Canadians just say no to all-wireless business networking

Jim Wilson, CIO of the Middlesex Hospital Alliance (MHA) in southwestern Ontario, says his organization's wireless LAN is secure and robust enough to meet the firm's needs. But you won't catch him ripping out the Ethernet and going all-wireless. And judging from the results of an Info-Tech Research Group survey, he's not alone.Wilson figures it makes no sense to remove the wireline infrastructure, because it works well for certain applications and network end-points."If I know it's going to be in one place and I know it's not going anywhere, it just makes sense, given the limitations of the wireless technology, to use the wired network for those things," Wilson says. "As far as a printer or a workstation that's never going to move, why would I take up the wireless bandwidth?"Bandwidth limitations are one of the reasons companies steer away from the all-wireless route, says Jennifer Colasanti, a research consultant at Info-Tech in London ON. "The sense we get right now is that there are a number of applications that don't work well over wireless." In the survey, a third of respondents blamed poor wireless LAN throughput for application performance problems.Relief is on the way. New protocols such as 802.11n promise higher data rates - hundreds of megabits per second - so capacity might not always be a major hurdle. "A lot of businesses are looking forward to adopting that," Colasanti says.This emerging technology traveled a rocky road to standardization: it took months of arguing among stakeholders at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers to bring 11n out of the development stage and onto the non-proprietary track. (See "802.11n Promises...", page 17, Telemanagement 233, March 1, 2006.) Despite the controversy, Colasanti says most people will consider it in the long term. "Initially people may be hesitant to adopt it, but once they realize the bandwidth capabilities, that's a huge thing for people."Winnipeg flies with wirelessThe Winnipeg Airport Authority Inc. (WAA) might be a prime candidate for the high-capacity wireless protocol. Having operated a wireless LAN in its offices, and having teamed with Telus Corp. for public Wi-Fi access in the terminal over the past few years, the organization expects big network developments in the future.The WAA is building a new terminal, slated for completion by the end of 2009. "Our plan is to make it a fully wireless facility with both public and private components," says Doug Stoyko, the WAA's e-business marketing director. "The technology is developing so fast now, I'm hoping the cost will drop, and we'll be able to have multiple networks...over the same wireless infrastructure."The WAA also plans to beef up its parking-lot security measures with extra wireless access points (see "Wireless helps protect..." below), and it hopes to extend the network out to the airfield to support operations there.In Stoyko's estimation, capacity is important, as is security. And the two must go hand in hand."You get much more bandwidth if you're not concerned about security," he says. "It's when you want to control the flow of information that you have to put restrictions on it to make it secure. Now it becomes a bandwidth-security trade-off: how fast do you want to go? As fast as possible, but I also want to be safe."Colasanti says security wasn't as big a concern among survey respondents as it might have been in the past. "I don't think people are no longer worried about security, they're just comfortable with the security that's now available. It was a surprise to us. We thought those concerns would still be out there."Wilson echoes that. When wireless first seemed possible, security "was the concern" for the MHA, he says. "And until the technology had matured sufficiently, we just wouldn't implement it."But wireless network protections "have matured since then," and capacity is the new problem, he says.Stoyko from the WAA says he wouldn't completely discount the all-wireless idea. Given performance improvements, security enhancements and lower equipment prices, all-wireless might make sense for some organizations - firms steeped in logistics or information development, whose employees spend a lot of time on the move.But for most businesses, all-wireless is all for naught. "There's not a huge demand to remove the wired infrastructure," Stoyko says. "It doesn't really cost you anything once it's deployed."Spectrum-management spells successDeployment methods also affect how wireless LANs perform, notes Chris Langdon, Telus' VP, network services. "Have someone do an audit....One major airport, when they did an audit, found 20 or 30 mini wireless LANs deployed by some of the tenants."That the airport's tenants built their own wireless LANs illustrates how popular wireless has become. According to Colasanti, most organizations eschew formal and time-consuming business plans before installing wireless networks. For survey respondents, "it was oftentimes considered a ‘no-brainer'," she says.It's good news for equipment vendors. Buyers are eager to invest in wireless devices. But it's still difficult for vendors to sell support services, such as site surveys and audits."People think it's a do-it-yourself activity," Telus' Langdon says. "When they don't get the return or see the immediate benefit because of these issues, they scratch their heads. When you start having deployments of up to 100 users on a floor, you need to manage capacity."To speed up the installation process, many companies turn to familiar vendors. For Info-Tech's survey respondents, "it just seemed a lot easier to go with the vendor they already had, rather than go through a whole vendor-selection process," Colasanti says.The WAA chose Cisco Systems Inc. equipment for the corporate wireless LAN. "They had done a Voice over IP solution for us," Stoyko says.The MHA knew NexInnovations Inc. from previous projects. The hospital group chose the Mississauga ON-based consulting company to install the Cisco equipment that would comprise the wireless LAN. "This was the first major implementation we used them as a vendor," Wilson says.Driven by business needsHe explains that a particular business need drove the wireless implementation: the MHA wanted to keep tech-savvy doctors happy about working in small urban centres like Newbury and Strathroy, where the organization's sites are. "Recruiting and retaining physicians in rural hospitals is challenging," Wilson says. "We wanted to assure our physicians in our small hospital have the best possible technology to help them treat our patients."The wireless network lets the healthcare providers exchange electronic patient documents such as X-rays and lab-test results. A secure fibre-optic link between Newbury and Strathroy also facilitates exchanges between the locations.Business-needs motivate many wireless network deployments, says Colasanti. "In roughly half of the businesses we talked to, it was the business that was driving the implementation. It wasn't IT. And in a lot of cases, it was business executives coming to IT and saying, ‘I have wireless at home. Why can't I get it in my boardroom?'"Wilson says the MHA has no immediate network expansion plans, but in the future the organization must face a new crop of wireless applications. "What happens when you have 12 VoIP phones on the same access point, two tablets and a couple of workstations on wheels?"Capacity will be crucial, he says. "The next thing is the constraints of the technology."Wireless helps protect parked cars in WinnipegThe WAA is in a unique position regarding - of all things - its parking lot. The organization uses wireless access points to help manage the area.According to Stoyko, the firm must keep an eye on parked vehicles. "We're responsible for the safety of the vehicles left overnight at the airport, in that if there's damage, people will ask, ‘How did you let this happen?'" he says. "It's an odd relationship: even though you're completely liability free, if you don't make a reasonable attempt to secure the environment, you might still be liable."The WAA has a truck sporting hardware and software that records the licence plates of cars parked in the lot. The system helps track when vehicles arrive and when they leave. It compares the parked plates to a list of police-flagged tags. If the system finds a wanted plate, the WAA calls the police to investigate. "Airports are notoriously easy places to drop off a car that's been involved in a crime," Stoyko points out.And if vehicles aren't dumped, they're plucked. "It's not as big a deal in Winnipeg, but there are airports in Canada where organized crime uses the airport parking lots as shopping lots for stealing cars," Stoyko says. Thieves go into the lots, call HQ, list the vehicles available, and take the ones the bosses identify.The person driving the WAA's sleuthing rig can send the plate information from the vehicle to the corporate LAN via an on-board NIC and wireless access points located around the airport - or, if he's nowhere near an access point, he can store the data on a USB drive and walk it to the nearest computer."Right now we do have some access points in the field, primarily for the construction that's going on in the terminal building," Stoyko says, referring to the new terminal being constructed. "They can drive over to those and transmit. "We're looking to put some more access points in to make it more convenient," and perhaps do away with the sneakernet option altogether.

Canadians just say no to all-wireless business networking

News | 04/30/2007 1:37 pm EDT

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