Wireless for retail store (point-of-sale <-> office)

Hi, I am considering setting up a wireless LAN for our small retail store. There would be one computer in the office (Level 1), and one at the point of sale (Ground Level). I would quite likely be using a PDA as well for easy stock-taking, and maybe connecting a laptop in the office on occasion. There is actually a lower ground floor as well (with stock in it), so the network would need to cover three floors in total, with each floor about 30-35 metres square (off the top of my head).

I have never set up a wireless LAN before, and was infact just getting used to wired LANs when I realised that, if there is an alternative to getting yards of cables and drilling holes for them, we should consider it. I would just appreciate if someone could point me in the right direction, and alert me of potential problems. Would the area I mentioned above be just outside the bluetooth
range? If so, would I just add an access point? Should I use 802.11a or 802.11g cards?

A number of people have advised me against using wireless networks for our purpose (saying that they wouldn't be reliable enough), but I'm hoping you can assure me that their reliability is rock solid - even when installed by a newbie like me.

P.S. The POS and office computers will be running Linux, so everything will have to be Linux compatible. Our distribution comes with drivers for a number of wireless devices installed by
default, but I presume there are devices that run on Windows/Mac but not on Linux.

Yes. Bluetooth is not really designed for this at all. It has a very small range (of just a few metres) and is designed more for transferring small amounts of data (between your computer and PDA, for example).



If you've already got a router which connects to the Internet, you could simply buy a wireless access point, connect it to the router and your network would now support wireless. If you don't already have a router then you could buy a combined wireless router, which would be able to cope with wireless (and probably wired clients) and share out the Internet.

Both 802.11a and 802.11g networks support the speed of 54Mbps, although the actual data transfer will be much less than this. 802.11g works in the 2.4 GHz band. This is the same as is used for the slower 802.11b networks and other wireless devices (such as telephones). This means that in some places, the 2.4 GHz band is quite congested, which could create problems of interference. It all really depends on whether you have any other wireless networks operating close by.

By contrast, the 802.11a wireless networks work in the 5 GHz frequency band with 12 non-overlapping channels (802.11g only has 3). Since the 5 GHz band is much less congested, you are less likely to receive interference. However, because the frequency is higher, the range of the wireless network is shorter and can more easily be obstructed. 802.11g signals can travel further from the access point.



I'd always prefer to use a wired network wherever possible. They are much faster and I would think that they are more reliable. You won't suffer with interference and the connection should always work. While the wireless network should work fine once you've set it up, there can still be problems later down the line. You may find that the frequency band becomes more congested in your area as more people use the technology, or if you're using your PDA to move around the store, you may find that some areas get worse reception than others.



If this is the case, just make sure that when you buy the wireless network cards to check on the manufactures website, to make sure that they supply Linux drivers.

Thanks very much for your response

No problem