Wireless networks can transform your business into a powerhouse by providing services to customers and adding more flexibility to your business than any other piece of hardware.
If you will, think about your network—just the hardware, not the IT staff or software. What would you consider the most underutilized pieces of gear on your network? Of course the answers vary, but for most folks their most underutilized hardware is something they overlook: wireless. Across the entire networking world, wireless networks get the least respect. They are expected to do little more than connect laptops, maybe buildings on a rare occasion. But that humble wireless network can transform your business into a 21st-century powerhouse in providing services to your customers, and it can add more flexibility to your business than any other piece of hardware on the market today.
Take a look at five innovations that wireless can drive. For most situations, all five of these solutions can work using your existing commercial-grade wireless access points.
- Location Services. Losing equipment can be a huge cost, whether it's one of your $2000 projectors or intellectual property worth millions. Tracking assets no longer calls for long inventory processes or audits. Placing RFID tags on your assets can allow you to track them to a very detailed level. Tagging applications could include people, such as staff or even medical patients. Some location-based solutions use RF fingerprinting for accurate location tracking. RF fingerprinting is more comprehensive than other location methodologies because it builds a grid map of your floor plan that includes not just the wireless access points, but also the physical features that distort wireless signals. Real- world data regarding physical objects in a given area is gathered by the network of access points and compared to the grid to determine a device's location to within a few meters. For finer accuracy, actual measurements and calibration can be performed with built-in RF calibration tools. For this reason, RF fingerprinting can deliver accurate resolution for any business application.
- Push-to-Talk Phones. Used like handheld instant message devices, push-to-talk devices are excellent for real-time business communications. The capital outlay for push-to-talk radios (LMR) is just too much for many businesses, but you can get the same push-to- talk capability on your wireless network. A mobile Wi-Fi telephone requires continuous high-quality connections as a user moves through the coverage area—something that quality of service (QoS) was made for. Using a wireless LAN for voice is not complex, though a few aspects are important for enterprise applications to maintain voice quality, reliability, and functionality like that in a wired telephone environment. The key issues in deploying Wi-Fi telephony are coverage, capacity, QoS, telephone switch integration, and wireless security, but the results can be well worth the time in both usage and cost savings.
- Secure Guest Services. A lot of folks design their wireless LANs with the idea of providing guest services to their customers. This is a great idea at heart, but for many businesses it also gives Internet access to hackers just as surely as if they had put an unsecure Ethernet jack out in the parking lot. Designing your wireless LAN to determine who is an authorized guest and who is a rogue guest is very important. Most security auditors recommend a secured guest approach that requires users to check in with a receptionist to receive a secure password. This gives you accountability by matching the password and access times to a device's MAC address.
- Outdoor Wireless. Certainly, wireless can provide access to users indoors and outdoors. You can even cut WAN costs by bridging buildings with wireless. How about bringing in more businesses? Some cities use outdoor wireless mesh technology to provide seamless access from the city airport right to the city center. With systems like that, historic buildings can have access on all floors without retrofits, and public safety vehicles can stay connected from the garage to their destination. Service vehicles can even download their data as they are pulling into the lot. This eliminates paperwork downtime and manual entry into a database somewhere by another pair of hands.
- RFID Tags. Get to know RFID tags, because they can support much more than location services. There are passive tags and active tags. Passive tags are very low cost—a few cents each. Active tags are always connected and cost a little more. RFID can completely change our business model for the better. For example, with RFID you can track inventory from every step in the manufacturing process and greatly streamline supply chain management. You can track children at daycare centers or hospitals using a simple sticker or bracelet. You can follow marathon runners by the RFID tags embedded in their shoelaces. RFID tags can be placed on assets or entered into a system, then coordinated with security cameras so that when a tag enters or leaves a specific area the cameras track it automatically. Applications like these can be done over your existing wireless LAN.
Wireless is not like switches and routers, which tend to have more rigid rules. The freedom from cabling gives you the ability to add services to almost anywhere, and easily. If you can dream it, most likely you can do it with wireless networking.
Questions or comments? Please contact the author: Jimmy Ray Purser, Network Solutions Expert, Cisco Systems. Email: jipurser@cisco.com
