Wireless networking has predominantly become more popular over the past few years, with advancements in technology, wireless speeds are getting closer to matching those of wired and many homes and businesses are implementing them into their network.
Whilst wireless certainly offer flexibility and convenience there are also many other important factors to consider when using them in place of wired networks.
Speed - We are becoming far more impatient when it comes to data transfer and speed is certainly of the essence when in networking. Many wired networks are being upgraded to gigabit since a lot of hardware nowadays is gigabit ready and a lot of cabling is gigabit compliant. Wireless on the other hand is unlikely to ever match the speeds offering by wired. Wireless N boasts speeds of 300mbps. Of course in a typical environment you are only likely to get around a third of this.
Another point to consider with the speeds is the fluctuation. Transferring over a wire will normally give you a steady and consistent speed; the same cannot always be said for wireless. Interference and signal drops means that transfer speeds can jump up and down a lot with wireless.
Reliability - Moving on from the point above wireless networks are far more prone to suffering from reliability issues. Due to there being no physical medium, data has to transfer through the air and must pass through any surface in its path. This means that signals can get blocked and deflected and this means your connection can suffer or even drop.
Even large distributed wireless networks can suffer from these problems and without careful planning of where access points are located wireless can be a nightmare for connection problems. On the other hand wired networks rely on physical cabling that will stay in the same location and have a long life span. Cabling rarely ever fails in networking and this means you get the same speeds and performance day in, day out for many years.
Security - One of the biggest concerns in regards to wireless network is proper security procedures. Because data is transferred through the air it can easily be intercepted. Strong encryption (WPA/WPA2) means that data is unreadable unless you have the correct key. However, many wireless network still remain unsecure or with weak WEP encryption and are prone to security breaches.
Wired networks do not face this problem, physical access can only be obtained by somebody who has access to the infrastructure, a wireless network on the other hand can be access from outside a building, in a car park for example!
As you can see there are many considerations to make when deciding whether to use wired or wireless networks. A mixture of both can be very effective with the right security procedures put in place. It would be quite foolish for any company to completely replace their wired network with a wireless one.
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You can read my Difference between wired and wireless networks article on my blog. You should also check out the rest of my guides, reviews and articles at Stan's computer blog!
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