|
| A wireless network has several major advantages over a wired network. As you review them, consider how they might benefit your organization: |
 |
|
• |
Reduced cost of installation: It can be expensive to wire your building with Cat 5, Cat 5e (enhanced), or Cat 6 cabling for Ethernet capability. Depending on the size of your organization and scope of your network, it may be significantly less expensive to install wireless access points and enable wireless support for notebooks and desktop PCs and printers (discussed in the Do it section). |
|
|
• |
Flexibility: If you regularly expand or reorganize your office, or need to accommodate a variety of network configurations (particularly mobile client platforms), the rapid transition time from one configuration to another that wireless technology provides can help reduce your network down time. |
|
| Note: A wireless network eliminates the costs associated with physically rewiring office space or manually configuring and reconfiguring PCs. |
|
|
• |
| Convenient information access: One of the main advantages of wireless networking is the ability to extend access to key information to anyone on your staff, from anywhere in the office, even when they aren't physically connected to your wired LAN connection. Consider the following: |
|
|
• |
Do members of your staff regularly work away from their desks or stations, but could benefit from anytime, anywhere access to important data? |
|
|
• |
Could you improve productivity by increasing access to important company systems or providing VoIP or VoWWAN? |
|
|
• |
Do you have business processes you could streamline by reducing the number of times employees have to go back to their wired connections? |
|
|
| As you begin to visualize how wireless networking might play a role in your larger networking solution, you should next consider the types of integration points you'll need to address for the solution to work. |
|
| After you have a good idea of how a wireless network can improve your business processes and some insight into the integration points a wireless solution would have with your existing wired environment, you can begin to formulate a business plan for your wireless solution. The equipment you buy and the way you configure your wireless network will be driven by your business needs, so it's important you have a clear plan before you spend any money on equipment or other resources. |
|
| Carefully define all of the ways you'd like to use wireless networking and related technologies in your organization. If you have several ideas for ways a wireless network can improve your business, write them down and rank them in order of importance. |
|
| Tip: Identify a potential pilot program in which you can test a wireless integration. |
|
| If you start small and plan to grow your wireless network (an easy thing to do), you have the opportunity to see if your wireless solution has the effect you thought it would and to learn more about wireless capabilities. This arrangement also provides you the opportunity to handle any operational issues or obstacles you may encounter on a small, easily manageable scale. |
|
