5 ways to improve your wireless network
Improving your wireless network
Dolce Vita IT Solutions consults for small and mid-sized businesses in a wide variety of verticals from manufacturing to medical, and from banking to human resources. We have seen businesses who struggled to get their wireless system to support the business...here are a few ways in which wireless can be improved:
Ensure that all network equipment is on battery backup
Having solid and consistent power going to the internet modem, firewall, switches, and all wireless equipment is the most basic part of a reliable wireless network. Battery backups keep the power at a specific voltage and avoids the “drops” or “slows” seen with surge-protected power. It also allows the attached equipment to live longer, saving you money.
Ensure network equipment is protected from heat
If network equipment overheats, the equipment and the network begin to act flaky and will fail.
Use more access points set to lower power settings
Sounds counter-intuitive until you realize that access points set to high power cause interference with their own network...this causes the network to have to re-transmit data constantly. (Think of being out with your significant other at a wedding reception with REALLY loud music...tough to communicate). The only people dancing will be your users...because they re hopping mad!
Never combine multiple wireless networks on the same local area network
Having multiple wireless SSID's (like the business network and a guest network) on the same environment will typically result in poor performance. By using a quality firewall (like Sonicwall or Watchguard) and managed switches which are capable of virtual networks (called VLAN's), each wireless network has its own network segment which vastly reduces traffic congestion and improves performance. This also forces guest network to be separated from your data which improves security…guest should never be on the same network as your business data.
Never rely on wireless for your primary business network
Relying on wireless for business-critical workstations is a mistake…wireless was designed for mobility, not for static communications. If you rely on wireless as your only network connection:
your workstations could be competing with hundreds of other wireless networks with hundreds or thousands of devices. These are communicating at the same time across just a few dozen channels
if you rely on cloud syncing services like Dropbox, OneDrive, Sharesync, or Sharefile you may experience file corruption. When this occurs the sync process will begin to intermittently fail, leading to possible need to recover from backups
Marginal wireless used for business-critical apps like Quickbooks, Peachtree, etc. will end up leading to file corruption…take it to the bank
Service quality is never as good with wireless as with hard-wired connections…so time and money are wasted on troubleshooting and tweaking.
Use wireless where it’s appropriate, but spend the effort to set it up right.
