Wireless and Server 2003 Question

[Kodiak]

Two questions:

Is wireless as fast as hard wire?

I say wireless isn't as fast as wired.

Does server 2003 have some sort of control features over all programs installed that if two people make changes to doc's or whatever programs you use on the server it makes both changes or does the software do this itself and server has nothing to do with it? If you can understand what I'm saying.

I'm saying that the server has nothing to do with software you install on it other than making it available to multiple users and the software itself has to be designed to let 2 people work on it at once and both changes be made at the same time.

[Matridom]

wireless speed, it's all relative.


Look at it this way.
SATA speed is rated at 3 gig/sec.
the average HDD on SATA will output at 70 Mb/s
PCI bus can only handle 127 megs/sec across the entire PCI bus.

so in theory, you could saturate a 54 meg wifi connection, but it's not likely, you have have to be dumping hard from the system and have nothing else going on (using up that PCI bus)

wireless N - Not much chance of saturating that.


To answer your other question. The OS will lock the file to the first person that opens it and will only save changes done by that person. The second person trying to open that file will get a message telling him who has the file open and if he wants to open it in read only mode.

[NooNoo]

Wired at what speed?
Wireless at what speed?
If I am to resolve an argument, I must know the parameters!

Lesseeeee wired 1mbs is slower than wireless 10mbs, wired 10mbs is the same as wireless 10mbs... then wired 100mbs or 1000mbs and wireless 54 mbs and 108 mbs then we get into the latest wireless standards.....see what I mean?

As for your server question... a file can be changed or updated depending on the controlling software. Each user can change the file, but I don't know of any software that makes changes from two different users at the very same time. Changes happen one after the other.

Versioning software will evaluate a change based on multiple users, but will ask for a human decision as to which change should take precedence if two changes to the same point in a file are requested at the same time.

[Kodiak]

Lets just say everything is equal in computer speeds for the wired/wireless.

On the server question he was thinking that this is what the server software was meant to do. It's meant to do a lot of things but not sure that is one of them.

[NooNoo]

Lets just say everything is equal in computer speeds for the wired/wireless.

Not possible... however IF we used 10mbs half duplex wired and wireless as an example, there would be less throughput on a wireless connection if WEP or WPA is used. There is an overhead created by encryption that will slow down the amount of data arriving or leaving. How much it slows down depends on the the processing power at each end.

On the server question he was thinking that this is what the server software was meant to do. It's meant to do a lot of things but not sure that is one of them.

It is one of them, otherwise there would be chaos!! file locking
From a user's point of view, the file server does accept updates to a file from different people - but in reality each change is handled one at a time. The speed at which the changes happen can look simultaneous to users.

[slgrieb]

Kodiak, wired networking remains faster and more reliable than wireless. Some software such as MS Word will track user revisions and changes for a collaborative environment, but this isn't a function of the server software.

[Kodiak]

Kodiak, wired networking remains faster and more reliable than wireless. Some software such as MS Word will track user revisions and changes for a collaborative environment, but this isn't a function of the server software.

Thats my thought about the wireless also.

As for the server it doesn't make any since at all that 2 people could be writing in a word doc and the changes occur in both doc's. That would be very hard to do if it was a book two people are writing and making changes at the same time. What a mess that would be. I have a Dell 2600 Poweredge I picked up for $400 (great buy and in excellent shape) with server 2003 on it and I know a little about server 2003 and 2000 but I don't pretend to know everything and to have a discussion like this is great. I thank you all for your input as always as I grow through this business. At 52 there's not much time left to grow but its fun never the less.

[NooNoo]

As for the server it doesn't make any since at all that 2 people could be writing in a word doc and the changes occur in both doc's. That would be very hard to do if it was a book two people are writing and making changes at the same time.

Hard to do, but not impossible. Office can hold a number of versions so that changes can be rolled back and changes sent to the file on the server are changes only... older versions sent the entire file to be overwritten each time, the new word docs have their files "patched" with just the changes thus saving huge amount of bandwidth.