27 Dec How To Do A Wireless Site Survey
How To Do A Wireless Site Survey
Our wireless site assessment checklist can assist you in planning for your desired wireless coverage and network capacity, as well as other essential variables like as roaming and service quality. A WiFi survey should ideally be the first thing a firm does before embarking on a full-scale wireless installation. After your WiFi equipment has been purchased and installed, you may conduct a wireless site survey. This is often done if the in-house IT staff or another WiFi service provider is unable to resolve WiFi difficulties.
A wireless site survey is not essential, but it is strongly advised if you want to ensure that your wireless network installation is done correctly the first time.
Checklist for Wireless Site Surveys:
1. Think about cellular coverage as well as capacity
When building a wireless network not long ago, many wireless service providers solely considered coverage. As high-speed internet access becomes more widely available for practically all enterprises, BYOD policies become more common, and an increasing number of individuals own devices capable of utilizing high-speed wireless connections, the need to prepare for capacity becomes much more critical. Having complete coverage across your building does not guarantee that you will be able to support all of the devices that you require as well as their intended purpose.
When it comes to your wireless demands, coverage and capacity may imply very different things.
A network designed for coverage often requires fewer access points than a network designed for capacity. The expenses of licensing and support, as well as the time necessary to deploy the access points, have a financial impact. Any wireless site survey business will tell you that a solid balance between coverage demands, capacity requirements, and budgetary constraints must be discovered.
2. Recognize the wireless network’s intended purpose
The intended usage corresponds to your capacity requirements. A wireless network in a shared workplace is meant for different purposes than a wireless network in a warehouse or an event area. The easiest approach to assess your network’s intended usage is to simply count the number of devices connected to WiFi on a typical day. Once you have that number, look at what sorts of activities those devices are performing on the WiFi.
Almost all of the devices are just linked to the network but are not actively utilizing any data.
A few devices may be surfing the internet, and even fewer are likely to be streaming films or engaging in other high-bandwidth activities.
It is best to do wireless site surveys during business hours, when the place in question is crowded with people and devices actively accessing the network. This real-time technique allows identifying existing weaknesses in the present network and developing a strategy for rectification more easier.
Seeing the network in use during peak hours will assist the engineers doing the study in understanding the strain on the existing network and places where performance may be enhanced.
3. During the wireless site survey, determine cabling pathways and installation needs
The wireless site survey program will provide a comprehensive report outlining how access points will operate in your environment as well as the ideal locations to deploy access points for optimal coverage and capacity.
Although it appears that the majority of the hard work has been completed, when it comes time to actually install the access points, you will discover that you still need to figure out how to run cable to the access points, determine exact mounting locations, and arrange for all the logistics to make this happen. This frequently entails additional site visits by cable workers to understand the installation needs.
Choose a wireless site survey provider that will do both the RF signal survey and the installation survey at the same time. Made By WiFi sends two or more engineers to every site study in order to provide a one-stop shop for both the survey and the installation. By the way, it was after one of those field visits that we decided to write this wifi site assessment checklist blog article.
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4. Remember that you might need to support legacy devices
Your firm’s CEO may be excellent at developing long-term strategies for the company, but he also has an odd connection to his antiquated Blackberry, and upgrading is not an option.
Your company’s WiFi network must now accommodate hundreds of contemporary Android, Apple, and Windows devices, as well as a few older devices that still employ outdated wireless protocols.
This is critical information to offer with your wireless site survey business since it may influence their setup suggestions.
The current wifi standard is still 802.11ac, or WiFi 5, in 2022. The spread of 802.11ax or WiFi 6 equipment and devices that offer faster speed and improved capacity is beginning.
802.11n or even earlier wireless protocols are commonly used by legacy devices. These devices are often restricted to the 2.4GHz band and will not connect to current WiFi networks unless they’re specially configured to do antiquated standards.
You must discuss any such criteria since wireless site survey software must be correctly configured to produce survey findings depending on your specified demands.
5. Consider any outside interference that may be affecting the operation of your WiFi networks
A wireless site survey will undoubtedly resolve any current WiFi issues, but in ever-changing environments, particularly those with high levels of air pollution, such as those found in major cities and large office buildings, regular attention to your wireless network may be required to ensure that outside network interference does not negatively impact the performance of your WiFi system.
