When considering installing a wireless network, keep in mind that AccountEdge and/or AccountEdge Network Edition will run at slower speeds when compared to a wired network. A wireless Airport network can only run at a theoretical maximum speed of 54Mbps with an Airport Extreme Base Station (11Mbps with the original Airport). This is half the speed of the recommended 100BaseT wired network, which will run at 100Mbps and 20 times slower than gigabit network cards which now are sold with newer Macs. Although newer Airport Base Stations and other wirelss routers have the ability to run 802.11n with a much faster theoretical top speed, it is nearly impossible to obtain those speeds on a network with mixed hardware and requires a perfect environment (keep in mind walls and other interference running on the same frequency will effect speed).
For more information on the latest Airport Extreme at 802.11n wireless networking, you can read this article by MacInTouch.
http://www.macintouch.com/reviews/airportn/
If you plan to run AccountEdge or AccountEdge Network Edition over a wireless network, we recommend that you use a Airport Extreme Base Station with Extreme Airport network cards and have a professional from the Apple Consultant Network assist you with optimizing your network.
Also be sure to be in range of the wireless network with a solid connection. Losing your connection while recording transactions in AccountEdge or AccountEdge Network Edition can cause a slow down in performance, possible loss and/or corruption of data and termination of the application.
One other note on using a wireless network in your business. Be sure to protect your network with the tools made available to you with the Airport and the Airport Admin Utility. Consider the following options:
- Password protect the entire wireless network. Please speak to your IT professional regarding wireless security.
- Create a closed network where a user must know the name of the network in order to connect.
- Restrict access to your wireless network by setting up a list of allowed Airport ID's in the Access tab of your Airport Admin Utility. This will allow onto your wireless network only those specific Airport ID numbers that you have set up.
- Don't use the Enable SNMP Access option on your Base Station. This will prevent remote users from administering your wireless network.