Wireless networking is one technology that benefits everyone through commoditisation. Wireless cut its teeth in the consumer space, where convenience easily outweighs security and performance.
But the technology has been getting a lot better, and faster. Dual radios which reduce the amount of interference - and therefore improve reliability and performance - make it possible to have multiple networks in small areas. Draft N has pushed its way into the market despite its unratified state.
And security has improved with the release of the WPA and WPA2 standards. Maybe not enough to satisfy a bank, but sufficient for smaller businesses.
These three advances have made the technology more attractive to business, and commoditisation has made it more affordable. It has also opened the door to SME and enterprise for consumer-focused vendors, which have been making headway with less expensive but comparable products.
Vendors claim that wireless networking is growing, but those that CRN contacted were not able to provide figures to back this up. Dlink's Maurice Famularo says 10-15 percent growth is a conservative estimate.
Wireless networking has taken off in the consumer market. Over 95 percent of Netgear's networking products are now wireless, says Parker. He adds that wired networking has dropped off quite considerably in the past 12-18 months.
Another factor is Telstra Bigpond's advertising campaign to customers, which changed from selling broadband to promoting the benefits of wireless in the home, says Parker.
Consumer trends have flowed upwards into the business world. The SOHO market (10 seats or below) use consumer products anyway, which means they will use N devices, says Parker. "It's a no-brainer for them."
Small businesses have followed the trend, according to Netgear. "Leading into Q2 we saw record sales of SMB wireless access points up 50% on 2008," says Parker, though he admits this was from a low base.
However, last year people were still reluctant to move to N in business, and that has changed, says Parker.
He attributes the rise of wireless to the wide acceptance of the draft N standard by notebook vendors. Nearly every notebook (and many netbooks) released this year has carried an "N" chipset, from Apple to Toshiba.
Intel has been pushing N chipsets for almost 18 months, feeding the market's impatience for the technology. The hardware vendors' de facto approval of the standard, plus their promises to update drivers to the final specification, seem to have won over those sick of waiting.
Most of wireless networking take-up in business is being driven by employees because they have it at home, says Gartner's Simpson. "If a consumer gets an ADSL2 link they very often take a wireless access point along with that. They're just after convenience on the phone and the stuff just works very effectively."
The speed boost of 80211n - which tops out at 100Mbit per second in reality, rather than the 300Mbit promised in marketing materials - is finally fast enough for a fully wireless office, says Simpson. The standard has the performance even for a dozen people using productivity programs like Microsoft Office.
"The typical office worker is only using a couple of megabits per second at most," says Simpson. "Wireless is practical now because it gives you that 100Mbit wired performance."
The average office worker needs 2-4Mbit/s in typical office productivity applications. Draft N devices have a theoretical bandwidth of a couple of hundred megabits. "The point is that today many people have 100Mbit/s to the desktop and the reality is they aren't using anywhere near that, let alone Gigabit," says Simpson.
Video needs 18Mbit/s per channel of video and can blow out network capacity quickly if several people are running videoconferences. However, videoconferencing and regular video use have not yet become common for small businesses.
Instead of network speed bottlenecks can pop up in the electrical infrastructure, as many recent devices use power over Ethernet. Draft N also has higher power requirements because it is running two radios instead of one. That means companies will need to install high capacity PoE supplies in wiring cabinets to handle a network carrying many access points.
Another potential bottleneck is in the wired network itself. Each N access point can churn up several hundred Mbits of bandwidth. A large installation will need a Gigabit backbone to carry the traffic, says Simpson.
When it comes to larger companies, however, the take-up hasn't been as swift. IT managers are reluctant to deploy a technology that hasn't been fully ratified, particularly if it applies to dozens of wireless access points that - in a worst case scenario - could have to be replaced to comply with the future standard.
One other factor slowing down wireless networking in the SME market is cost. The difference in price between wired and wireless networking for a company of 500 people is considerable, not least because of the variables that affect wireless signals over floors or separate buildings.
In the enterprise it's an expensive exercise to manage 20 to 100 access points and requires costly kit to manage.
SMBs with smaller wireless deployments are more likely to move to N at a greater rate because it comes back to that issue of easier and inexpensive manageability, says Parker.
