Wireless networks / LAN and the WLANs

[munkee]

Hi all,

I know first hand and through researching articles in the past that it is simply unfeasable to run a microsoft access database across a WLAN unless using some form of terminal server/upsizing to a SQL server. The WLAN connections are typically seen when trying to access your office network through some form of VPN.

Now my issue is that the office I work in has recently switched to a wireless setup. I previously discussed this in another thread whilst the new network was being setup and have since realised that running through wireless seems to be exactly as slow as running through a WLAN / VPN.

Is this the correct characteristics I am seeing? I am sure I have read a few times that people are succesfully running databases wirelessly within their office (even if there is a very high risk of corruption through JET due to loss of connections etc.) I am not a networking guru but I assume the 100.mbps speeds you can get through your ethernet cable and a direct connection to the network can simply not be met by a wireless setup and hence this is the delay? Much like trying to access via VPN etc where your connection may only be 3mbps and less

[Stewart Ross]

Access is not a good choice to run across a network of any kind really. It passes a lot of data across the network when tables or queries are accessed.

Wireless networks are even worse for Access performance. Although in theory most wireless networks will operate at about half the speed of a direct network connection these days (around 54MB/s for Wireless G routers as compared to 100MB/s for most Ethernet cards) this is dependent on the strength of the signal, and will drop off as distance from the router/repeater increases or as obstacles mount.

Access is also VERY sensitive to network interruptions, and can experience severe corruption if the connection drops when Access is processing data.

In my opinion the best solution for slower or less reliable network connections is to use a SQL-Server or similar client-server back-end database to store the tables. Access can connect to SQL-Server tables as easily as it can connect to any other. If pass-through queries are used then much of the processing can be kept at the server side, minimising network traffic passed back and forth across the network by the Access application.

-Stewart