I agree strongly with Dave Molta on this one. At the University of Utah we have been deploying 802.11a right along side 802.11b/g. Currently, our 802.11a usage is less than 1%. I believe that this is mostly due to the fact that you can purchase a b/g wireless card from computer stores for as little as $3 on sale. Along with a lack of education on the advantages of the 5 GHz band. However, when you purchase a new notebook that is wireless capable (which just about all notebooks are these days), it is a small cost to upgrade to a card that supports 802.11a.
As for additional support headaches. They should be minimal. 802.11a and 802.11b/g all operate pretty much the same way from a user perspective. The only support problem that I can see is with poorly written drivers (which is a problem with any networking device), and the extremely small chance that a user comes in with an 802.11a only card and complains about the range/coverage. But, I have not seen an 802.11a only card for sale in a long time. On Thu, 2006-02-23 at 16:20 -0500, Dave Molta wrote: > I personally have pretty strong feelings about this issue and feel some > frustation that too many organizations adopt a perspective of choosing > between 11a and 11g. My view is that supporting both 11a and 11g provides > you with more wireless capacity and better performance at only a modest > increase in cost, both on the AP and on the client. > > While there are certainly benefits of engineering your systems for full 11a > coverage by deploying AP's in a dense configuration, even if you choose not > to do that, you get benefits, as long as a reasonable percentage of users > have 11a on their clients. At Syracuse, the University-standard notebook > computer that is made available to students comes with ag support. I think > the incremental cost of 11a from Dell was on the order of $10. Although I no > longer work in central IT, if I did, I would be working closely with the > Purchasing Department to insure that all institutionally-purchased notebooks > included 11a support. I don't think it will be too longer before all > Centrino notebooks come with ag support by default. > > With respect to support, this is largely transparent. In most cases, clients > will attempt to associate first to 11a and roam to 11g if necessary. There > are definitely some latency issues associated with roaming and some client > adapters handle this better than others, but fast roaming is not usually a > huge issue for notebook users, who usually need portability/nobadicity > rather than true mobility, as might be required with wireless VoIP handsets. > > > I'd love to hear arguments from people about why supporting 11a is a bad > thing. It just looks like such a win to me, I don't know why everyone > doesn't do it. Even if you only offload 20% of your client traffic to 11a, > all of those users get better performance and you've also made things better > for the 11b/11g users by offloading that traffic. > > dm > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Daniel R Jones [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2006 3:19 PM > > To: [email protected] > > Subject: [WIRELESS-LAN] 802.11a > > > > CU-Boulder is significantly expanding wireless in student and > > academic areas. The question has been raised about support > > of 802.11a. Even though our new access points support > > 802.11a it may not necessary make sense to deploy the technology. > > > > For those who have adopted 802.11a could you answer the following > > questions: > > > > 1) How much usage of 802.11a do you have vs 802.11b/g? > > > > 2) Do you have coverage of 802.11a in all locations where you > > also have 802.11a or is it provided for specific applications? > > > > 3) Has 802.11a generated additional support calls? > > > > Regards, > > > > Dan Jones > > University of Colorado at Boulder > > > > ********** > > Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE > > Constituent Group discussion list can be found at > > http://www.educause.edu/groups/. > > > > ********** > Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent > Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.
