A report from Burton Group suggests that new emerging standard of wireless network (WLAN / WiFi) 802.11n (Mimo) will start replacing wired Ethernet 802.3 networks within the next 2-3 years as it improves throughput and range compared to actual 802.11 b/g.
IT senior analyst Paul DeBasi goes even further and says "IT professionals should start thinking now about how they will deploy, maintain and benefit from an all-wireless LAN."
This is a joke isn't it ? Even if I'm a fervent of wireless technology, I simply cannot imagine how wireless networks will replace actual wired networks. Here are the main reasons:
- Bandwidth: With 802.11n the maximum theoretical throughput (using 2 steams) will be 248 Mbps meanwhile Ethernet 802.3an (2006) already provides 10Gbps and next IEEE study group target is 802.3ba with both 40 and 100Gbps. I don't even speak about signal attenuation releated to distance and obstacles.
- Frequency spectum 2.4 GHz & 5GHz are very narrow and number of available channels are limited. So maintaining high speed links, large number of clients without facing frequency overlaps and other electro-magnetic interferences seems very unlikely.
- Electro-smog: With 802.11n the range covered will be larger but this will have undoubtedly have a negative impact on performance and signal strength specially when using ISM 2.4 GHz spectrum in a wireless crowed environment.
- VoWLAN capacity: Several studies have been done to determine, how many simultaneous calls one AP can handle. The number of simultaneous calls is 15 before observed speech quality is lowered via increased delay. (I assume the study also get rid of telephone wires).
- A "wireless only" corporate office means that PBX system also have to rely on wireless network, otherwise it would be complete non-sense to pull wire only for telephone and use wireless connectivity for computers.
Is this report a hoax or do they, at the Burton Group, have some enlighten prophets?
Source: ZDNet
Full report is available here (sign-in required)
Entries (RSS)