Whatever your business, you chose to install a Wi-Fi network to benefit from it. In most cases, if you didn't offer your customers Wi-Fi, you knew you risked losing customers to a business that did. If you've been providing a wireless LAN for your employees to access, you've long since realized the efficiencies gained from mobility.

Many of our first Wi-Fi networks used 802.11b technology, with a data rate of 11 Mbps - and when 802.11g hit the market at 54 Mbps, upgrading was a no-brainer. Some of us waited until the price came down, but we knew we'd have to provide the increased speed to our customers and employees sooner or later, weighing the cost of upgrading against what we risked losing in terms of revenues and productivity.

The newest Wi-Fi technology 802.11n was released in October 2009, offering the fastest maximum speed and best signal range. When preliminary versions of 802.11n products began to ship over a year ago, we had a choice between high-end, enterprise priced or off-the-shelf home office models. The enterprise products were too expensive and the home office models couldn't provide the network performance needed.

This is still the case today, however, there is a vendor who recently introduced 802.11n-capable APs aimed at small and medium sized companies. Ruckus Wireless offer the lowest price-over-performance ratio when compared with similar products from other vendors, such as Cisco. You can see results of an independent test as reported by Craig Mathias of Network World here.

Now that more and more wireless devices are hitting the market, G networks will no longer be able to keep up, become too difficult to manage and too expensive to expand. Voice, video-on-demand, and emerging smart phone applications - just to name a few - are beginning to impact network performance.

Is 802.11g still supporting your wireless network traffic sufficiently? Are you waiting for 802.11n prices to drop before you consider an upgrade?

Let us know what you think.