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Businesses Networking Wireless Networking

Making Wireless, Not Ethernet, the Heart of the Network 346

GMGruman writes "As mobile devices enter the workplace and latch on to Wi-Fi networks — along with devices such as HVAC sensors and videoconferencing that most people don't even realize use Wi-Fi — the typical wireless LAN is unable to cope. What needs to happen, argues Aberdeen Group's Andrew Borg, is a rethink of the wireless LAN not as a casual adjunct to the wired LAN (the typical mentality when they were first set up) but as the corporate LAN itself."
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Making Wireless, Not Ethernet, the Heart of the Network

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  • [...]as mobile devices gain strong adoption in businesses, it's not unusual for there to be as many -- or more -- devices connecting to your network via Wi-Fi as are plugged into an Ethernet jack.

    So what? What is relevant is what those devices are doing. Anyone who needs to pull boatloads of data needs to sit the hell down, and at that point, you can serve them with a wire.

    • by Albanach ( 527650 ) on Sunday May 08, 2011 @08:36AM (#36062418) Homepage

      So what? What is relevant is what those devices are doing. Anyone who needs to pull boatloads of data needs to sit the hell down, and at that point, you can serve them with a wire.

      And where, exactly, do you suggest I plug in my iPad? The MacBook Air requires a separately purchased dongle to connect to a wired LAN.

      Your solution assumes that a majority of devices continue to be developed with an ethernet port. As we move towards thinner, lighter laptops, I doubt Apple will stand alone in manufacturing devices that no longer have an easy way to connect to a wired network.

      • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 08, 2011 @08:45AM (#36062496)

        I can tell you where to shove your iPad

      • by dfghjk ( 711126 ) on Sunday May 08, 2011 @08:46AM (#36062518)

        You are using an iPad on a corporate LAN and accessing "boatloads of data"? Haha.

        Some people have real work to do.

        • wow...this is not trolling.
          • by Comen ( 321331 )

            I do not think it was trolling, if you are doing some serious work, get off your iPad.
            I have a iPad myself, and like many have stated before, its a device used to watch media and browse, you can stream video just fine at WIFI speeds, not sure what else you want to do here, if you really want a good connection plug a wire in.
            Wireless will never top a wired connection, you have to much interference, and retransmissions just at layer 1, its nice and all, but if you can plug in... do!
            I had a buddy recently buy

            • by Pieroxy ( 222434 )

              I do not think it was trolling, if you are doing some serious work, get off your iPad.
              I have a iPad myself, and like many have stated before, its a device used to watch media and browse, you can stream video just fine at WIFI speeds, not sure what else you want to do here, if you really want a good connection plug a wire in.
              Wireless will never top a wired connection, you have to much interference, and retransmissions just at layer 1, its nice and all, but if you can plug in... do!
              I had a buddy recently buy a PC from Best Buy and paid the Geek Squad to hook his new PC up witha new wireless router, the router sat only a few feet on his desk, and still they hooked his PC up using the wireless connection, I changed that for him right way, why would you do that?
              Is the original poster asking for us to make wireless as good as wired? because thats not going to happen.

              That, and the fact that I tend to believe more and more that wireless (Wi-Fi at least) actually has an impact on health. I have a friend whose daughters got headaches the day he powered his WiFi router. He did some double blind testing (nobody in the house was remotely aware of what he was doing). Every day the router was on, both daughters got headaches. The days it was off, they got none. He kept running this for two entire month, some days on, some days off. 100% match. No wifi ever again for him.

              It gave

              • by Pieroxy ( 222434 )

                Not mentioning wifi will banned from most schools and public libraries in France, given the speed at which people complain.

              • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

                by Anonymous Coward

                how do your friends daughters and your wife not get headaches from:
                tv signals
                radio signals
                cellular signals
                gps signals
                sunlight
                cosmic rays/cbmr
                garage door openers
                remote controls
                hell just sitting in front of a monitor or tv.

                you are BOMBARDED with electromagnetic radiation all day every day. anecdotal story is fail.

            • I had a buddy recently buy a PC from Best Buy and paid the Geek Squad to hook his new PC up witha new wireless router, the router sat only a few feet on his desk, and still they hooked his PC up using the wireless connection, I changed that for him right way, why would you do that?

