Choosing a Flavor of 802.11

One of the more important decisions you will need to make when deploying
your wireless infrastructure involves choosing either 802.11a or
802.11b. You get more speed with 802.11a, but 802.11b is much less
expensive and much more commonly available. However, if you want to
deploy a wireless infrastructure that is going to last for a long time, you
may find it much easier to deploy 802.11a. While 802.11a is more expensive
at this time, costs are going down for wireless NIC cards and access
points. Most important, you gain a significant speed increase from 11 to
54 Mbps. In today’s information world, you will require more speed in
your wireless infrastructure for multimedia network applications that
require more bandwidth.
In order to deploy the most effective solution possible, make certain
you understand what capabilities you will need in your wireless structure
both today and tomorrow. You can overcome 802.11 security limitations by determining your requirements. One of the factors that makes
802.11 more secure is that it functions in the 5-GHz band. This frequency
spectrum is significantly different from the 802.11b use of the 2.4-
GHz band, and it is much harder to eavesdrop on the signal with off-theshelf
listening equipment.
Defining your requirements is necessary for you to determine what
your WLAN is going to provide your users. It is vital that you completely
define your wireless infrastructure requirements, or your WLAN won’t
satisfy your user’s needs.

The key requirements you need to consider include the following:

Wireless range
Speed and throughput
Security
Application software
Battery life
Operating system functionality

In order to understand these requirements it is important that you
determine what applications you will be running on your network. Many
network applications are bandwidth intensive and have increased
throughput requirements. Next, you need to determine how many users
will be concurrently using these applications. Understanding that
throughput decreases proportionally with increased distance from the
access point, you also must consider the range your users will need in
order to work efficiently over your WLAN.
When you define network requirements, you should consider how
many users you are planning for in your WLAN. If you are dealing with
only a few dozen workers, it may only take a few hours to determine the
necessary requirements. When working on larger projects with several
thousand people using a WLAN in a large corporate area, you may need
to invest several weeks to survey your users so that you can determine
the most appropriate mechanism for your new wireless infrastructure.
It is important for you to be able to plan your wireless infrastructure
with enough room for future improvement so you can meet the increasing
needs of your corporate users.
When you have determined a fixed set of requirements, then you can
concentrate on effectively designing your infrastructure to meet your
requirements at the lowest possible cost.

The most important elements that help you reduce the cost to deploy
your wireless infrastructure include:

Choosing a vendor
Assigning the most effective access point locations
Designating non-conflicting access point channels
Determining how to assign security mechanisms to protect your network
Determining components to meet wireless infrastructure requirements
Assigning the most efficient wireless configuration

You may find it most appropriate to create a design diagram that
describes the specific configuration and components needed to meet your
wireless design requirements securely. You design specifications will
define how best to plan your wireless devices for secure, optimal reception.
You can achieve the best reception by placing the antennas for
your access points at higher elevations to get the most range. From a
security standpoint, shielding your walls from stray signals from your
access points helps you contain your WLAN so that people cannot hack
into it or gain access to resources they are not authorized to utilize.

Choosing a Flavor of 802.11

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