Wireless Wars

I don't think I have ever seen networking methodologies be so controversial as they are in wireless.
From a common sense point of view the use of non standard vs standards based 802.11 a/b/g/n make even less sense and the only reality that can be gleaned from this is the reality of the effectiveness of good marketing and network engineer ego.
If you couple this with the obvious lack of generalized understanding of what any of the acronyms really mean to device and end user performance you can very easily see how the FUD and confusion around this are allowed to persist and propagate. Bottom line is that you should NEVER sacrifice consistency for speed in production mission critical networks. The only excuse for this is lack of mission critical necessity, after all, if it is not important then use what you want.
But if it is important then it is important to make sure that someone besides the “wireless guy” make the call, also, that it be justified and in keeping with best practices.
I have yet to see anyone agree to use a beta patch on a production server, except under dire circumstance, most often these types of changes are coupled with a high degree of change control and a fair amount of approval.
Yet everyone seems very willing to be far more cavalier with wireless network design and authentication architecture, both of which are far more onerous and insidiously difficult to troubleshoot, diagnose and cause incredible end user dissatisfaction with the WHOLE network.
I would guess that this costs at least a billion dollars a year in lost productivity, wasted time and is a real talent sink because “if the wireless ain't working then I ain't working on anything else... “

KD5YDN