Validating your wireless design is an important, and often overlooked part of setting up a wireless network in offices, warehouses, and retail stores. Performing surveys allows you to generate heatmaps that can then be used to optimize your network so that your wireless connections are running on all cylinders.
Why Site Surveys are Important
Have you ever been in an office, restaurant, or any other building when the Wi-Fi just won’t cut it? It’s extremely aggravating to deal with and causes unnecessary stress. Site Surveys can help prevent lagging, buffering, and poor connectivity.
Wi-Fi Site Survey Setup
To get wall-to-wall Wi-Fi coverage you’ll need to have access points in every area that you expect people or devices to be accessing the network. So the first step is to identify where in the facility you should plan on installing access points using the building’s floor plans. While routers claim to have up to 300 feet of signal, this is unlikely because of common obstructions. When determining your access point and router configuration, you should expect a signal with somewhere around a 100-foot radius of connectivity.
After you have your access point locations buttoned up, you should test the coverage of your work. There are many ways to do this, but a common and effective way is to walk around the building with your phone in hand and monitor the signal strength in every location. CUSITech deploys the Ekahau; a really robust tool to not only check coverage but develop comprehensive coverage heatmaps. The downside of Ekahau when it comes to a DIY coverage check is the price tag. Unless you are mapping dozens of facilities, it makes sense to outsource this to a company like CUSITech.
When you’ve tested the entire facility and identified any weak points in the Wi-Fi, you can start to optimize the coverage by adding access points to areas with a weaker connection and removing extra access points that have redundant coverage. Because rooms change and bandwidth/connection need to change, you should reevaluate your site survey every year to keep your Wi-Fi running smoothly.
CUSITech provides a single point of contact to manage the planning, surveying, installation, and implementation of these projects with our nationwide skilled W2 technicians, so you can hit go-live dates on time and on budget. Give us a visit today: https://cusitech.com
