Do we want to WiFi today?

2003-09-15 23:03:22

As I sit here, using my notebook to write this article, several things work silently in the background, making sure that I have access to information I need, when I need it.

The single most important technology in this case is the wireless network - WiFi for the initiated - an 802.11b based network that lets me stay connected to my LAN and the Internet no matter where I am on the premises.

Which, in this case, is my garden, where I sit with my notebook in my lap, writing these words, while at the same time using an Instant Messenger to stay in touch with people, keeping an eye on incoming email, and browsing the web for background information that I need.

A year ago, this would have sounded like a utopian dream. Today, this isn't just stark reality - it is commodity reality.

Solutions v/s Commodities

When I first decided to look into a wireless network for the home earlier this year, I did so with the usual misconceptions - probably too expensive, hard to justify, not really available in India, etc.

What I found was an eye opener.

There are two ways of approaching setting up a wireless network today - and they are really at opposite ends of the cost and benefits spectrum.

The Solution Approach

One approach, considered by many large organizations, is the "solution" approach.

With this approach, you essentially field out the whole thing to a vendor, who will quote for a solution that includes components, setup costs and possibly maintenance. The rationale, as presented by most vendors, is that they have to do a site survey, design the system, implement it, tune the components, take into account expansion, etc.

Sticker shock is an inevitable result of this approach, and many a decision maker will decide to shelve the whole thing at that stage. And if the price of the solution doesn't scare her away, the implied complexity of the setup will.

The Commodity Approach

With this approach, the decision maker takes into account the commodity nature of today's wireless components, buys essential off-the-shelf components, gives it to her Information Systems (IS) people to fool around with for a few days, and then sees it deployed to maximum benefit within days.

Or she might just decide to do it herself.

All that at a low cost, very little time-investment, almost negligible learning curve, and everyone learns something new in the process. And it is actually fun!

Very clearly, the two approaches are radically different, and I'd be lying that the second approach is always better than the first.

However, it does give a new perspective to things - that there are feasible alternatives.

Which route do I take?

Costs aside, one needs to consider what you are trying to achieve going wireless today. What's your deployment need? Are you replacing an existing wired network? Or are you just extending one? Are you trying to bridge two physically separated LANs? Who is the target user - heavy-duty File&Print users or lightweight Internet and mail access executives? Are you wireless-enabling a corporate LAN or a SOHO (Small Office/Home Office) setup?

Scary questions? Not really.

Here is an easy rule-of-thumb you can follow to assess your need - if you need to


  • enable executives with wireless Internet (web/mail/IM) access via your existing LAN (which is connected to the Internet)

  • setup a SOHO network to cater to your Internet-access requirements

then you can do so with commodity wireless equipment. It doesn't even have to be high-end equipment, or the fastest on the planet. It just needs to be standards compliant (most available equipment is) and available.

If you are looking at heavy duty data transfer (File&Print, database replications, etc.), bridging two LANs, or replacing an entire wired network for a large company, you would need to look at a professionally designed solution.

There, that wasn't so hard, was it?

Benefits of being wireless

I am not going to inundate you with the benefits of wireless networking - you wouldn't be reading this article if you weren't already aware of them, and today you cannot throw a stone without hitting a "Benefits of Wireless Networks" article.

Instead, let me illustrate to you just how simple it is to get a wireless network going, and what the immediate results are. I will look at two cases - both of my own stable: my home/office setup, where I and my family are the only users, and my office, where 10 users use an existing wired LAN, and I needed to extend it.

The Small Office/Home Office Setup

OK, this was so simple my ears went red.

I checked the market for prices, and then picked up a low cost SOHO Wireless Internet Gateway Router for about Rs.15,000 plus taxes. (a few months later, costs dropped to Rs.10,000 and lower, as all commodity electronics do).

When it was delivered, I unpacked it, and switched it on. No, I did not read the manual. I plugged it in and switched it on. Then I had a look at what connections it had. I couldn't really go wrong - one said "WAN" (i.e. the Internet), the other said "PC/LAN". A supplied cable was plugged into the PC/LAN port, and the other end went into my daughter's PC's LAN card. Then I plugged in my ISP's cable into the WAN port.

OK, at this point I did have to refer to the manual to find out what to do next. No software needed to be installed - I just had to point my browser at an address, which I did.

Voila, up came a configuration wizard, which asked me some very simple questions - I just clicked my way through accepting the defaults. Then I switched on my notebook (which has a built-in wireless card, as most modern notebooks do).

And I was connected wirelessly, and was able to browse the Internet, check my mail, and chat shamelessly with my friends, gloating about my "achievement" (which got a bored "ho hum, you too? What took you so long?" response out of most of them).

That was really all it took. The whole process took about 5 minutes. It took longer to arrange a chair, table and some iced tea in the garden.

