Why Your Wi-Fi Network Needs to Improve
Your Wi-Fi network needs to serve many different needs and user types. The demands on the network are considerable. It needs to be accessible, fast, user-friendly and reliable.
For many companies, keeping the network optimized for the many different users is a challenge. That’s why you need a partner that can help assess the network’s strengths and weaknesses, develop and deploy a solution that improves performance, and provides monitoring and assessment tools to keep it running at peak condition.
One Network, Many Roles
Understanding the roles of your network is one important component of any network assessment. Your organization may need multiple types of networks to accommodate users. For example, consider a factory environment. Warehouse and transportation workers need access to each other while in transit or in remote locations. Visitors and supply chain partners need temporary, brief usage periods primarily accessing the network via smartphones. In-house administrative and finance staff need a network that connects a range of devices, from desktops and laptops to smartphones, with remote access of files a must.
Most enterprise organizations have a combination of the following network roles and requirements:
- Visitor and Guest Network. These users, like in the hospital example, will be using smartphones, tablets and laptops to access the Internet for browsing, email and use of apps, but do not need access to internally stored resources. Users in this group need to be isolated from internal resources and each other. Encryption may or may not be used.
- Staff Network. Employees will be using a range of devices or dedicated network appliances to access each other and internal resources. Access and data in these network roles are typically encrypted to prevent unauthorized access using Active Directory or other tools to identify users.
- Voice Network. If your facility uses voice over IP (VoIP) or voice over Wi-Fi (VoWi-Fi) capabilities, it may use a dedicated service set identifier (SSID) to prioritize such network traffic. Wireless traffic often uses encryption to allow uninterrupted connectivity between access points.
- Security Network. Keeping your facility secure involves using appliances such as cameras and access control locks and fixed or portable security stations. These tools need to be wired or wirelessly connected and are encrypted to prevent unauthorized access.
- Network Appliances. The Internet of Things (IoT) has created vast numbers of connected objects that are equipped with sensors and wireless capabilities that record and transmit data. While the amount of data they transmit may be small, there may be many of them that need to transmit data at any given time.
Keeping It Connected and Protected
With so many different usage types required, your enterprise needs a solution designed to assess, monitor and deploy your networks to achieve the best-possible performance. At BCS, we offer comprehensive Wi-Fi assessments to identify how to improve your network’s configuration and ensure it is needing the needs of all your employees.
Our Wi-Fi assessments include:
- Spectrum analysis to identify interference that’s slowing performance
- Heat maps that show signal strength coverage, maximum channel bandwidth and network capacity problems
- Passive, active and spectrum surveys
- 3D modeling of where to place and how to configure access points
- Capacity configuration to show network coverage areas, define Wi-Fi clients and applications, and prepare for network peaks
Our experienced teams use these comprehensive analyses to identify solutions that will improve your network’s capabilities and performance. To learn more, contact BCS today to schedule your Wi-Fi analysis.
