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The 10 Deadly Sins of Wireless: Page 7 of 10

If you design a wireless LAN based on its data rate rather than its real-world throughput, you're likely to experience serious network congestion and multiple calls to the helpdesk.

8. Over- or underestimating bandwidth requirements

Experienced designers of Ethernet networks long ago learned that the most effective way of dealing with the threat of network congestion is to simply throw bandwidth at the problem.

Think you need 10 Mbps? Install a 100-Mbps LAN. Think you need 100 Mbps? Install Gigabit Ethernet. This strategy has sometimes led to overengineered networks that have average utilizations of 1 percent or less, but it may be the most rational approach when uncertainty about bandwidth needs exist.

For WLANs, you can usually service many more users than you think with a single 802.11b access point, particularly if the most common applications are e-mail and Web access. However, with the growing popularity of high-speed WLAN standards like 802.11a, the development of more sophisticated WLAN infrastructure products and decreasing prices, it's now becoming possible to throw bandwidth at WLANs, too. All you have to do is estimate your aggregate bandwidth requirement, double it and then double it again.