Do you need a better wifi signal in your office? Have you considered a wifi extender, a wifi booster, or maybe even replacing your wifi router? Or maybe you’re looking for better wifi speeds and you’ve heard about mesh wifi or wifi 6.
Unfortunately, there isn’t a single answer to wifi problems. There are too many variables involved. The best answer is to get an experienced IT professional to perform a wifi test (referred to as a wifi survey). A good wifi survey will check signal strength, stability and speeds from numerous points around your office, then put into a location heatmap. That data is then used to make a recommendation on how to correct the wifi problems.
Wifi Problems (Real Case Study)
For most businesses, hard wired network connections are much better than wifi. Wifi connections are much more complicated with more physics involved, meaning more things can go wrong. However, there are many instances when wifi is necessary. That was the case for a local medical office recently who used iPads to document patient information.
The problem was that their medical records program required a constant network connection to their server, which was very sensitive. They came to us because they consistently had problems with their iPads.
The first step on the project was to gather data about the current conditions. We performed a site evaluation along with a wifi test (referred to as a wifi survey). For the Wifi survey, we took a floorplan of the office and plotted out 21 points around the office to take our measurements (see the floorplan image). From each point, we checked the wifi signal strength, packet loss, and packet response time to the server. Simultaneously, we checked for packet loss and response times from ethernet devices (the control group) to ensure there was no network congestion at the time of our test. From the results, we identified response times over 300ms along with a 2% packet loss which would be more than sufficient to cause problems with the iPads.
After troubleshooting the existing wifi router, we determined it was insufficient for current use and recommended a new wireless access point be installed in a central location, mounted to the ceiling. Once the new access point was installed, we repeated the survey and found significant improvement. Most notably was the maximum response time of 8ms (a 3,750% improvement) with 0 packet loss.
Immediately the project was complete, the business reported their iPads were operating perfectly and had never been smoother.
