For anyone that has gone wireless, can you share pros and cons? We have a new office being built and I was planning on wiring the Cisco Access Points and the servers to the storage. I was wanting to use wireless for all of the end user's devices. However, I am getting pushback from the other executives.

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Even in open working environment where you never know which seat you will have each day, we still wired the desks. We put in a lot more wireless so someone can easily stop by with their laptop and collaborate and be online, but we store 90% of our files on TEAMS and Servers, so a lot of traffic over the network and not back and forth to local hard drive on PC. If your office is a single story, and spread out, low density of equipment it's workable. However when I host video calls I prefer to have wired access for more reliable connection and lower latency.

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We went wireless in one of our facilities about 6 years back and we did not have very good experience with it. We took the plunge without thinking through what it takes to run an all wireless office and as a result, had ton of issues. For example: Technology also was not there to support the increased demand (APs/Channels/RF etc.), APs were not 100% reliable across rooms (seating layout and building had a lot to do with how stable/fast your wifi connection was and how good your experience was with meetings/calls/normal work etc.). Workload also matters.. Folks who are transferring large files (think creative teams, AV guys, users downloading next OS update or large patches etc.) would see longer download times etc. on wireless vs. wired. These are just some of the issues that contributed to us not having good experience with all wireless world. Regular RF surveys, AP adjustments, monitoring of APs, capacity planning, usage of edge content caching, and planning large projects like OS upgrades etc in phases etc. are just some of the items that would help alleviate issues and make the overall experience better. I would still recommend running wires to key locations (as a fall back) as doing so afterwards is costly, resource / effort intensive, and takes longer to do.

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For people to be able to move around and take their computers with them, like to meetings, wireless is a must. When we moved into our new office over ten years ago, we had cabling to each desk and meeting room, because we had Cisco phones which only operated wired. We added enough density with the Cisco Access Points to start and then switched to Meraki Access Points that we never had many problems with the wireless.

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We are going wireless in a new building this September (can provide update at that time). So far all the tests are good and we do not anticipate any issues. I have run tests with various teams by moving them to wifi for a few weeks and have had no issues so far. In my case, I have brand new network equipment with QoS setup and zero issues so far.

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With proper system design and installation, there shouldn’t be problems. For office environments, it is suggested 1 Wifi AP per 10-15 square meters.

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