Oxbow Carbon's Wi-Fi Office Local Area Network

When Oxbow Carbon and Mineral's management team decided to move their Western operations to a new office building, they were looking for ways to reduce costs and promote a better work environment for their employees.

The new office space required offices and a network design to connect more than 50 workers.  Oxbow also had several conference rooms and guest offices that needed to be networked.  Since the building wasn't finished, a network had not been installed.  Oxbow's network team had the option of building a wired network and pulling cables to over 50 offices, guest offices and conference rooms or seeking an alternative networking solution.

Since a large number of their employees were sales people that traveled, the management team wanted their network team to build a flexible network that would allow people to logon from a variety of places in the building.  Upper executives also had been adamant about requesting network connectivity in the conference rooms so that they could maintain contact with the outside world during lengthy meetings and presentations.

Oxbow's team decided that building a 802.11b, standards-based Wi-Fi local area network made sense from an ease-of-use and an ease-of-deployment standpoint, and had a very cost-effective price tag for actual deployment.  And, the wireless network solution would allow access by both fixed Personal Computers (PCs) and laptops that would come and go from the network's location.

The wireless team recommended a Linksys WAP 11 access point to serve the entire office.  In order to provide coverage of the 5,000 square foot office building, the WAP 11 access point was slightly modified by connecting two external 6 dBi omni directional antennas through the unit's TNC connectors. The result was a wireless network that remained within industry guidelines and provided the signal strength needed to penetrate office and conference room walls. 

PCs were outfitted with Linksys USB-port wireless network adapters, which meant network technicians didn't even have to open the PC to install network cards.  Mobile laptops were configured with standard LinkSys PCMCIA 802.11b adapters.

Security, which was a major concern, was NOT implemented using Wireless Encryption Protocol (WEP). WEP was considered to be weak and was not suitable for Oxbow's needs.  Instead encryption was handled through the network's operating system using IP Security Protocol (IPSEC), which ensured strong encryption and utilized pre-shared security keys.

The result was a cost of implementation that was much lower than what category 5 wiring would have been, and at the same time allowed mobile workers the freedom of not being tethered to wired network. The wireless flexibility also satisified upper management's desire to bring their laptops into meetings, move about offices with ease, as well as give customer demonstrations without the burden of cables.

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