Characteristics of wireless LANs

Advantages

• very flexible within the reception area 
• Ad-hoc networks without previous planning possible 
• (almost) no wiring difficulties (e.g. historic buildings, firewalls)
• more robust against disasters like, e.g., earthquakes, fire - or users pulling a plug...

Disadvantages

• typically very low bandwidth compared to wired networks (1-10 Mbit/s)
• many proprietary solutions, especially for higher bit-rates, standards take their time (e.g. IEEE 802.11)
• products have to follow many national restrictions if working wireless, it takes a vary long time to establish global solutions like, e.g., IMT-2000