              At work, where everyone has two gigabit lines to every office, using wireless this way would be silly. At home, where my cable modem is slower than 802.11b speeds, there's no real point in using wired. If 802.11g isn't fast enough for home network transfers, I can just sneakernet a drive from place to place.

        • by lwsimon ( 724555 )

          I look around at the Fortune 100 company where I work, and I note that every single executive is carrying an iPad. I regularly see them pulling down enormous PowerPoint presentations, spreadsheets, and watching Netflix.

          This is the first wave, of course - soon, VPs will need one to feel important - then Directors, then Sr. Managers, and on down. The iPad is on the path to finally cracking the corporate market for Apple.

          • I look around at the Fortune 100 company where I work, and I note that every single executive is carrying an iPad.

            Yes, but this thread was about people doing work. Not about people who parleyed social connections into dead-wood positions where they rake in large salaries to get in the way of the people who actually get shit done. (Or am I being cynical?)

          • How big exactly is an enormous powerpoint presentation? How big are these spreadsheets. Excel only handles 65,000 rows, the data can't possibly be that big. Maybe if you stick some movies in that powerpoint it can get pretty big. I'd be surprised to see a spreadsheet that took up more than 50 MB. Netflix, while having large files, doesn't actually require that much bandwidth, as you have the entire time the movie is being watched to download it. For this kind of stuff wireless is fine. But one you star
          • Your NetFlix comment makes me think you're being sarcastic, but let's take the comments seriously:

            I look around at the Fortune 100 company where I work, and I note that every single executive is carrying an iPad.

            Again, you need to find someone doing real work on an iPad. Executives don't do real work on a computer. They pay other people to do that. They do their real work on the telephone and face-to-face.

            I regularly see them pulling down enormous PowerPoint presentations, spreadsheets, and watching Netflix.

            They're viewing. Viewing is not working on the device. Creating is doing working on the device. In this case the iPad is little better than a printed document or a DVD player.

      • by hawkbat05 ( 1952326 ) on Sunday May 08, 2011 @08:47AM (#36062532)
        Perhaps then it's time to refine the overly large rj45 plug into something that will accommodate smaller form factors. Call it Ethernet micro. Most of the connector is wasted plastic anyway.
        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Unlike most kinds of wires (e.g. USB), it's very common for people to want to make their own Ethernet cables. Part of the reason people are often staying with CAT 5e instead of CAT 6 is that it's easier to deal with. Any change would have to keep them easy to pull and crimp. Plus, if you make a new system, you're going to have to replace all the tools associated with it. Every IT pro is going to need to buy new crimpers and testers.

          All that to fix a system that ain't broken.

          Now I wouldn't mind seeing a

          • by h4rr4r ( 612664 )

            If you have a good crimper all you need is a new die. If your crimper does not have swappable dies, buy a better one.

          • by Hylandr ( 813770 ) on Sunday May 08, 2011 @10:18AM (#36063378)

            The only thing that leaves me inclined to go wireless is not having to pull butt loads of cable through ceilings and attics. Then things like security, PCI DSS and HIPAA are brought into the mix and reality sets in, as I head back into the attic. One of the places I worked at was trying to use an apple airport for a firewall. We were scanned for PCI DSS compliance and gave us a report of every single device on our network. I yanked that in my first 30 days there. Don't even get started on the wireless encryption bit. Really

            - Dan.

      • by Charcharodon ( 611187 ) on Sunday May 08, 2011 @10:07AM (#36063264)
        An iPad is not a real device, it's a toy. Besides exactly how much "data" do you need to send it?......... oh wait you are talking about watching movies/video at work not actually doing "work" because anything else doesn't actually take up that much bandwidth for more than a minute or two.

        The only thing thin devices like iPads may be usefull for someday is running remotely software on a hardwired server or a desktop and then streaming it to it.

      • by jedidiah ( 1196 )

        Use less lame devices.

        Wireless networking is highly problematic for a number of reasons. Those problems disappear once you use a proper network.

        A situation that may be tolerable for a self-centered early adopter may not scale to hundreds or thousands of seats.

        The idea that corporations should go wireless because that's the only way that some Apple devices can connect just demonstrates how poorly suited Apple products are for business or "serious work" in general.

        "I've followed our glorious cult leader over

      • I suggest you not believe your iPad was designed to handle serious GB or TB of data transfers and use a real computer.

