Wireless > Ethernet? I don't think so...

[bobber205]

The guys above us at my school are having us put all of our ethernet desktops over to wireless.

The wireless network over the last year or so hasnt' been reliable at all (I once calculated a 93% uptime or so). But we've been promised it will be.

I was told the reason is because "manageable" ethernet switches are much more expensive than the same thing for wireless networks.
Is this true?

Also, in Windows: to log into the secure wireless network, you need to be onto the domain. But you can't connect to that network unless you're on the domain. So in the login screen, you have no network connection b/c the system requires your username and password combo to connect.

So it's a catch-22. Is there even a way to have windows connect a wireless device while on the login screen?

Thanks for the help!

 

[yg17]

No, it is a catch 22. I worked in the IT department for my college and we had this problem all the time with the staff laptops. They had to be plugged into ethernet for a user's first login. After that, once Windows has a copy of the local profile, you can login with no network connection and then connect to wireless once logged in.

 

[bobber205]

Oh wow. Because each time the computers are shut down that we delete all the profiles because of HDD space.


I sure hope they've thought of this.

 

[0098386]

Oh nono. Wireless is more of a make-do technology. We even bought a Draft-N router to get the speed up somewhat, and whilst it does bring the connection speed faster it still suffers from occasional dropouts (all our routers have).
I'd swap my computers over to a wired network in a heart beat if we could tidily upgrade the house to do so.

 

[bobber205]

Sad thing is now all of our 60+ machines are wireless. So when the wireless is down, the whole place is down.