Would you move your entire office to wireless, if so, how?

MrGuvernment

MrGuvernment

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I was talking to a friend today and the company he works at with some 500 employee's in a new building is using all wireless for all their systems, besides servers, i would hope.

So it got me thinking, you must need some serious hardware to do that many people on wireless for an office and assure people have good connections.

Since this company does a lot of media that means a lot of large content going around..

How would you even do that, or start? It must of cost a pretty penny..

i have 52 workstations in my office and roaming profiles and folder shares and thinking that would cost me $20-$30K, random guess to do high speed reliable wireless for my office..
 
Lol. I would NEVER do that. Everything gets wired. Wireless for the odd time laptops are used outside their "home" office.
 
can i ask why?

Would using a Radius server not provide decent security, assuming the Admin doesnt use simple passwords?
 
MrGuvernment said:
can i ask why?

Would using a Radius server not provide decent security, assuming the Admin doesnt use simple passwords?
Click to expand...

The key word there would be "decent".

I wouldn't want to do it just based on management and support problems. If your users aren't constantly roaming around while doing work, wireless adds more complexity, more chances for problems, and gives you worse performance than wired. Theres also an increased chance of a security breach. Remember, at one point WEP was considered "decent" security. Then it wasn't.
 
Massive wireless setups aren't uncommon, universities use them extensively. But they need to be planned and installed on a whole other level. Cisco has specific hardware that allows wireless roaming between the many access points and Ubiquity also has this in their product lineup, but at a lower price I believe.

I'm not a supporter of wireless-only (or mainly) unless it is absolutely necessary, but it is possible. Just don't try to get it done by placing some access points at "strategic" places and think you are done. You need capable hardware, software and staff.
 
Wireless is for moving hosts or a last resort for hosts you can't possibly reach via wire. Connecting stationary desktops wirelessly, 52 of them, in a business, is borderline stupid.
 
I'd advise against a large wireless implementation. Especially given the bandwidth requirements you state in the OP.
 
TCM said:
Wireless is for moving hosts or a last resort for hosts you can't possibly reach via wire. Connecting stationary desktops wirelessly, 52 of them, in a business, is borderline stupid.
Click to expand...

Yep. I'm not concerned about WPA2/RADIUS EAP being broken. I'm concerned about performance, interference and just general wireless inconsistency.
 
Hells no - Even with N and AC, the best most expensive wireless network will never give the same consistent, hassle-free performance as a real Cat5e/6 drop.

I've never seen an office that can't (or shouldn't) implement a proper wired network - despite what some executive read about "the Wiffie" on his "EyeTouchPhonePod". Offices have desks - desks should have at least 2 Cat5e hardlines each.

I have decent 5GHz N coverage at home and work, and I still can't stand pulling over a file from my servers and seeing it top out under 20MB/s.
 
I wouldn't, but if I had to I'd use Xirrus or Cisco.
Roaming is supported in most WiFi drivers.
The management, support, and reliability of WiFi make it unattractive for any business situation where it is not needed.
My rule of thumb is Wired for stationary devices (includes laptops at desks) and WiFi for mobile or temporary.

University colleges/campuses are serving a large number of mobile/transient users. Look at their computer labs and institutional workstations- they're wired. Staff may or may not use wireless, mostly because it is already there, and staff may see it as a 'perk' or convenience.

If you have a business case for wireless besides 'its cool' then investigate it. If you already have functional infrastructure, you are just adding a lot of expense and a lot of headaches.
 
Wireless is fine if you're doing regular web-browsing on multiple computers. It gets bad when they start needing to file swap and move directories between multiple computers. Not very reliable IMHO.
 
RocketTech said:
I wouldn't, but if I had to I'd use Xirrus or Cisco.
Roaming is supported in most WiFi drivers.
The management, support, and reliability of WiFi make it unattractive for any business situation where it is not needed.
My rule of thumb is Wired for stationary devices (includes laptops at desks) and WiFi for mobile or temporary.

University colleges/campuses are serving a large number of mobile/transient users. Look at their computer labs and institutional workstations- they're wired. Staff may or may not use wireless, mostly because it is already there, and staff may see it as a 'perk' or convenience.

If you have a business case for wireless besides 'its cool' then investigate it. If you already have functional infrastructure, you are just adding a lot of expense and a lot of headaches.
Click to expand...

^ What he said. In Higher education facilities the Wireless access is the greatest benefit to the transient population, and it typically NOT used as a primary source for data in their enterprise.

My biggest concern for that plan wouldn't necessarily be speed and/or security, but reliability. You better be in your OWN building and not in multi-tenant building where you can't effectively control your own environment. Rogue APs, Open APs from office that don't have a clue, etc. Especially if you are like the vast majority of offices and are a Windows shop that might be trending more to laptops. The wireless side needs to be locked down almost to unusability to prevent users from auto attaching to non-office Wifi networks, which defeats flexibility for travelling laptops, etc...

Can an office be effectively be designed as the OP is suggesting? Yes. But it's headaches pretty much outweigh the benefits.
 
I hate wireless networks. Most people have no idea how to design them correctly. Its a giant pain in the ass and network troubleshooting get stupidly difficult.
 
We have a big cisco wireless controller setup , 2400 AP's. Pain in the ass. VERY expensive. VERY time consuming. I wouldn't do it unless you had ALOT of time and money.
 
We have a medium sized Aruba setup, close to 300 ap's and many controllers due to different locations connected via wan, etc.

I spend a total of an hour a week on it.

But I would never, ever want to replace the stability and consistency of a wired device with a wireless connection.
 
Heck no. Wireless is slowly getting better and better but it is in no way a replacement for drops in a business environment any time soon.
Wireless is a supplement but not a replacement.
 
Wireless that is high speed is like saying there is a shark that is a vegetarian.

Half duplex, your information is broadcasted hundreds of feet in all directions for anyone to capture and break encryption, you really need expensive hardware, bandwidth suffers horribly, even if N is 300mps the max speed you normally would ever get is around 70mbps and that is not mentioning what if your servers needed to do some backups that were several hundred gigabytes? Even with quality of service on high end wireless products i.e. Cisco you still have to use TDMA protocols to ensure all wifi clients have available timeslots and if servers are transmitting hundreds of gigabytes of data that is a lot of weight on the network.

Wifi is just a botique bonus if you ask me. It is not REAL business networking in any way. I cant get my clients to understand this yet they persist to call me everyday bitching about little wifi issues speed being number 1 and they are all on Ubiquiti products which are high end.
 
good lord no. wifi is for guests/conference rooms, ipads and phones only. I'd go with a crappy 1995 10/100 network before I'd go wifi.
 
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