Wireless vs. cable connection

My county is thinking about installing Wireless Internet. How does wireless
compare with ethernet connected cable for:
Speed (upload and download)
Reliability of connection

What additional equipment is required for a generic PC and what is the price
range?

What is the frequency range of the signals (VHF, UHF, GHF etc.)

--
John Culleton
Able Indexers and Typesetters

On Tue, 22 Feb 2005 14:42:05 -0500, John Culleton wrote:

> My county is thinking about installing Wireless Internet. How does wireless
> compare with ethernet connected cable for:
> Speed (upload and download)
> Reliability of connection

I'd suggest you also look at security.


>
> What additional equipment is required for a generic PC and what is the price
> range?
>
> What is the frequency range of the signals (VHF, UHF, GHF etc.)

ray wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Feb 2005 14:42:05 -0500, John Culleton wrote:
>
>
>>My county is thinking about installing Wireless Internet. How does wireless
>>compare with ethernet connected cable for:
>>Speed (upload and download)
>>Reliability of connection
>
>
> I'd suggest you also look at security.
>
>
>
>>What additional equipment is required for a generic PC and what is the price
>>range?
>>
>>What is the frequency range of the signals (VHF, UHF, GHF etc.)
>
>

Speed: wifi slower for large transfers, but adequate for most applications.

Reliability: wifi more likely to loose connections, but you're less
likely to trip over the cable.

Security: wifi easier to hack into - make sure you turn on encryption
etc - dont leave any of the "out of the box" defaults in place. Turn on
firewalling (to protect all systems) and anti-virus (if there's any M$
involved) everywhere.

Convenience: wifi easier - do it anywhere provided there's a WAP
reasonable close.

Chris

In article <p6mdnQaMm_fOFobfRVn-(E-Mail Removed)>, John Culleton wrote:

>My county is thinking about installing Wireless Internet. How does wireless
>compare with ethernet connected cable

Good question - are we comparing a sports car or a ten ton truck delivering
free refrigerators?

As with all generic questions - "it depends". What is the configuration of
the two networks? A cable serving no more than a city block, verses one
wireless site serving the entire county? Vice Versa? Some other set
of circumstances?

>Speed (upload and download)

Depends on how many users are on the {cable|access_point}. Same numbers
give about the same results.

>Reliability of connection

Depends on the wireless configuration. Is there one access point in front
of each house (meaning range isn't a factor), or is there a bunch of wet
trees between you and the access point? This stuff is "light of sight"
so you also have to consider building materials - foil backed insulation
in the walls is going to play hell with reliability. On the other hand,
frequency reuse in cables is far superior to that possible over the air. To
compare this to cable TV - "channel 2 can be different on each cable, while
on-the-air TV stations on the same channel have to be widely separated to
prevent mutual interference..

>What additional equipment is required for a generic PC and what is the price
>range?

See the newsgroup 'alt.internet.wireless'. Depends a lot on version and the
quantities involved.

>What is the frequency range of the signals (VHF, UHF, GHF etc.)

[Very High Frequency, Ultra HF, what's GHF - Ghoddamn High Frequency? The
next ones above UHF are SHF (Super) and EHF (Extremely) but those terms are
extremely dated.]

That depends on the version used. ALL are in the ISM frequency bands, with
some around 915 MHz, others around 2.45 GHz, and still others in the
5.25 GHz band.

Old guy