        PS blame Apple for not being enterprise-ready, not the enterprise for ignoring Apple's stubbornness.

    • Aha, but corollary: if they're in a line of business that doesn't involve boatloads of data, then a slow network can only be caused by employee misbehaviour! Ergo, productivity. (Long live the PHB twist theory: anything annoying can be twisted around into a means of enforcing a certain style of working.)
      • by Hylandr ( 813770 )

        if they're in a line of business that doesn't involve boatloads of data,

        Why are you bringing an Ipad to flip burgers at McDonalds?

        - Dan.

        • Why are you considering an iPad the heart of a network?

          Anyway, you forgot all the pencil-pushing bureaucrats.
        • at my manager's going away party two weeks ago, i saw this suit use his ipad as a tray for his beer... i imagine similar use-cases can be found by the dozen at mickey Ds

    • by Huntr ( 951770 )

      Anyone who needs to pull boatloads of data needs to sit the hell down

      Sure, in May 2011. The idea is that, moving forward, let's not have to sit down. Let's be able to pull, process and use that boatloads of data on the go.

      • by Anthony Mouse ( 1927662 ) on Sunday May 08, 2011 @10:02AM (#36063220)

        People are apparently having trouble understanding that there is a finite amount of spectrum allocated to wireless and you have to share it between all the devices in range. At some point all the bandwidth is used up, and if you want more, you need wires.

        • by lwsimon ( 724555 )

          ... or more spectrum, or more efficient use of the spectrum to already have ...

          • There is no more spectrum. You can't manufacture it, you can only reallocate it. There still comes a point at which all of the allocated spectrum is consumed and there is no more, and that scarcity means that it isn't exactly cheap.

            Efficiency has the same limits. If you already have something which is 50% efficient (i.e. 50% of the Shannon limit), it is physically impossible to more than double your available bandwidth through efficiency improvements, and in practice you can't even do that.

        • some people obviously have zero ideas about basic physics and how wifi works and just how much more expensive a wireless network its when compared to wired one.
      • by Charcharodon ( 611187 ) on Sunday May 08, 2011 @10:22AM (#36063430)
        :) I can give you 1,000mbit connection all to yourself over a wire which you can plug into your desktop/laptop.

        Or I can give you a 300mbit wirelss connection that you have to share with every office drone within 300ft who is watchin youtube on their portable and non-portable devices.

        Even with a thousand fold improvement in wireless bandwidth the unwashed masses will still be bringing the network to its knees while the wired network won't even break a sweat with 10 times the traffic.

        Maybe what they really need is a very short distance wireless router that covers the distance of say a room or four cubicals or maybe not much beyond your own cubical/office. You'd get the benefit of being wirelss without the downside of sharing.

        Of course the bean counters will just say plug your damn device in instead of having to spend an extra 100-200$ per employee so they can be lazy.

      • The idea is that, moving forward, let's not have to sit down.

        Agreed.

        Now companies can get a lot of fat fucking desk jockeys to work from a treadmill/stairmaster via iPad.

        Everybody wins:

        the company, because fit (not fat) people are more motivated

        the employee, because it sucks to be a fat fuck

        the rest of us, because we have fewer ginormous blobs of grease riding around Wal-Mart in those little electric LTPs (Lard Transportation Devices)

        • i totally agree that workplace health is an important part to many things (including productivity) but the notion that an iPad is an adequate replacement for a desktop or even a laptop in terms of productivity absurd. If everything you do on a computer would be no less constrained by use of an iPad i serously doubt you need a computer at all. Its useful for reading email and reviewing documents and the like, but composition is really impractical, If its not a Mac or mixed OS environment already, setting tha

    • by Gerzel ( 240421 )

      No. I don't think that is the reason that a user who needs lots of data should also need to sit down, but I do think you are somewhat right.

      Two reasons both of which stem from the fact that on Wires the signal is cast down a narrow path with only a limited number of recipients. Yes there are some wireless technologies that also are narrow path but these behave in practice much the same way as wires do, chiefly that they are stationary.

      First is security. It is more difficult to tap a wire and easier to pr

  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 08, 2011 @08:32AM (#36062372)

    High latency, low throughput, and a shared collision domain.
    What's not to like?

    • by Idbar ( 1034346 )
      You also missed interference. If there's something you don't want is a clown with a jammer bringing all your network down (in addition to having probably a security leak if they patiently listen to your high-demanded service - which brings the topic of extreme overhead in packet transmissions for security reasons).

