Critical Laws of Using Technology to Grow Your Business

Four Reasons to Choose Structured Cabling Over a Wireless LAN

16 July 2018

Christina Watkins

Any home or office with a local area network, or LAN, can run with a combination of Wi-Fi and structured cabling. However, relying on wireless alone can be a mistake. Although Wi-Fi is undoubtedly convenient for all sorts of devices these days, it has limitations. Why should you choose data cabling for a physical connection between devices, rather than only having wireless data communications in your building?

Range

One of the most important things about data cables is that they can offer a great deal of connectivity, even if you want to plug your device in a long distance away from other ones. For example, a laptop computer can be connected to a LAN via a Cat-5 or Cat-6 data cable even if it is up to 100 metres away from the server it is communicating with. This is more than enough for most sizes of building. In fact, even longer distances can be achieved if you have fibre optic cables installed. Either way, the range you can expect for your network will far exceed that of Wi-Fi.

No Dead Spots

Everyone know that part of the office or home where Wi-Fi reception is not so good or where it doesn't work at all. Wireless data communications can suffer if there is something in the way, such as a wall, a window or a pillar. If you reconfigure your rooms, then a dead Wi-Fi spot can appear as if from nowhere because a new blockage has been created. This is not the case with structured cabling, however.

Speed

The fact is that data communications run faster over an Ethernet connection. By plugging a computer into a structured cabling outlet, you can achieve much faster rates of data transfer than you would with a mere Wi-Fi signal. For instance, Cat-5e data cables were developed in order to provide speeds of 1,000 megabytes per second. Wireless LANs don't even approach superfast speeds like that!

Fewer Clashes

All LANs send and receive many packets of data every second that they are in use. Not all of the information that is broadcast over a LAN is intended for every device using it, which means that some clashes will inevitably occur from time to time. With a structured cabling network, fewer of these clashes will occur, meaning the entire system is more resilient and less prone to multiple errors which can lead to devices crashing.  

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