Business Buyer's Guide to Wireless Networking

Choose the right wireless gear for your growing business network.

Your business is growing, and so is your IT network, so it's important to invest in wireless hardware that can grow with you. This simple guide will make it easy for you to pick the right gear for your business, so you can spend less time and money on your infrastructure and put your energies into the things that really matter.

Wireless is now ubiquitous in the business world, with more users working from mobile devices than ever before. In any given workplace--be it a bustling office, a large construction site, or a family-owned pizza joint--it's become commonplace for everyone from the CEO to the field reps to do all their work from a laptop, or even a smart phone. Here's what you need to know to get all those devices connected to your network with a minimum of fuss and zero downtime.

A wireless network consists of three major types of devices, all working in unison to deliver seamless connectivity to the Internet, file servers, printers, and other users.

Clients: The client is the most basic element of your wireless network. It can be a laptop with a wireless card, a handheld PDA, or even a cell phone. Even desktop PCs can be outfitted with wireless cards for those times when they're too far from an ethernet jack for wired access. You can run a minimal wireless network (called an ad-hoc network) using just a couple of client devices, which makes it easy to transfer files and data between the two. But in a typical business environment, the primary role of a client device is to connect your users to the rest of the network, and to the Internet, by way of common client applications such as Web browsers and e-mail apps.

Routers: When you turn on your wireless laptop, it automatically searches for something to connect to. In a small business network, that thing is often a wireless router (sometimes called a wireless broadband gateway). A wireless router is a small box with a few ports for ethernet cables on the back and an antenna or three sticking out of it. Inside the box, a few chips and some firmware do the work establishing connections to various devices and controlling who can get in and who can't. In a typical small office, the router often serves as the primary hub of the entire network, connecting to both wired PCs and wireless laptops, and keeping them all connected to the Internet and to each other. Most routers can be easily configured through a simple menu in your Web browser. The typical off-the-shelf router offers reliable connections at a distance of roughly 150 feet indoors.

Many larger networks eschew wireless routers entirely, using more robust wired routers in conjunction with access points (see below) to control traffic on the network.

Access Points: Larger business networks often cover too much area for a single wireless router to handle. Access points serve as extenders for your network. Unlike a router, an access point contains minimal firmware for managing connections. Instead, it simply allows wireless devices to reach the network itself, and leaves all the management business up to your router. Access points can be connected directly to an existing wired network or run in a "bridge" mode that relays data wirelessly between the router on one side and the clients on the other.

All major wireless standards are built on a common underlying technology, but each has different capabilities. Here's the deal.

802.11a: Established in 1999, 802.11a has a long and successful history on business networks. It operates on frequencies in the 5-GHz range and offers speeds of up to 54 mbps. It remains one of the most popular and stable standards for business data.

802.11b: Created at the same time as 802.11a, 802.11b wireless has enjoyed greater popularity for home users than its "a" counterpart, although its 11-mbps speeds are much slower than 802.11a. It operates on 2.4-GHz frequencies. It's rare to find wireless gear that is strictly 802.11b-compatible these days, as it has been integrated into the newer 802.11g standard.

802.11g: In 2003, 802.11g became the de facto wireless standard for most home and business networks, because it offers the same 54-mbps data rates as 802.11a, while still supporting older 802.11b client hardware. Like 802.11b, it operates on 2.4-GHz frequencies.

802.11n: This is the next great hope for speedy wireless networks, and is currently considered a "draft" specification--it is not yet fully ratified by the IEEE (the organization that oversees wireless standards). Most wireless hardware vendors currently offer 802.11n gear for sale, and promise future firmware updates that will bring the devices into compliance with the final standard when it is ratified. 802.11n offers much faster data rates than a, b, and g devices, with speeds of up 248 mbps. It also roughly doubles the range of the network. Because it operates on both 2.4-GHz and 5-GHz frequencies, 802.11n is backwards-compatible with all of the older standards listed here.