      Not to say that wireless is good and useful. But wired is and always been more reliable since people use switches instead of hubs. But perhaps what this guy is proposing is creating a "wireless
    • Lol, mod up. I manage wireless infrastructure for a large warehouse. We have best-that-you-can-buy wireless, and it's still flakey for all the reasons you described. Give me the speed and reliability of wires any day.
  • No, can't be done. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SuricouRaven ( 1897204 ) on Sunday May 08, 2011 @08:39AM (#36062452)
    Ye cannae change the laws of physics!

    Seriously, though... wireless has serious inherent disadvantages. Susceptibility to interference, a single collision domain, much lower bandwidth in the analog sense. It's good for mobility, but if you try to run a whole site-LAN on wireless it just wouldn't work - even if you utilised the 800MHz, 2.4GHZ and 5.0GHz bands all at once. Maybe if you put little 60GHz nodes in every room, but it'd be far too expensive.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Well, we can. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Cyberax ( 705495 ) on Sunday May 08, 2011 @05:16PM (#36066548)

      4 years ago I've helped to manage a mesh WiFi network for a fairly large enterprise. It covered a large building with about 1000 people working simultaneously. It was first intended as a temporary network (they had to relocate quickly, because of a fire in their old building). But it worked well enough to become the main network.

      Keys to success: low-power APs with WDS, and gigabit Ethernet trunks + switches with STP. We used WPA with pre-shared password for wireless security and then IPSec for IP-level security (it was used with the wired network earlier so no setup was required).

      As far as I remember, an average access point served about 15 clients. We manually set all the access points to the lowest possible power level, but apart from that we did no additional setup.

  • by OzPeter ( 195038 ) on Sunday May 08, 2011 @08:44AM (#36062488)
    One of the advantages of a wired network is that the data only leaves the premises at well defined locations that you control. With wireless networks it floats over the aether in all directions. And before you can say "encryption will protect me", think about how easy it would be to build a transmitter running on the same frequencies as the wireless network and sit that just outside the company and pointed inwards - instant denial of service attack with zero traceability.
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Amarantine ( 1100187 )

      One of the advantages of a wired network is that the data only leaves the premises at well defined locations that you control.

      Well defined locations you control, or well defined locations you *think* you control? It is very well possible to do port security at the access layer of your network, but how many networks have that? There's always some outlet somewhere for a printer that nobody uses... Somebody sneaks his way into the building, hooks up an accesspoint to that port, sits in his van outside, and can hack away at your network. Really, wired is not always as safe as people think.

      In fact, i remember a customer with a voip net

      • There's always some outlet somewhere for a printer that nobody uses... Somebody sneaks his way into the building, hooks up an accesspoint to that port, sits in his van outside, and can hack away at your network

        Doesn't even need to be that. If the cable is exposed anywhere, you can splice it easily. There are cheap off-the-shelf devices that you can buy that will plug in between a computer and a LAN and record everything that's transmitted, and even do active probes or MITM attacks. Would your IT department notice a workstation dropping off the network for the 20 seconds it takes to install one?

        The physical network - wired or wireless - should always be treated as hostile. If you're relying on the integrit

    • by laffer1 ( 701823 )

      Not only that, but encryption adds additional overhead to an already slower technology. I can't even live with wifi in my home as the primary connection. Interference from my neighbors pet projects can kill the signal. If I can't maintain two computers connected at a reasonable speed, how can an entire office run on it?

  • by betterunixthanunix ( 980855 ) on Sunday May 08, 2011 @08:49AM (#36062546)
    Printers? Video surveillance? HVAC? Electric meters? Why are these things using WiFi, when they rarely move and are always plugged into an external power source?
    • Printers? Haven't seen any but one or two low-end consumer models. All professional installs I've seen use good old Ethernet.
      Video surveillance? Sane deal. Heck, most of these just use composite over coax.
      HVAC? Low bandwidth at best, and I haven't seen an in-use system that actually uses WiFi.
      Electric meters? Really low bandwidth, and the better systems I've seen send /very/ low speed data back up the power lines.

