Which is Common Networking in Offices in these days: Wired or Wireless ?

Now a days commonly networking in offices is Wireless.

But offices that are establish early still using wired network..

In most offices in western countries, a combination of wired and wireless networks are available. There are advantages and disadvantages to both, and the choice of which one or combination depends on a few factors.

Wireless networks does have the convenience that you can move around without cumbersome wires, but as posted below this comes at a price. Wired networks go through switches and routers which assign a single port to a single device (in most cases) and these devices tend to be clever enough to route the information from one port to another port, thus saving on network bandwidth by not transmitting everything to everyone.

At the moment, wired network offers 1000Mbps (or gigabit) to devices and faster speeds between switches (10 gigabit or more) using cables and even fibre optic cables.

These two factors alone make wired networks faster than wireless networks.

Wireless networks require you to have access points (APs). Multiple devices connect wirelessly to the AP at the same time. However, the AP has only one wired connection to the switch, meaning that all the devices connected to the AP have to share the bandwidth.

Wireless networks suffer from signal degradation, meaning that you will usually need multiple APs to overcome this limitation.

While you do get APs that use power over ethernet (PoE) in which the data and the power for the AP goes over a single CAT 5 cable, they have the drawback that they are slightly more expensive and that the electrical current may interfere with the data stream if the cables are sub-standard.

WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) should not be used, as this is an old standard that has been proven to be easily hacked. WPA2 (Wi-Fi Protected Access) + Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is much more secure for offices and the preferred method of connection. For more information, check out this article.

As far as firewalls go, this should be on a dedicated machine or network device that lies between your network and the internet, giving a single point of access that can be easily updated.

So what does this all mean? In places where it is difficult to lay cables or where wireless devices have to be used (like on factory floors) it is necessary to use wireless networks. For places where you have machines sitting on or under desks, it is better to use wired networking, as the speed and security are preferential. Even laptops that have docking stations should be connected with wires.

That way, you will have more bandwidth availble to the wireless devices.

The previous poster advised using Cisco products, and while the quality of these products are generally higher than cheaper alternatives, they also suffer from security flaws.

As a final thing to keep in mind, APs require a wireless network name. I have seen places where each AP had a different wireless network name and others where they all had the same name. I have even seen some where a single AP can have multiple network names.

If all people are going to access the network with the same security measures, you may want to use a single wireless network name. This allows a user to have a single password to join the network and to go anywhere in the office and the wireless network card will automatically change between APs.

Alternatively, with APs that allow more than one network name, you can assign an Office network as well as a Guest network for others.

The only thing to keep in mind with APs is that you have to carefully assign the channels for each AP so that there is minimal overlap between channels which minimizes problems such as interference which can make the wireless network slower. You can use wireless network applications to help with this.

You also have to bear in mind that 802.11ac is the newest, fastest protocol, but not all wireless cards support it, so you may have to use hybrid APs in 802.11b/g/n/ac modes, which may also cause issues.

As you can see, the use of wireless networks isn't a straight-forward yes or no question. I suggest you do some research into the topics mentioned above before plunging into turning the office into a wireless network.

Hope this has helped you.

To All:

Kindly consider all the recommendation in this forum with regards to the pros and cons of wired and wireless.

But for me in a office or an organization, use a wired connection when you have program or software that uses database. This is to ensure that the database is free from inconsistencies and minimized data corruption. Other factor is to make your data more secure since data is not broadcast.

Lastly use wireless when your activities is viewing only and does not involve database.

This is my recommendation to make office transaction more secure, reliable and effective.

Thank you.

common offices prefer to use wireless. when using wireless all office area will be covered and less termination port, less cable. Speed/bandwith will no much different since wireless user traffic is limited to employee only. you may install more than 1 access point to distribute wifi traffic.

Wired is stable and reliable option. You can use it for connect servers, PC and printers. Bandwidth is related to your switch interface (10Mb, 100Mb, 1Gb)

Wireless gives you movement ability. Bandwidth is limited to users we access point. Should be implement carefully to avoid any signal disconnection or bandwidth limitation.

I recommend the network to be mixed between wired and wireless. 

it is some time depend on condition if an office a newely build then all room is equiped with a wired connection to connect desktop .but when on the other hand wireless is mostly used 

Both are needed as they both provide various factors to making a network consistent and secure and well structured and categorized. However, the use of wireless networks makes it convenient and a good utilization tool for many networks that require less management on a daily basis.

Hello everyone, 

Wired networking is better than wireless and will always be preferred on wireless.

The most common Networking in offices in these days is wired. 

Ofocurse, Wireless networking is used for providing network access to employees in a simple and easy way and with mobility too. Now a days each employee has his/her own smart phones so they can make their work better with best use of company resources.