Network World's Phil Hochmuth takes a look at the future of wired and wireless solutions in the enterprise, noting that Farpoint Group analyst Craig Mathias says WLAN will likely become the default network connection technology within the next five to ten years.

"I've always said that wireless should be thought of as an adjunct and not as a primary network," Mathias says. "But we've made so much progress in the technology in recent years that there's no reason why we should not be thinking of it as a primary vehicle for access for anybody with a mobile device."

As capacity and security improve, Mathias says, the differences in performance between wired and wireless solutions will become negligible. "We'll see an improvement in throughput, range and reliability," he says. "So at that point, there's probably no good reason not to use wireless."

In the short term, though, wireless security remains a concern: Gartner says 60 percent of IT professionals feel current WLAN security is inadequate.

In fact, at Network World's headquarters where Hochmuth wrote the article, WLANs are currently banned.