Wi-Fi rising

Four years from now, Wi-Fi will be bigger than the entire networking market was last year. According to Wi-Fi Alliance research conducted by Tonse telecom, by 2011-2012, the market for Wi-Fi networking gear and services in India will top $890 million, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 36% from 2008. Considering that the Indian networking market was valued to be around $850 million in 2007 that’s an incredible growth story, propelling which are two factors:

• Sales of notebooks are going through the roof: notebooks sales are expected to exceed 1.35 million units during the April to September 2008 period as per MAIT and 610,000 laptops shipped in Q1 of the current fiscal accounting for close to a third of the PC mart.
• Wi-Fi is getting better: From the slow 802.11b to the decent performance of 802.11g and now 802.11n with its Fast Ethernet comparable performance, it has been a case of up, up and away in terms of sheer performance. (Theoretically, 802.11n is faster than Fast Ethernet but the trick with Wi-Fi is that what you get is not always what is on the box. Obstacles and distance as well as competing devices can reduce available bandwidth).

The Wi-Fi management story is getting better all the time with thin access points and controllers offering manageability that approaches that of wired networks in its simplicity and scalability. Small companies can get by with fat access points but even moderately complex set-ups will do better with thin points and controllers.

Security is a problem that you can address with a little planning and foresight. There’s no reason not to deploy Wi-Fi today if your company has even half a dozen laptop users. In a large company with hundreds or thousands of notebook users, it’s a necessity.

That’s not to say that wired networks will wither away. Just as desktop PCs continue to have a value proposition in industries like ITES where workers are deskbound and shifts are common, wired networks will continue to be faster (Gigabit Ethernet trumps 802.11n hands down) and more secure. However, for many applications, Wi-Fi’s throughput will be good enough and the convenience factor will swing things in its favor.

Globally 88 million 802.11n access points should ship in 2013 as per ABI Research. The only thing holding ‘n’ back and favoring ‘g’ right now is the paucity of ‘n’ ready laptops out there. That’ll change in the next couple of years.

I recommend going with ‘n’ for fresh deployments as its future proof and there’s no real point in using ‘g’ today unless you’re on a tight budget or in a small set-up where you’re simply sharing a DSL connection in which case ‘g’ should be plenty.

prashant.rao@expressindia.com