Hello. Is there anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me. Is there anyone home?

Network World, via Slashdot, has a story by John Cox talking about how a number of companies with Wireless LANs are finding that as Wi-Fi became more prevalent, they don’t actually use wired networking equipment quite as much; in fact, the article says that in these companies, “50% to 90% or more of Ethernet ports now go unused”

So the question is put to the reader: is it time to disconnect those Ethernet wires from our veins and go to Wi-Fi rehab?

Probably not.  Even under the best conditions, wireless links typically lose more packets than wired links, and “best conditions” under WiFi usually aren’t real-world conditions.  Intereference from phones, radios, and pesky little obstacles like walls can degrade or corrupt signals, causing dropped packets, increasing retransmissions, increasing latency.  And there’s also the delay increased with the various wireless encryption schemes.  (Of course, you could just not encrypt your over-the-air traffic… but I don’t think that story will have a happy ending.)

There are other concerns as well, with reliability and security, but performance is also an issue.  As far as browsing the Web goes, WiFi is fine, and the advantages and economies of scale may mean some cutting back and replacing wires with waves.  But choosing between wired and wireless Ethernet should depend on the application’s needs.  If you need 24/7 reliability, you’re looking at wired connections. 

Most of the examples in the article deal with colleges rolling out networks for student dorms, and students, after all, prize mobility and are more likely to have laptops than the desktop-based solutions of most corporate users.  Even so, I think that the physics labs will want a port or two around, you know, just in case CERN decides to send all the data they get from the Higgs-Boson to research universities around the world.

"The driver always comes down to economics, in my experience," St. Bonaventure's Kellogg says. "That's almost always the reason something either gets axed or pushed through. If you can't show the benefit for the extra cost, it just isn't going to happen."

At any rate, whether going with wired or wireless connections, it’s important to monitor the impact of any changes you make to the network and to baseline performance before you make the change.  Before figuring out how much it would cost to install new wireless switches, it pays to check out the performance of the current network.