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Hi Guys,

Had an interesting discussion with a client today who has two class leading WLAN vendors bidding to supply them with a new (industrial environment) dual band WLAN solution....

Turns out one vendor can reportedly guarantee that their WLAN platform will be free from any RFI that will degrade network performance. The other manufacturer makes no such claim. I was asked my opinion, and I have told them to be wary of vendor marketing. My thoughts are that as WLAN's operate in public, unlicensed and therefore non regulated frequencies, then all WLAN platforms may, at some stage, be subjected to random interference from known or unknown sources.

What do you guys think? Is it possible to guarantee WLAN performance in the same way as a Cat6 UTP cable can be certified with say, a Fluke DTX 1800 Network analyzer? I would have thought not , as the WLAN transmission environment is constantly changing whereas the UTP cable is generally fixed and when installed correctly, should not be subjected to external interference.

I am very interested in more experienced CWNP's thoughts...

Cheers
Andrew

when there are mouths to feed...

tongues fork

a welder operating near the network could train wreck this claim

My thoughts were similar ad5mb... in addition, the client is considering the possibility of running mission critical applications via the WLAN platform, to remove more expensive (to install) cabling requirements. This is based on the very slick sales presentation of one WLAN vendor (I won't name names, but they are a global player).

I like wireless, and find the tech interesting, however, I tend to consider 802.11x platform performance to be "best effort" and because of this, unable to be guaranteed to perform to expected levels. That's not to say the WLAN won't meet/exceed the clients expectations, especially when well designed, but they will always have to operate in the unregulated airspace.

So far we have only done some low level predictive analysis for this client using our Ekahau ESS Pro and Air Magnet Survey applications as the vendors have also suggested that full site design surveys are not required.....no RF spectrum analysis has been conducted on site at all.

Interesting times....

Andrew

There is no such thing as a guarantee of "complete elimination of RFI". If they manage to acheive it, I suggest they contact the following:

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/prize_awarder/committee.html

More likely, they will have to contact the following instead:

http://disneyland.disney.go.com/disneyland/disney-princess-fantasy-faire/

There are a number of ways of mitigating the effects of interference, but there is no method of completely eliminating those effects when the interference is strong enough.

I have found the following training video highly useful prior to communicating with sales people. Many ?tells? can be picked up when you speak to them:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX2tMmVVTiw

My unbounded respect of lawyers and certain sales people increases with every post like this that I hear??

Dave