Best Way To Go

I would think both, wired and wireless.
I feel both complements each other.
If you have fat client, then wired might be better, depending on the location of the base station, the response may be slow.
if the campus is big, then wireless should beconsidered. wireless should also give staff the flexibility. Wireless is still evolving, so in conclusion, have both if your funds permits, but if your organisation and campus is relatively small to medium, wireless may also be easier to deploy but the start up cost may be huge.

One clue is "We are recently changing offices". Is that going to happen again? Do you own or lease? If you think you will be there 2+ years, then Cat5E is definitely the way to go.

I recently did a public library, which is definitely Not moving.We did Cat5E with dark fiber going everywhere. The expense in the fiber is not the cable, but the terminations. Personally, I think Gigabit ethernet is going to be dirt cheap and they'll never use the fiber.

I brought up that example as one extreme, someone who ain't never gonna move.

You have to weigh the stability and ownership of your premises. Wireless is shared 11 at best. Cat5E is 100 easily switched. Wireless bought now will in all probability be obsolete in two years.

Hope that helps,

Bruce

Maybe I'm overly paranoid, but my opinion is that wireless has enough risks (security? adverse health effects? reliability through interference? competing standards? expense? obsolescence?) that it should only be used when Cat5 or fiber is not practical for a particular application.

I'm a big fan of traditional Cat5 structured cabling (with fiber between the closets if indicated by distance and bandwidth). If properly designed, MAC (move, add, change) orders can be easily managed by swapping patch cables.

paul

Thought I'd ring in here and recommend pmwright's response as being almost word for word what I would have provided.

I will add that wireless possibly has its place. In an environment using hand held terminals: obviously it's the correct choice. In this case, it can complement the wired world (per "quahst"). For a temporary (or short-term) setup (as bruce suggests) wireless is also a potential candidate.

You haven't really stated the problem. Is the "we" that changed offices you and a partner or 1000 employees?

If you anticipate a long-term requirement be sure to install something you can reuse. Fiber will probably never go away even if the data it carries changes speed and I would use it to connect data closets. Install extra fibers now and leave them unterminated until you need them. Install the best cable you can afford. Quality doesn't go out of style. I would only consider wirelessfor low data-rate applications where it is unfeasable to run wire. I would consider wireless building-to-building links if there wasn't already a conduit.

The "best" solution really depends on the size of your organization, type of construction and volume of data (among dozens of other considerations).

Why don't you provide some more information and start a discussion?

Wireless is expensive, slow and has many limitations and security risks. Trust me on this wireless is not secure, I don't care what 3Com or any other supposed "network security guru" tells you. How do I? A buddy of mine (an electrical engineer by trade) already intercepted data from a wireless network and he did a demo and showed me to prove it.

Then don't forget wireless is expensive, VERY expensive if you ask me - especially since for less money you can go 10 times faster as well.

The other posters make two good points though.

How large is your company? How long are you planning/foreseeing you staying in one location.

The only good thing about wireless were it may serve a decent purpose is for small, extremely temporary networks (or a recreational network , like setting up your computers at home so your kids and play games head to head with each other - but even then, why spend so much money when Cat5 is cheaper?).

I say go Cat 5e, get yourself on a switched network and use the standard Pyramid methodology.

Switches - top level (100 megabit)
Hubs - second level (100 megabit)
Servers - third (100 megabit full duplex)
Clients - bottom (10 megabit, half duplex)

This is a very general, layman's setup - most advantageous to smaller operations. Just remember you purposefully set the cliets NICs to 10 megabit half duplex - if you use it at 100 megabit (which most people seem to overlook this detail) you are flatlining your design - thus losing efficiency. (yes what I'm saying is having 100 megabit full duplex clients is SLOWER than 10 megabit half duplex using this model).