Question

One of the things that some businesses do to minimize risk in this area is to use wired networking (as opposed to wireless networking). If you were an e-business owner would you consider using 100% wired networking? Why or why not?

Answer 1

The option for wireless networking is sometimes a good option for small businesses but as the business grows, it becomes more and more infeasible. Though nowadays the wireless access points have a theoretical maximum speed in the range of 3000 megabits per second, the same speed is hardly achievable and the maximum that can be achieved (stochastical estimate) is around 400 megabits per second only. This happens as the wireless access points vary is capacity and reliability depending on the external condition. On the contrary, an ordinary ethernet cable has a maximum speed of 1000 megabits per second which can be reliably attainable at any moment.

On top of this, the wireless speed is shared among all the users in the given area of access and the wireless device always communicates with one user device at a time. Since the bandwidth gets distributed among the users, the speed can further reduce. Moreover, most of the wireless devices come with an upper cap of maximum devices that can be connected. To manage an entire office or so, the suppliers generally provide an access point built for enterprise use which is a costlier option to explore.

That said, 100% wired network may not be necessary at least at the first stage of an e-business. The mobile devices or tablets can be connected to wireless networks in order for the employees to use for internal communication. Note that when we connect mobile devices with wireless networks, the bandwidth consumption is usually much less. But as the business grows, for a more serious form of business communication, wireless connections are unreliable.