Sure, there is fine-tuning you can do (secure the network, for example) but to get me going, this was all it took.

A typical SOHO setup does not require much in terms of bandwidth. The typical Wireless Network runs at 11 mbps (that's mega BITS per second), being the most common wireless standard (802.11b) until yesterday. Today, the recently blessed 802.11g standard is the hot item on the market at 54 mbps.

Consider that in most cases, you cable/DSL Internet connection isn't going to be much faster than 64 or 128 kbps, even 11 mbps should see you through until next year.

It is rare that I would have to share files with my daughter's home PC, but if I do want to do so, I can.

The setup I have described services my connectivity needs anywhere in the compound and anywhere in the building (ground floor, first floor and basement).

The Office Setup

My office has ten users using a variety of network resources, which include file&print, Internet access, database queries, remote installs, etc. The office network is a professionally setup 100 mbps wired (CAT5) network, utilizing a switch. The Internet connectivity (a very functional BSNL DIAS connection) plugs into a gateway server that also runs the firewall, and makes available Internet connectivity to everyone on the LAN.

My need was to add wireless functionality to the LAN so that I could move around with my notebook for meetings, and for visiting clients to be able to access the Internet from anywhere in the office. While File&Print functionality was an occasional need, my bandwidth requirements were limited.

The office isn't very big, so I decided to emulate my home setup. The only difference was really that I didn't need the functionality of a router and DHCP server, since my LAN already provided all these. In short, I just needed an Access Point that bridged the wireless network with the wired office LAN.

So I checked the market for available Access Points without router functionality, and was in for a bit of a shock - prices started at Rs.25,000 and went up from there!

At first I felt that I was being subjected to a rip-off - my wireless router at home with far more functionality was priced almost half of what I was being offered here.

It turns out that there is a difference, though a subtle one. The Access Points I was being offered were the "sticker shock included" Enterprise Access Points, that can handle a lot more connections and traffic than the SOHO-style routers.

But that was not really something I needed in my small office, where I already have full Internet access functionality on my LAN. So I just picked up another wireless router, turned off all the router and DHCP functionality (which turned it into an Access Point without Internet capabilities), and plugged it into the LAN's switch. Seconds later, my notebook DHCP'd off the office server wirelessly, and I was on, browsing the Intranet and Internet, collecting my email, conferring with my colleagues using Instant Messengers, etc. any visitor to the office is given a temporary access key/account, and they are on in a minute as well.

Eventually, we found that we could replace the Access Point functionality with an even cheaper wireless card in the server, configured to act as an Access Point, but that is going too deep into things for this article.

The Client Side of Things

Wireless networks are a boon for mobile users, and recognizing this, most new notebooks coming out in the market have wireless connectivity built into the machine. If you are buying a new notebook, make sure to specify that you want built-in WiFi connectivity, saving you the trouble of buying and maintaining a separate PCMCIA wireless network card. Many new notebooks offer 802.11g wireless functionality (see "The Alphabet Soup", below), and that is preferred over the older 802.11b, so if you have a choice, go for 802.11g.

If you need to add wireless connectivity to an existing notebook, options are plenty, and prices are falling. A typical PCMCIA wireless network card costs about $40 (about Rs.1,800-2,000) in the USA, but in India, given duties and the usual markups, you are looking at a price tag of about Rs.6,000 at the time of writing.

Things start getting expensive if you are looking at adding wireless connectivity to a desktop PC. Currently, a PCI (not PCMCIA) wireless card starts at Rs.10,000 and goes up from there. However, there are clear indications that this is going to change drastically in the downward direction over the next month or so.

Ironically, you may still be dealing with a PCMCIA card - most wireless PCI solutions are actually the same old PCMCIA wireless cards, with a PCMCIA->PCI adaptor.

And here comes the big question - why would you want to wireless-enable a desktop PC at all? After all, it is not likely to move from where it is installed.

That's a good question, and the answer is probably that you needn't think wireless for desktop PCs at all if you have an existing wired network. It just does not make sense.

There could be exceptions, of course, but in most cases, it just isn't worth the trouble if you have an existing wired network.

The Alphabet Soup

Throughout the article I have thrown around terms like 802.11b, 802.11g, etc. A likely question you would have is - which one is the right one for me?

The answer is so simple that you'll laugh - you may not really have a choice.

802.11b was the wireless standard for several years. Running at 11 mbps shared bandwidth (this means that all users attached to the wireless access point/router will share a total of 11 mbps) in the free-to-use 2.4 GHz frequency range, it provides nice, stable connectivity, and is great for Internet connectivity and low-volume connectivity, or when you have few users on one network.

But as data requirements go up, so does the need for speed.

