Pro’s and con’s of going wireless at work?

[Jimmy Little]

Hi guys I have a meeting with some of the governors at the school I work for tomorrow (thurs 7pm) I have a pile of paperwork prepared for the 30k I wanna spend and now some monkey has asked me why have we not considered wireless! Which I know very little about, so really wanted to take the ‘cons’ to the meeting as we don’t need wireless in the IT suite because we have the computers right next to a network ports! You would think that would be enough!!! Wireless is something I would like in the classrooms but not in this or next years IT budget

[Grey M@a]

Well If you are going to go for WiFi throughout the whole building or a section of it, you can do this relatively cheap. Get yourself a few or a dozen or more depending on size of building and space them about 50 ft apart (wireless routers this is) so you get a good signal coverage throughout the location. Slap WEP protection on it with a 64bit key (change this key every few months so keys are always being renewed) Obviously there will be the hassle of giving your users with wireless capabilities the key on their laptops etc but as most users wont have a clue you could do this and the key would remain secret to you and other computing staff who needed to know it.

Obviously as there are a few different kinds of bands for wireless cards etc make sure your routers are dual band so they can accept either of the bands available. There isn't much to it, register the routers mac address's in your Active Directory and simply plug the router into the point in the wall and hey presto you got yourself a relatively secure wifi network, max time to set this all up about 2 hours, we got half the campus at this Uni done in 3 hours which wasn't bad.

If you need to know anything else drop me a line and I will fill you in

[Moby-Dick]

I just dont find wireless stable enough for enterprise use.

its fine for a couple of users , but not on any for of large scale unless you spend a bucketload of money.

The security issue isn't all that bad ( providng you follow a few sensible steps )

[Jiff Lemon]

You've answered the question yourself.
"we don’t need wireless in the IT suite because we have the computers right next to a network ports".

From the schools point of view, you'll be spending extra money, slowing down access and creating extra work for what?

[Grey M@a]

the thing is, wireless may not be benifical to staff who are in place and using it, imagine you have outside companies comming in or other schools ding joint projects, wifi is a major bonus as nowadays most will turn up with tablet pc's or centrino laptops, they do here atleast, once in the area, they are issued a 8 hour username and password to get access to the basics so they can conduct their business whilst on the campus. The amount of feedback we get from outside companies congratulating us on what we have done, we get extra business thrown our way and discounts, so in a way it aid's the department.

[Jiff Lemon]

Ah..... but thats' where it starts getting interesting....

Let a complete stranger plug a laptop into your network? Nope. So then you're then into segregating networks into trusted / non trusted networks and further complicating matters.

From what I can gather, its a fairly simple setup at Bobbys School (wait for him to confirm it) and keeping it simple is probably a good thing.

Easiest way to look for the cons, would be to ask what the Pro's of having wireless would be and work from there.

[Jimmy Little]

yeah if we had the money it would be an option, but at the mo i have to give more than 'we don't need it' to keep the powers that be happy... are there any health risks with radiowaves around for kids?

[Grey M@a]

thing is when they use our username and passwords in the building their are traced, actions logged they do anything out of turn within a minute we know about it and ask the what they are up to and report them to their companies, we have never had that, yes it may be a faff setting up a trusted and non trusted network but after an hour it was done for us. They only get access to the net so they may get emails or grab documents from their work place. As I said they get logged, something out of turn we will question their actions, report their actions to our management, their company and escort them off the premisis. Been running it for close to 8 months now and not complaint or suspicous action carried out

[Jiff Lemon]

No "proven" dangers yet.

Price up a wireless solution for the school so you can see how much extra cash you'll need. Remember, no place likes to spend money needlessly.

Go in armed with a huge budget, then when they start chipping down the price you can loose the wireless

[Grey M@a]

Bobby if you don't need wireless or want it, through the stories about people scanning the transfers, data maybe secure but as UK law would have it 56bit encryption is the legal limit I am sure, you can use higher but government advise 56bit, this is obviously not enough, can be cracked in a matter of hours and your school is exposed throw the horror stories they won't take the wifi offer any further

With educational facilities make your budget 20% higher than what you need because when they cut it down and pick it to bits they will no doubt drop the budget, heres the best bit as the 10 - 20% they drop off you still get what you needed in the first place

[Jimmy Little]

good call Jiff, and Grey M@a you know your stuff, it is something we would like but not yet, the problem is a 'high up chap' keeps says "we MUST go wireless" and i'm saying "yes but in 20065/2006 so i was just looking for 'extra' con's against wireless

[Grey M@a]

forgot to add, if you want the cons to wireless here you go, obviously routers will broadcast on different frequencies so they dont condtradict each other, thing with wireless it can be interupted over a large area, so you lose your signal rather quick, the data transfers between a wifi and a fixed point can be staggering at points if the wifi has a fit you lose connection mid way through a data transfer you may find work is corrupted, not a good thing, there is one argument against it if you need it.

Bobby the high up chap wants it to raise the profile of the school, question him why he wants it and what advantage it would bring the school, bet school image is mentioned and he wont have a clue as to why its a bonus, if he does that you have him hook line and sinker, wifi is a relatively new tech and is always changing here is what to say, as the tecnology is always moving on in the wifi area at this present time, money spent now will be double in a years time when it requires a total upgrade again to meet new standards. Ask for a transitional period, evaluate the sector of wifi for a year then get together to discuss the benefits to the school as a whole.

[Paul Adams]

I'd just give them the difference in the performance to put them off.

Wired switched network, cheap, is 100Mbps per client.
Wireless network, expensive, is 54Mbps (theoretical maximum, rarely achieved) per access point, shared between all the clients using it.

As Moby pointed out, it's often not a stable infrastructure to run in an business/large scale environment.

Conversely, ask them what they would consider a benefit of moving to wireless, and spending all that money - with the above taken into consideration.

[Jimmy Little]

thanks guys i have some 'guns' now!

[iMc]

Hope it goes well Bobby.

I think wireless is brilliant technology, just installed mine today, but i agree that once you want to use it over a large area with 100s of people it is just to risky as it is not 100% stable. Plus with all those people using its gonna b dead slow.

[Jimmy Little]

cheers guys i cut and pasted your views and made a page of pros and cons... top help thanks ! REP POINTS IN THE POST!