debate here. You'd be a fool to go all wireless.
-matthew
Meru Networks does this - Wireless Backbone System (Score:2)
Meru uses their radio switches and bonds multiple channels of wireless to create backbone trunks between APs. You end up with around 150Mbps full-duplex if you used 3 channels for the backbone...a bit better than 100-Base. These trunks are encrypted, and the wireless path between AP and controller are also encrypted. Keep in mind, this path is between APs and rad
shared bandwidth (Score:2)
How does that help? (Score:2)
But with a normal setup -- one server with one 100 mbit wire to a switch -- that's ultimately only 100 mbit full duplex vs 54 mbit half duplex. The bandwidth ends up being shared anyway.
I'm sure it's still an issue. Certainly, wireless seems to deal very poorly with interference -- the wireless I'm writing this on is practically useless in some places around the ho
Re:How does that help? (Score:2)
maybe wrap the building in a big tin foil hat (Score:2, Informative)
From my experance I've found wired network far cheaper in the longrun. The cable costs maybe high to lay but once in maintance and upgrade costs are low. Were with wireless support costs are high and ongoing. We only use wireless as a bandage till the wires are in.
If you want really secu
What are you doing about phones for this office? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What are you doing about phones for this office (Score:2)
(something to do with involuntary cycling due to low quality components and improper grounding)
Wireless is temporary (Score:3, Insightful)
Wireless does have its place, though. You can set up a wireless network very quickly. That can be important if you need to start moving people to the new location before the contractors have finished wiring. It's also good for meeting areas where people will be bringing laptops. That is, it's good for -temporary- network connectivity. So, even if you (correctly) walk away thinking that a completely wireless office is a bad idea, don't leave wireless out of the plans completely.
Suppliment, don't replace (Score:2)
So, go ahead and have wireless all over, especially in meeting rooms where people are likely to bring laptops. But make sure you secure it, and use wired for anything not likely to move. Even if people are using laptops, they already have to be plugged int
Wireless (Score:2)
Overall, a bad idea (Score:2, Informative)
An all wireless network for a 100+ person office may be buying a lot of trouble. For example, one user running a multicast app (think "ghost") means the whole network will become unavailable. One user with a 2.4Ghz phone or someone making popcorn in the corner kitchenette and you're going to have a lot of drop outs. One user with a PDA running B and your shared 22Mb/s (max) tput G network suddenly drops to 14Mb/s or less.
I'd definitely go with wired jacks with wireless available for convinience.
If you're de
We did it and are fine... (Score:2)
My experience... (Score:2)
At my last employer, they remodeled the entire office, and decided to go with "wireless everywhere". This was about four years ago. They decided to use some nice 802.11a & b equipment, put in wireless cards in all the computers, and made sure all the laptops had wireless. This was to replace an *already set up* Ca
Gigabit to the desktop (Score:2)
Re:what? (Score:1)
Man, I wish slashdot had an age requirement of at least 13 before allowing posting...