      So, no, WiFi isn't everywhere. It's just a good add-on for portable devices and stuff that does

    • by Gryle ( 933382 )
      In the one instance I've seen of WiFI printers, it was a mobile field-office set-up that ran off one of those celluar WiFi cards that AT&T or Verizon produce. The individual in question traveled a lot and apparently felt the need to be able to print wherever he wanted. I can't speak for the other devices however.
  • by Bilby Baggins ( 1107981 ) on Sunday May 08, 2011 @09:11AM (#36062736)

    These are the three things that WiFi still can't compete in against a wired network.

    Even the most secure wireless is still much more susceptible to attack then a wired network. Even with the most modern access control and protection methods (which are neither cheap nor convenient) the sheer massive avenue of attack WiFi presents creates a problem for many large corporations. Ask JPMorgan Chase how much WiFi connectivity they have. Or pretty much any US Government building.

    Even if you do as the article suggests and call in an expensive contractor to map out the best locations for access points, you have to find out if it's even feasible to run network and power to that location. Even with the best-possible placement you are going to have dead zones, and the size and location of dead zones will vary depending on the devices used. My Toshiba laptop got service in places a virtually identical Macbook did not- let alone the poor wireless reception most mobile phones and devices provide. So you have to deal with irate users, and try to find places to install additional access points to cover the dropped zones.

    When I worked for a small non-profit K-12 school, during teacher inservice days I always had to install 2 additional access points in the gym so that the teachers could all connect on their laptops, as the single AP currently serving the gym was not sufficient. Even then, transferring any large file from the server or online either brought the network to a standstill or required tethering each machine to an ethernet cord to do the transfer. Most high-tech oriented conferences, the wireless is all but useless if it's available publicly, due to the hundreds of devices all connecting within a limited frequency space and bandwidth. There is just not enough bandwidth in a small space available to deal with more then a handful of data-rich connections. Spread across multiple spheres of AP reception the problem is reduced, but not eliminated! My bedroom is WiFi-connected only due to wiring constraints and connecting from my laptop to my server via VNC or to copy files is very... very... slow. And really, try having a LAN party over wireless- I can run hundreds or thousands of network cables through a small room and connect everything I need for nearly any project or task inexpensively, and know that the network will be robust. Working with WiFi in anything other then a solo arrangement is a lesson in frustration.

    TL;DR - Until security protocol and access control methods are more robust and available; until tools to design, implement, and test wireless networks are more plentiful and robust; and until bandwidth availability is not on par with but exceeds that of standard CAT5- wireless is but an adjunct, a convenient add-on to the main structure of a wired network in a business. ... err, not that I'm impassioned about it, or anything.

  • I agree with the sentiments here that wireless is not appropriate for a large portion of traffic. Especially as we move to all kinds of media traveling over our IP networks, do we really want all of that to be steamed over wireless when it does not need to be?

    I consume all of my media at home over IP, and because of my house's design and the location of my wireless router, it is very difficult to run a wire to where our big screen is, so I use wifi. When it works it is fine, but I have to reset the connecti

    • by nurb432 ( 527695 )

      That is true if we stick with the 'fat' client concept we have today, pushing gigs of data to the end point directly..

      If everything is moved to a RDP/VDI sort of environment, then it might become more feasible ( and secure ).

      • I'd prefer if we separated our applications into client/UI layer and server/core; that way you could have multiple UIs adapted to the workflow of each device.

    • by Arlet ( 29997 )

      There's nothing wrong with the protocols, you just have bad equipment.

      • Yes, I suspect you are right. But the equipment I have tried include the latest models of Belkin, Netgear, and Linksys (Cisco) wireless routers, all 802.11n capable. And everyone in my household has a Mac, and the other wireless devices are an Apple TV and a Roku. The Roku seems to be the least problematic, although it also loses its connection frequently - just not as frequently. (This never happens while one is streaming, however: only when a stream is done.) And interestingly, all devices show a strong w

  • Wifi can be handy as a 'core' network if you live in an apartment and don't want to (or can't) drill holes to run copper throughout. An extended 802.11n 5GHz-dedicated works well enough to feed 1080p from my upstairs NAS to my downstairs home theater. Still, if I owned, or had an apartment with ethernet wall plates, I'd take advantage of that..

  • Borg (Score:5, Funny)

    by arisvega ( 1414195 ) on Sunday May 08, 2011 @10:32AM (#36063524)

    What needs to happen, argues Aberdeen Group's Andrew Borg

    So a Borg is giving suggestions as to how Earth's networks are to be set up?

