WHY WI-FI?

The main reasons for using Wi-Fi are as below.
• Mobility
• Scalability
• Increased Reliability
• Reduced Installation Time
• Financial benefit
• Long-Term Cost Savings


• Mobility

Mobility enables users to physically move while using an appliance, such as a handheld PC or data collector. Many jobs require workers to be mobile, such as inventory clerks, healthcare workers ,police officers etc. Of course, wireless networks require a physical link between the user’s workstation and networks resources, which makes access to these resources impossible while roaming.
Mobile applications requiring Wi-Fi networking include those that depend on real time access to data usually stored in centralized databases. If your applications requires mobile users to be immediately aware of changes made to data, or information put into the system must immediately be available to others, you have a definite need for wireless networking. For accurate and efficient price markdowns, for example many retail stores use wireless networks to interconnect handheld bar code scanners and printers to databases having current price information. This enables the printing of the correct price on the items, making both the customer and the business owner more satisfied.

• Scalability

Wi-Fi systems can be configured in a variety of topologies to meet the needs of specific applications and installations. Configuration are easily changed and range from peer to peer networks suitable for a small number of users to full infrastructure networks of thousands of users that enable roaming over a broad area.

• Increased Reliability

A problem inherent to wired networks is the downtime that results from cable faults. In fact, cable faults are often the primary cause of system downtime. Moisture erodes metallic conductors via water intrusion during storms and accidental leakage of liquids. With wired networks, users may accidentally break their network connector when trying to disconnect their PCs from the network to move them to different locations. Imperfect cable splices can cause signal reflections that result in unexplainable errors.
The accidental cutting of cables can bring a network down immediately. Wires and connectors can easily break through misuse and even normal use. These problems interfere with the user’s ability to utilize network resources, causing havoc for network managers. An advantages of wireless networking, therefore, results from the use of less cable. This reduces the downtime of the network and the costs associated with replacing cables.

• Reduced Installation Time

The installation of cabling is often a time consuming activity. For LANs, installers must pull twisted-pair wires above the ceiling and drop cables through walls to network.
These tasks can take days or weeks, depending on the size of the installation. The installation of optical fiber between buildings within the same geographical area consist of digging trenches to lay the fiber or pulling the fiber through an existing conduit. You might need weeks of possibly months to receive right-of-way approvals and dig through ground and asphalt.
The deployment of wireless networks greatly reduces the need for cable installation, making the network available for use much sooner. Therefore, many countries lacking a network infrastructure have turned to wireless networking as a method of providing connectivity among computers without the expense and time associated with installing physical media. This is also necessary within the United States to set up temporary offices and “rewire” renovated facilities.

• Financial Benefit

Wi-Fi is a no risk financial decision especially for small business or companies in hard to wired locations, because of its low cost. Consulting firm which spent 30,000$ to wire its office, says the similar Wi-Fi installation today would cost only 500$. This shows that it is really beneficial to install Wi-Fi instead of wired network.

• Long Term Cost Savings

The changes like companies reorganization, resulting in the movement of people, new floor plans, office partition and other renovations often require recabling the network incurring both labor and material costs. In some cases, the recabling costs of organizational changes are substantial, especially with large enterprise networks. A reorganization rate of 15 percent each year can result in yearly reconfiguration expenses as high as $250,000 for networks that have 6,000 interconnected devices. The advantage of Wi-Fi is again based on the lack of cable. You can move the network connection by just relocating an employee’s PCs or access points.

An oil exploration company operating in Colombia, South America, experienced high expenses when relocating its drilling rigs. The oil drilling setup requires two control rooms in portable sheds located approximately 5,000 feet from the drilling platform to provide 500 kbps computer communication between the sheds and drilling rig. The communication system consisted of Ethernet networks at each of the three sites. Each shed had four PCs running on the network and drilling site had one PC for direct drilling control purpose.

Every time the oil company needed to move to a different drilling site, which occurred four or five times each year, it had to spend $50,000 to $75,000 to reinstall optical fiber over the difficult terrain between the sheds.
So naturally in this type of cases Wi-Fi is better option.

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