Benefits of a Wireless Network

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009 at 3:55 am

by Bun Neth

A wireless network work through the uses radio waves to communicate from your home wireless router to your allowed device such as your laptop or enabled devices. These radio waves communicate between your laptop to your router and the modem allowing you access to your Internet provider. Allowing you much more mobility than wired connection.

With wireless there are no wires that can make a mess and tangle up. It lets you comfortably move to almost any spot and allows you to enjoy Internet access among other things. Even in your yard, you can sit back and be on the Internet through your wireless local area network or WLAN. The labor to run cables from one area to multiple areas in a home can be a lot of work a messy and can add up in cost if ypu think of placing the wires in the wall.

This allows you to print from any location in your home with out the need for multiple printers or transferring the document to the computer that is connected to the printer. Another thing that wireless can allow is access to music, videos, and any other multimedia. With a WLAN setup you can store all of your media on one hard-drive and allow other computers on the network access it. There would be no need to transfer the media to all hard-drives and can save a lot of time and money as will as the convenient access to your files, document, and media.

There are a couple of problem with wireless (WLAN). One problem would be security. Since wireless routers uses radio waves that can be picked upped by other devices. Some computer users would even spend time to crack into wireless network for their own use or to steal private information. It would be much more difficult to do this on a wired network as the person would have to physically tap your actual cables. Of course wireless does have security features such as Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) encryption that lowers the risk of being compromise, however older encryption methods can be compromised.

Range is another matter when dealing with wireless. The usual use of wireless come in different types usually, Wi-Fi 802.11b and 802.11g for a typical wireless router antenna. There range are around 120ft indoors. There is another type, 802.11n that has about double the range. Wired limitation is the length of the cable. Now there are a few things that can interfere with the range, generally devices operating at the same frequency as the router. Most routers frequency is at 2.4 which is similar to microwave ovens, security cameras, and cordless phones can interfere with the range and the signals of the router.

One of the biggest draw back of wireless is the lack of speed. At maximum wireless 802.11b can reach 11Mbits/s, 802.11g at 54Mbit/s. Wired on the other hand can reach to 1Gbit/s and up. With 802.11n speeds can reach 600Mbit/s closing the gap between wired and wireless.

If you thought of switching from wired to wireless, it is up to you to weight in both sides. Of course many routers are operational in wired local area network (LAN) and wireless local area network (WLAN) or a both LAN and WLAN at the same time. So why not have the best of both. Use wire for your main use and wireless for basic use.

About the Author:

Choosing between wired or wireless can be a tough decision. In the end, it is a matter of preference. If you have a DSL router set up for a network of many people, than a wireless network is your best bet.

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