    Careful now, people.

  • Jebus, people. Ethernet is a layer 2 OSI technology and has nothing to do with the physical layer. Wireless uses Ethernet too.

    • by Tacvek ( 948259 ) on Sunday May 08, 2011 @12:46PM (#36064588) Journal

      Ethernet (IEEE 802.3) defines the physical layer (layer 1) and MAC layer (lower half of layer 2). Both of those are specific to wired connections.
      Wifi (802.11) defines the wireless physical layer and MAC layer. Again both of those are specific to wireless connections.

      The MAC layer of both were deliberately designed to have similar frame formats, but they are most definitely not the same. You cannot simply emit a WIFI frame on Ethernet and expect it to work.

      Both utilize the same LLC layer (upper half of layer 2) specified in (IEEE 802.2).

      So, no Ethernet is not a Layer 2 technology, and it most definitely implies a wired connection.

  • by gavron ( 1300111 ) on Sunday May 08, 2011 @11:42AM (#36064126)

    The limitations of a shared medium preclude its being the "core" of any LAN that is actually seeing sustained use.

    History (skip if tl;dr)
    Ethernet, as originaly designed by Digital, Intel, and Xerox (DIX) was a shared medium. Transceivers sat on very think cable with vampire-taps piercing the cable to provide station connections. That is 10Base5. (10Mbps, 500meter max length). An improvement in technology allowed switching to 75ohm coaxial cable with BNC connectors, three-way connectors instead of vampire taps, and allowed four repeaters instead of the previous two. (10Base2 was commonly called Thinnet, as the coax cable was much thinner than its predecessor.)

    Both of those are shared-media. That means every station receives every other station's transmissions. It's half-duplex in that only one side can transmit in any one time. The concept of "Collisions" and collision-backoff intervals were employed to minimize multiple stations transmitting at the same time.

    With the advents of twisted-wire Ethernet (10Base-T) and having stations "home run" to a master repeater, this didn't change much other than the way in which cable was laid. HOWEVER, it prepared the ground for the existence of "smart repeaters" which would "learn" where each Ethernet MAC address was, and only forward frames to the right ports. This switching capacity led to them being called ... switches.

    NON-Shared Medium comes into existence:
    Switches now allow treating the network as a NON-shared medium. For example, Alice's PC can talk to Printer Bob, while Charlies PC talkes to file-server David, and neither's Ethernet frames interfere, hold up, or affect each other. That's what wired Ethernet is like in today's "modern" network.

    WiFi however is a shared medium. AT THE VERY BEST it would be like going back to pre-switch days. If Alice's PC is transmitting, neither Printer Bob nor Charlie's PC or file-server David can be transmitting. Everybody queues up, and overall throughput drops by a function of the number of transmitting stations. But wait, WiFi has other issues which means it's not "at its very best." Some of these include hidden-nodes, RFI, limitation on channel-use, and adjacency issues. Additionally, most WiFi devices will transmit at the speed of the slowest station. So if you have a 802.11b node, it will slow down the 802.11g or 802.11n traffic. In other words, a WiFi network is worse than pre-switch wired networks by a significant amount.

    CORE vs EDGE:
    When you design a product (and a LAN is a product... it's used by everyone in the house/office/factory,etc.) a design should be based on accomplishing the goals. With LANs that's usually HIGH throughput, LOW cost, LOW errors. For that to work, the "bottlenecks" should not be in the center of this great star cluster of communication, but at the edge.

    That is why the core needs to have the MOST bandwidth. (For some 100Mbps full-duplex wired is sufficient. For some of my clients 10Gbps is not enough.) The edge, where small-bandwidth devices exist (e.g. Android Phone, iPhone, Netbook, laptops) is the ideal deployment of WiFi for three reasons:
    1. These devices are mobile. It makes sense they should be able to connect everywhere.
    2. These devices use little bandwidth. It is unlikely they would normally saturate the wireless network.
    3. These devices typically are complementary... so if a user has BOTH an Android phone AND a laptop... it's unlikely both will be using lots of data at the same time.

    Ehud Gavron
    Tucson AZ

    P.S. "Wireless" as used her is "WiFi" which is wireless Ethernet. So it's not really "Wireless vs Ethernet" but rather "Wireless vs Wired".

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