Wireless solution.

[Admiral Huddy]

Advice..


I've been to see a small company this morning how have a small network (6 clients) running off a Windows 2003 server. The 8 port hub is full.

The contact has asked for a large laser printer to be added which is simple enough but long term he want to add a couple extra clients. Not a problem however, he is in the habit of changing the desks around and moving the PCs into different room. In fact, soon he's thinking of moving. The existing cabling isn't great as it's quite an old building.

As i was on the train this morning, i was thinking that he could benefit from having a wireless solution since then it eliminates the cables thus it doesn't matter where the clients are. All the clients are on the same floor and are easily within range.

So my question is - does this sound viable?

Is there a wireless router that can cope with this sort of demand?

Cheers

[Mark]

It's possible, yes, but my personal (non-business) instincts say don't do it unless there's a damn good reason and/or no better option. I think a lot of people will tell you wireless is just too unreliable.

[Daz]

Not enough info really - need to know what sort of traffic is going over the LAN. As a rule of thumb though, I'd say no - wireless security is still a problem for business, as it inherently isnt secure. Using certificates with another authentication layer (MSCHAP v2 with PEAP, see here (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/columns/cableguy/cg0702.mspx)) should be what you use on a business network, but it's fiddly to setup and maintain.

A cabled network is cheap (relatively), reliable, scalable and secure - and should be preferred over wireless. In fact, none of our clients use wireless for client PC access - only for things like barcode scanning in factories, and even then it's locked down heavy (heavily monitored and controlled VLANs).

[edit]As a contractor/consultant I'd also advice caution. You put a wireless network in somewhere and it gets broken into, there'll be hell to pay.

[Admiral Huddy]

That's fine... all I needed to hear really.. It was just a thought. All stick to Cat5.

Thanks Mark/Daz :)