Office Wireless Networks-How Reliable Are They?

xinit asks: "The company I'm working with is moving into a new, large space and we're just in the process of throwing up a couple of walls and such in the new space. We're going to need to wire the place pretty heavily, and I'd prefer to avoid the cabling snarls that I've seen in some places that were setup wrong from the start. We've got approx 8000 sq. ft. split up a little bit with some hollow walls splitting off meeting rooms, some offices, etc. Since we're all pretty much using laptops at the moment as our workstations, what if we were to just go with a wireless solution that would allow us to move our laptops around at a whim..." We've given wireless networks alot of coverage on Slashdot. How do some of solutions rank in terms of practicality?

"...rather than unplugging and replugging, you could move down to the employee lounge and continue to work. Or perhaps with a hub placed in a choice location near the front window, a person could even venture downstairs (we're on the second floor) and sit outside for a coffee and some coding. To me, the advantages of being able to do this outweigh the speed hit at least. However, the question is, how reliable is this, and what can affect the performance realistically? What's the practical distance and coverage of the available units? Who makes quality wireless gear?"

Comments

The users love it.

[bluGill]

I don't have a laptop, so I'm strctly wired in, but other here have wireless laptops and love it. While in a meeting I talk to my boss about some issue, that doesn't concern a third guy in my department. After we "solve" the issue the boss turns to the third guy about the next issue and he responds "While you two were talking I tested the fix I coded up last night" or some such. I then twiddle my thumbs on a fourth issue involving anouther person.

So I would not recomend anyone do without laptops and wireless networking. All the bosses have it (they go from meeting to meeting, with a cell phone they don't need to enter their office some days. Users love it and are more productive.

However, today I would put a fast network to all the desktops. Laptop only users will probably never plug into it, but let them know it is faster and they might. If wireless turns out to be too slow in 6 months when you suddenly have to roll out realtime video confrencing to everyone you will be glad for the wires. If you have any fixed location systems wire them in. (Fixed location I mean rarely moved, not nessicarly cemented in place)

Re:Security

[iob]

The Baseline to have is 802.11b with 128 bit WEP support. Use the WEP and make all the basestations only accept encrypted connections. Preferably only from NIC cards known to you to belong to the company.

You're going to need a few basestations in order to segment the network space, and also to get better coverage.

Bear in mind that it is a shared medium, so your network performance goes back to close to shared 10Mbits levels.

Best Basestation so far: Cisco / Aironet for interoperability

Best Cards: Cisco, Lucent, Nokia all seem to be much of a muchness (I haven't tested the Nokia 802.11b gear yet, and I want to - the 802.11 gear is good!)

Put the basestations in the roofspace (away from users' reach) and poke the antennae back through the tiles for a tidy looking install. That should be OK for most of the good basestations as they have the capability to extend the antennae. (unfortunately it isn't true for the Cisco one I've seen)