Even if your WiFi network is fully established, surrounding interference such as misconfigured access points from neighboring offices or other radio frequency-using devices might degrade your wireless performance.
Regular maintenance and inspections are required. The majority of the hard work is over after the initial wireless site survey, but periodic wireless checkups are strongly advised to ensure that the settings applied during the original site survey still make sense in the current context.
Choose a wireless site survey firm that also provides managed WiFi services so that your annual wireless inspection is handled by the same team that set up your WiFi network. Made By WiFi provides both wireless site assessments and managed WiFi services.
6. When constructing your facilities, consider high-traffic zones and user flows
When establishing WiFi access points without a suitable strategy, you may choose to position them in the middle of a room or based on some incremental distance that you selected at random. This is one method for setting up a WiFi network, however you will most certainly encounter problems.
The traditional technique of deploying access points did actually advocate that they be placed in central areas, but things have changed, and as commercial wireless demand grows rapidly every year, the current line of thinking is to position access points where they will be utilized the most.
Perhaps you have a conference room where a few wireless video conferencing equipment are continuously in use. Set up an access point there! Perhaps your office has a section where all of your workers prefer to congregate and work in groups. Install an access point! It’s likely that you have a section of your office where all of your C-level executives sit, and they despise failed WiFi connections.
Mount an access point there, you guessed it! Even if all of these random access point placements cover your most vital area, you may be worried about potential dead zones. The only way to accomplish this correctly is to hire a wireless site assessment firm.
Another thing to think about is user flow throughout your facility. There are probably certain spots with a lot of foot activity, such as particular halls. These are frequently passageways near doors or other communal spaces. Because it is the first access point users connect to and the radio signal is not poor enough to compel the device to connect to a closer access point with a better signal, user devices may cling to access points in these locations.
Even if the radio signal from the access point is strong enough to connect the device, it may cause problems while surfing or conducting other online activities. Only by employing appropriate wireless site survey tools and engaging qualified network experts can perfect placement and configuration be found.
To Improve Your WiFi, Hire A Wireless Site Survey Company
Wi-Fi performance is a key consideration for wireless connectivity. The way to optimize performance is to place your wireless router or gateway in an open area in the middle of your house, avoid multiples in one location and tweak your router settings for optimal performance. You may also consider installing a repeater to cover large areas with reliable Wi-Fi
We Can Improve Your WIFI Connectivity
Made By WiFi has completed successful wifi site assessments for businesses large and small in New York City and around the country. When creating this wifi site survey checklist, we drew on our experience working on several projects and hope you found it beneficial. If you’re having problems with your wireless network, or if you’re relocating or establishing a new office and want to set up your wireless network properly, call our experts for a free wireless network assessment and site study now.
For Your Information
As a business owner in Utah, you know how important it is to have reliable wireless coverage. After all, your customers and employees depend on it for their day-to-day operations. But having the right wireless network isn’t always easy – that’s why so many businesses are turning to professional site survey companies all over Utah!
A Wireless site survey company provide invaluable insight into what kind of hardware and software will work best for your specific location. Companies like ours use specialized tools to measure signal strength and detect interference sources that may be affecting performance or causing issues with connectivity. We can also help you identify any potential dead spots where coverage might be lacking or inadequate, as well as recommend solutions such as antenna placement or additional access points if needed.
At our company we take pride in providing comprehensive services tailored specifically towards each customer’s needs – from small businesses looking for basic setup assistance up through large enterprises requiring full scale deployments across multiple locations – no job is too big (or too small!) We understand the importance of staying ahead of technology trends while ensuring maximum uptime; which is why we offer top quality products backed by superior technical support along with ongoing maintenance packages designed around keeping things running smoothly 24/7/365 days a year!
Also, wireless site survey accessories we include, as we have so many vendors and third-party providers we can rely on, whom we’ve built so many technology infrastructures over these 18 years.
WLAN site survey tools for you to achieve your business goals in Utah
So don’t wait another minute – contact us today to learn more about how our team can help ensure optimal performance out of your Wi-Fi system throughout Utah!
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