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The main advantage of wireless networking is the obvious one of avoiding the need to thread cables around the house or office. This is a huge advantage for a home system where unsightly cables are deemed to be unacceptable, or where adding cables is simply not allowed for some reason.

The ranges quoted for wi-fi system have to be taken with the proverbial “pinch of salt”. The quoted ranges might be achieved in practice, but typical operating ranges seem to be somewhat less than the specifications would suggest. Operation is still possible with low signal strengths, but not at anything like the full quoted transfer rate.

Inefficiencies in the system mean that data can not be transferred at the quoted rates. In practice it is likely that the actual rate will be a little under half the quoted figure. Note also that the rates are in bits per second, not bytes per second. Divide speed figures by eight in order to obtain a transfer rate in the bytes per second.There us only one standard for wi-fi equipment, which is the IEEE 802.11 standard. However, matters are complicated by having three different versions of it (802.11a, 802.11b, and 802.11g).While the 802.11a equipment has potential advantages, it relatively expensive, difficult to obtain, and is incompatible with the other two.

It is 802.11b and 802.11g equipment that are used in most home and small office wi-fi systems. The faster 802.11g equipment is compatible with the 802.11b variety, but when a link uses the two types of equipment it obviously operates at the slower rate.

Bear in mind that it might be easy to set up a wireless network by simply accepting the defaults, but doing so will almost certainly leave the system wide open to hackers. Modern wi-fi equipment has built-in security measures, and it is import to protect your system by ensuring that these are properly set up.

The short operating range helps to avoid problems with interference due to there being too many wi-fi users in the vicinity, but it is still a potential problem in heavily built-up areas. The problem is worse with 802.11b and 802.11g equipment which has fewer non-overlapping channels, and shares the 2.4GHz band with other types of equipment.

A wi-fi equipped laptop or notebook PC can be used to access wireless hotspots at cafes, libraries, computer shops, etc. With a few exceptions, use of wireless hotspots is not free though. The cost of access can be quite high, but the same is true of the alternatives. The download speed when using hotspots is usually quite, and is typical via a 512k or 1024k ADSL Internet connection.

Many wi-fi equipment manufacturers now have their devices approved by the Wi-fi Alliance, but some do not bother. It is obviously reassuring to have approved equipment in your wireless network, but gadgets from any of the large manufacturers should have full compatibility with the relevant standards. As always, cheap generic equipment is a bit more risky and often lacks worthwhile customer support.

Bluetooth is not used for true networking, and is not really an alternative to 802.11 wi-fi equipment. It can be used for something like wireless printer sharing, but in most cases it is only used to provide a link between two devices such as a notebook PC and a mobile phone. It has a relatively low maximum data transfer rate of 1Mbits per second, but this is adequate for many tasks.