Air Time: Upgrading to 802.11n: Better Late Than Early

Many experienced IT Professionals have split managerial personalities. At one pole is the technical optimist, who believes business problems can be streamlined, if not solved, by applying the right technology. At the opposite pole, there's a voice crying, "Not so fast." Picking the right time to deploy new technology, when return on investment is maximized and organizational risk is minimized, is never easy.

In most cases, risk aversion is grounded in bad experiences with half-baked technology. Like a baseball player in the middle of a hot streak at the plate, it's easy to be optimistic about technology solutions if all your projects have turned out successfully. But few among us have a perfect batting average. Now it's time for many of you to deal with the latest wireless technology, 802.11n. My advice: the longer you wait, the easier it will be.

Some emerging technologies offer easy ways to pad your managerial batting average. Ethernet provides one example. Yes, there have been costs associated with upgrades to faster versions of 802.3, but the benefits are often easily measured, and the architectural complexity of upgrades is usually modest. You might debate whether it makes sense to spend a little extra money for Gigabit to the desktop, but the truth is, either way, it's a safe decision.

Wireless LANs are different. With the exception of certain vertical market applications, establishing compelling ROI for Wi-Fi in the enterprise is anything but easy, and the risks--financial, security, scalability, availability--are obvious to anyone who takes a hard look. And for as long as wireless data transmission has been technically feasible, it's been clear that wired networking solutions offer better performance and reliability--usually at a lower cost. There's a reason the terms "broadband access" and "guided media" almost always go hand in glove.

Today, it's fashionable to envision a day when Wi-Fi--or perhaps some successor technology--will be the primary mode of enterprise network access. We've all seen people use Wi-Fi even when a superior Ethernet connection is a short cable away--mostly because Wi-Fi is good enough to get the job done. Now that Wi-Fi is getting faster, the prospect of replacing Ethernet, rather than supplementing it, is beginning to look more appealing.Today's enterprise Wi-Fi market has some interesting dynamics, with pure-play wireless vendors like Aruba Networks, Meru Networks and Trapeze Networks enjoying healthy growth, even while Cisco Systems dominates with 65 percent market share. You might think those kind of numbers would be music to the ears of Cisco bean counters. But the flip side of the equation is that growth in enterprise wireless is rather anemic, in part because many IT professionals are waiting for the right time to deploy. A large proportion of growth we've seen over the past two years has been concentrated in the higher education market, where WLANs are deployed not because they deliver more productivity, but more because they are a convenience amenity that institutions need to attract students.

The market becomes even more enigmatic with the emergence of 802.11n, a breakthrough technology if there ever was one. The 802.11b version of Wi-Fi succeeded in part by breaking the 10-Mbps Ethernet barrier. Now, 802.11n promises to deliver bits faster than 100Base-T, though the shared-access reality of Wi-Fi makes these comparisons suspect. But it's never been raw performance that has constrained Wi-Fi in the enterprise, and even today, few organizations that have well-designed Wi-Fi networks are experiencing performance bottlenecks.

The bottom-line advice for IT pros contemplating a short-term upgrade to 802.11n is to get back in touch with your risk-averse self. The final standard is still at least 18 months away, and even though the underlying technology is solid and the Wi-Fi Alliance has decided to certify products based on a draft standard, the business value is marginal at best. And since it will be at least two years before even half the enterprise client devices are 11n-capable, you've got plenty of time to let things settle out a bit.

Dave Molta is a Network Computing senior technology editor. He is also assistant dean for technology at the School of Information Studies and director of the Center for Emerging Network Technologies at Syracuse University. Write to him at [email protected]