Making Wireless, Not Ethernet, the Heart of the Network

GMGruman writes "As mobile devices enter the workplace and latch on to Wi-Fi networks — along with devices such as HVAC sensors and videoconferencing that most people don't even realize use Wi-Fi — the typical wireless LAN is unable to cope. What needs to happen, argues Aberdeen Group's Andrew Borg, is a rethink of the wireless LAN not as a casual adjunct to the wired LAN (the typical mentality when they were first set up) but as the corporate LAN itself."

Comments

Too bad it won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

High latency, low throughput, and a shared collision domain.
What's not to like?

No, can't be done.

[SuricouRaven]

Ye cannae change the laws of physics!

Seriously, though... wireless has serious inherent disadvantages. Susceptibility to interference, a single collision domain, much lower bandwidth in the analog sense. It's good for mobility, but if you try to run a whole site-LAN on wireless it just wouldn't work - even if you utilised the 800MHz, 2.4GHZ and 5.0GHz bands all at once. Maybe if you put little 60GHz nodes in every room, but it'd be far too expensive.

Re:The number of devices is not most relevant

[dfghjk]

You are using an iPad on a corporate LAN and accessing "boatloads of data"? Haha.

Some people have real work to do.

Re:The number of devices is not most relevant

[hawkbat05]

Perhaps then it's time to refine the overly large rj45 plug into something that will accommodate smaller form factors. Call it Ethernet micro. Most of the connector is wasted plastic anyway.

Why are these things using WiFi?

[betterunixthanunix]

Printers? Video surveillance? HVAC? Electric meters? Why are these things using WiFi, when they rarely move and are always plugged into an external power source?

Re:Why are these things using WiFi?

[ledow]

That's no excuse.

I work in schools (i.e. limited budget). It's just not sensible or practical to have ANY of that stuff running Wifi, especially in solid-build buildings, near residential areas, or anywhere you need something to STAY connected.

We have HVAC controls - on a Cat5 outlet that we put in specially. The electrician ran it in with the electrical outlets and the AC engineers run it with their cabling happily too - for the price of the cable / box and a little extra labour.

We have a printer in every room. Usually wired to the same Cat5 outlet as the main computer outlet.

We have door-controls - same thing. All over Cat5/IP, even down to the individual door activators and swipe-card sensors.

We have VoIP - same thing. If there isn't a socket where we need it, Cat5 goes in for no more than a phone line of the same length / distance.

We have CCTV - all wired to Cat5 sockets rather than with Coax back to a central point because that would mean more unnecessary cabling when the Cat5 does the job and STILL supplies Gigabit Ethernet to several other devices on the same point.

And then eventually you realise - after a while, in any large building, you still always have a Cat5 point within 100m (usually within 10m) and from there you can do everything you need to split it / put a switch in and join even more stuff to the normal network.

Cat5 is a universal deployment that virtually everything can use once plugged in and can be extended to ridiculous means (i.e. Gigabit to every outlet, so you CAN stream multiple CCTV channels from the other end of the building without having to worry about the wireless bandwidth / interference in between and/or knocking out other systems).

Whereas our wireless deployments? In the middle of a residential area, we can't get more than 8 machines into a room reliably using Wifi - even with flooding 3 channels full from school AP's - ( and where reliability means "can login via LDAP without having to constantly retry") because of the interference and up/down-ness of it all - training days we only use switches and hard cables now.

What we do expose to Wifi can be picked up miles away if you want to but can't be used reliably on the other side of the room. Wireless CCTV interferes like hell and knocks out both itself and the Wifi and other 2.4GHz gadgets.

Yet with wired cabling we can cover the entire building with the minimum of fuss. Diagnosis is simple (green light on switch = working). Things don't change over time. We can have redundant and even circular links. We don't drown out our neighbours.

It costs LESS than the Wifi crap - hell a run of Cat5 to the maximum run (with installation costs and sockets) costs less than a single access point (without installation costs) if you have decent contractors that aren't conning you. If you have in-house staff, you also save the "profit" that you would have given the contractor.

Copper cabling saves you so much more hassle and time and money and effort and extraneous costs, if you're being charged sensible prices, and stays that way pretty much forever - use your brain and install Cat6a now and you're save until each outlet needs more than 10Gb/s. Install wifi now and for MORE cost, you get LESS service, LESS reliability and in before you even get to 200MB/s you're going to be replacing them ALL.

Re:The number of devices is not most relevant

[MeatBag PussRocket]

Your job may be vital to your organization, and you may be "goddamned good" at it, but thats really besides the issue. Any corporate network contains mountains of proprietary data that is placed at risk when people who dont understand how to manage that data (you) attempt to hook up whatever you damn well fancy. Computers are not magic no matter how much you'd like to believe otherwise. Ethernet is not powered by unicorn blood an IT staff are not wizards (no matter how much some of us would like to believe otherwise). Getting a virus is only one potential problem, and truthfully the ability to not get a virus has no bearing on "knowing what you're doing"

At the end of the day, if your flashy electronic status symbol causes a network issue and then no one in your office can work, it really doesnt matter how 'goddamnded good' you are at your job, you cant do everyone elses too.

I've seen a number the power-suit, anger-management, "i'm a type-A", throbbing hard-ons; thinking they're the next Richard Branson. its a great wet-dream until you fuck up and get punted from your high horse by people that care about advancing the goals of the business over their own personal agenda.