For a while, the 802.11a standard seemed like it was the way to go - at 54 mbps, it was four times faster (in theory) than 802.11b. But it also had one major issue - inability to co-exist with existing 802.11b infrastructure, the need to work in the 5 GHz radio frequency range (which is not open for use everywhere, and costs Rs.18,000 per license in India) and its shorter range.

Today, the 802.11g standard has been ratified (in June 2003) by the IEEE, and at 54 mbps over 2.4 GHz, with its ability to cater to both 802.11b (11 mbps) and 802.11g (54 mbps) clients, it is effectively the only way to fly.

"Hold on" I can hear you say, "802.11g products have been available since last year!"

That's true, but they were all using a draft standard, which eventually led to the ratified 802.11g standard. There is virtually no difference between the draft standard and the final standard, and whatever differences there were, were quickly ironed out with a firmware upgrade.

The major advantage to you, as a consumer, is that the early adoption of 802.11g products has led to a tremendous drop of prices, and today 802.11g products are available at the same price (in the USA and Europe) as 802.11b products were till last month. A SOHO router of the type I bought months ago, but using 802.11g, now costs about $100 - the same as the older 802.11b equipment.

So what standard should I go in for?

Today, that question may still be valid.

If you have a price advantage (and can get a SOHO 11 mbps 802.11b router for at least 30% lower price than a 54 mbps 802.11g router), and if your application is a SOHO setup, then by all means go for it.

But in all other cases go for 802.11g equipment - it makes no financial or logical sense to go in for the older standard, given that 802.11g prices are now at the same level as the 802.11b equipment. Also, most manufacturers will probably phase out their older 802.11b line anyway (they may deny this now, but let's consider market realities here).

For some time, a window of opportunity may exist for acquiring legacy 802.11b equipment at very low prices as the manufacturers start clearing their inventories of this kind of equipment. This is excellent value for SOHO setups, which do not need high throughputs.

There are a few products that used a proprietary extension of the 802.11b standard to achieve higher speeds (up to 22 mbps). These cannot inter-operate with 802.11g equipment at those enhanced speeds unless the 802.11g equipment is also from the same vendor and also supports the proprietary protocol. With all other manufacturer's equipment (and even the same manufacturer's equipment, if it doesn't not support the proprietary protocol), they will inter-operate with 802.11g equipment only at the slower 11 mbps 802.11b standard.

And these proprietary protocols will probably go away pretty soon as well (as evidenced by most manufacturer's new product specs).

If you have absolutely no choice other than a proprietary protocol and standard 802.11b equipment, go for the latter, unless there is no price difference, and as long as you understand that the proprietary protocols will not work at those enhanced speeds with other equipment.

What did you leave out?

Lots. I skimmed over security, for example.

Wireless networks, by their very nature, are less secure than wired networks, but how badly you are affected by this depends on your application:

If you are only using the wireless network to access the Internet, you will probably not have to bother too much about this, since you do not have to protect an entire corporate network, but the need for security does exist, and is best handled using personal firewalls. Basic encryption and MAC-level grant/deny lists offered by any wireless access point or router will dissuade most casual freeloaders from hopping onto your network and using your bandwidth.

However, if the wireless network allows access to your corporate network, you may want to give this some more thought. Securing the corporate wireless network is a non-trivial task, but it isn't very difficult either - it uses concepts most network administrators are already familiar with and using today, such as Virtual Private Networks, routing and firewalls.

I'll cover these issues in a future article.

I have assumed cable or DSL kind of connectivity to the Internet, not modem-based dialup connectivity, throughout this article.

While not impossible, it is not really a situation commonly found in the target setups we are considering. If you are using a modem-based dialup connection, then you would probably enable Internet Connection Sharing ICS) on your PC, and allow wireless clients to share the connection via an access point or peer-to-peer wireless connection, rather than using a dedicated router.

Winding up

Setting up a wireless network these days is no black art - if you can use a PC, you can set up a little wireless network. As your needs become more complex, you may need to plan a bit more and maybe get in some professionals to set things up for you, but if you have an existing network team in your organization, handling an existing wired network, you really do not have to.

And costs are way down - I expect that within months, you should be able to get a SOHO wireless router for around Rs.5,000-8,000, i.e. the cost of a fancy colour printer, and the cost of wireless network cards will drop to around Rs.2,000 - if you need them at all, given that most notebooks will already have them built-in. This is especially true for all the new Centrino based notebooks, which will come with WiFi connectivity built-in in most cases (though not necessarily 802.11g based, since the current Centrino products are 802.11b based).

Providing wireless connectivity to executives in their offices and conference rooms will instantly raise productivity, and they will know whom to thank. Even a simple access point plugged into the wall-mounted wired socket of your LAN in a conference room would instantly show results.

I hope that this article helped to demystify the concept of wireless networking, and to encourage you to give it a try, because it is really affordable, easy to set up, and definitely useful.


A shorter version of this article appeared in the 1-July-2003 issue of Dataquest

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