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?"

Security

[RGRistroph]

In addition to picking out a hardware infrastructure, you also want to pay attention to the network setup so that someone outside the facility cannot do something nasty or annoying.

Even if you don't allow an unknown MAC address to mount drives or have other dangerous access, they still might be able to sniff and evesdrop.

ELF

[nomadic]

I know low energy electromagnetic fields haven't been proven harmful, isn't this sort of taking a chance? Or am I just paranoid?

Wireless is good

[Chris_Pugrud]

I recently made the jump to a wireless connection at my new company and I really love it. We are using the Lucent Gold cards with WEP encryption and it only took me a few minutes to get Linux supoport running ( you have to download the wavelan2 drivers from wavelan.com ).

The ability to wander throughout the office on a whim, to meetings, or to a coworkers desk to show them something running on your machine is terrific.

On a humourous whim I recently wandered around the office showing off IE running in Linux (via the Citrix MetaFrame Linux Client). The looks of terror were priceless.

In short, pay attention to the encryption, your companies data is a valuable assett. The worst part is now I am lusting to put the same technology into my home. To wander around the house, and the deck, or to move servers around without stringing wires (I rent) is a bit too appealing, so now I must justify the expenditure to set up wireless at home...

Chris

Re:Security

[faster]

You can get decent security with Lucent's WaveLAN Gold cards. If you're cheap (not a good idea where network security is concerned, but not everyone has critical data floating around their networks), check out Freebase [sourceforge.net]; they claim to describe how to replace the WaveLAN Silver card in Apple's Airport with the Gold version for better security.

Practicality

[iob]

The performance angle is what would strike me as the worst feature in an office. We use it to supplement a switched 100Mbits desktop environment, by granting portability features to laptop users.

In a couple of years time a lot of small devices like web pads will probably be wandering around the office and will want to use wireless 802.11b cards to get their networking services. That, and employees eating their lunch outside under the trees, or wandering to a small casual meeting area, is where I see most users wanting to have wireless access.

The power bandwidth users won't be too happy with it as a CAD / CAE network. But they don't mind using it to read their email!

802.11 wireless stuff

[Benley]

At my office we are playing with Lucent Orinoco 802.11 stuff, using Wavelan Gold cards and a few base stations, and it works pretty much perfectly for us. As someone mentioned previously, I don't think I would deploy this stuff haphazardly because of security concerns (and big ones too, can you imagine someone spoofing entries to an ISP's billing system? - or even worse, someone busting in on your intra-office Halflife tourny? :)

Seriously though, this wavelan stuff is really NIFTY when you see it working. Just take the time to do it right; use encryption, take the time to set up SSH, filter MAC addresses, hell, install a faraday cage around your building if you want to really feel secure, or if you just want to feel even more like you're on the inside of a microwave oven.

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)