Until recently, enterprise players like Aruba, Cisco and Alcatel have produced wireless controllers for managing multiple access points.
But now D-Link and Netgear (in October) are competing with their own devices which are generally employed once a site uses more than five access points. These controllers centralise management and security, monitor user access and track wireless devices.
"There's a lot of benefits from an IT manager's point of view," says Parker. "We too will be putting a greater focus into pushing N into SMBs."
Netgear has already been selling what it calls "business class" access points, targeting SMBs who only need a couple. These devices carry from two to eight antennas and frequent the 5GHz spectrum where there are more channels to play with.
The older 2.4Ghz frequency can only manage three non-overlapping channels compared to the 24 channels available in 5Ghz. Each frequency carries more channels, but each channel block must be three channels wide to avoid interference.
Interference was a common problem with 2.4Ghz wireless routers in apartment blocks which could have many overlapping networks. Vendors set older access points by default to channels 1,6 or 11, whereas newer devices will automatically shift to the least occupied part of the spectrum.
Parker recommends the MEMO package to resellers looking to install one or two access points in an SMB. If deploying five or more access points, look at a controller based solution for doing upgrades and maintenance, says Parker.
Famularo points out that wireless networks are not replacing wired networks in small businesses, but are added as complementary to the incumbent network. He says businesses still have "a level of paranoia" associated with security, and in some cases performance is not consistent or high enough.
Mobility is one driver for wireless, says Famularo. Companies adding or reducing staff don't need to bother with the cabling, and presentations in the board room don't require a cable to access the network drives or the internet. "That stuff is important," says Famularo.
Mobility tends to be more relevant than providing access to smart phones, says Famularo. While Blackberrys and iPhones can use a wireless network to avoid injurious charges on 3G networks, SMBs aren't likely to outlay money for this staff convenience.
Simpson agrees that although there is generally headroom in N networks, voice is not yet a driver for their installation. Although most smartphones have wifi built in which have the ability to bypass tolls, this function has been difficult to configure, he says. Also many handsets are not good at swapping from wifi to cellular, adds Simpson.
D-Link has its sights on higher targets than small businesses, however. The vendor has pushed into SME networking and is now pulling in six-figure projects, says Famularo.
"We used to win very small deals a long time ago, only because we never had enough legs on the ground to do it. But now we are winning multi-million deals with our products. It's a big achievement for us."
The vendor is taking away business from high-end players like Cisco and 3Com. D-Link's products are "very competitively priced and we have a better level of support", says Famularo.
D-Link has expanded its staff to include technical support, sales and marketing in different vertical markets, and pre-sales engineers, who Famularo calls the company's biggest asset in the channel.
The vendor is having great success in education, local government, health and transportation, and is on state government contracts for networking NSW, says Famularo.
D-Link's wireless networking includes point to multipoint bridges, wireless switches and directional antennas with ranges up to 20 kilometres.
One of its more popular products include the DWS-3024 wireless switch, which is a 24-port, layer 2 device with power over Ethernet. The switch controls up to 48 access points, which can be remotely configured and bandwidth limits set individually.
Another is a multi-service business gateway that has sold well in the hospitality market. The DSA-3600 integrates wired and wireless networks and can give access to guest accounts with set privileges. A customer in a coffee shop can use a key to access the wireless network and the internet, for example.
D-Link plays a very hands-on role with its channel partners to make sure that the customer is using the right combination of products.
The vendor checks the bill of materials to ensure network coverage and performance meets expectations. It also provides quotes on network design.
"We've done that in the past and it's been very successful," says Famularo. "It is a competitive market, but those that closely align with the vendor that's providing them with all the backend support is going to do well."
Resellers interested in selling wireless networking to larger sites need to be able to carry out site surveys to sell the technology effectively, says Famularo.
"If it's a small office or a single floor it's much less work. But if it's multiple floors or multiple buildings, then you have to deliver a detailed map on what the signal coverage would be, what the interference would be."
Some sources of interference are visible, such as walls, concrete, windows and electrical equipment. Other sources require sensitive equipment to measure and can emanate from high tension power lines, satellite dishes, microwaves or other wireless networks.
An area over-saturated with wireless networks may mean selecting an appropriate channel that doesn't interfere by using a combination of 2.4 and 5GHz signals.
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