Selection of equipment for WLAN: how not to spend money in vain

Today, for the staff or visitors of any organization, wireless Internet access is a must. In time, this need will only increase. When choosing equipment for your network (or if you are a reseller, then when choosing a Wi-Fi solution for a customer), there are three important factors to consider.

1) Capacity and future network growth

When you choose access points and other Wi-Fi equipment that will serve your network today, it’s important to find out if they can get the network working in two or three years. This is a more important factor than theoretical performance, since Wi-Fi problems most often occur when there are many devices connected to the wireless network and they are not related to the nominal speed or available bandwidth.

If you simply add new access points to the Wi-Fi network, this may increase its coverage, but it will not solve the signal overlap problem. On the contrary, an increase in the number of points can lead to network congestion and conflicts between points using the same channel. If the number of devices that need to provide Wi-Fi connection in a certain area increases significantly after a couple of years, or at a certain time it will increase dramatically (for example, in an exhibition complex or a theater), then you need to plan the installation of additional access points.
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Technologies that optimize signal transmission between the router and other wireless devices can solve this problem. The choice of technology depends on the specific situation. One option is to use MIMO Wave 2, but client devices that will connect to your Wi-Fi network must support this technology. Smart antenna technology provides such or even more significant performance improvements and is compatible with all mobile devices. This option is a bit more expensive, but more effective in the long run.

2) Visibility and control

All organizations care about their information security, and taking into account the legislation of the Russian Federation, it is necessary to know exactly who has access to their data. It is extremely important to control the access to the wireless network and to fix the entrance to the network of each user. You may need to block access to certain types of sites and content.

It is also necessary to ensure constant connection of users to the network. Users and guests want Wi-Fi to work not only quickly, but also stably, so you need to consider not only the quality and reliability of the equipment, but also how its failure affects the network and what solutions are used to restore its performance. It is worth paying attention to the self-healing functions used in some routers and access points.

You should also consider the option of concluding a service level contract (SLA), which guarantees the replacement of a faulty product at a certain time, or other options for the purchase and maintenance of Wi-Fi equipment.

3) Options for the acquisition and maintenance of network equipment

Most companies already use applications and services hosted in the cloud, for which they pay the provider once a year or a month, or upon use. The same payment schemes are already available for network equipment, so you can receive from your supplier for temporary use a device based on the latest Wi-Fi technology along with services, remote performance management and security monitoring.

There are several purchase options. For example, you can entrust all management and monitoring of a network to a hardware supplier or another company, or you can do all this work on your own. In any case, you have several options and it is worth analyzing them, choosing the best one for you and applying it at the right time.

If you are a reseller, then think about what options you can offer to customers - one customer makes sense to offer all three, and the other none of them is suitable.

All of these factors need to be considered when planning the development of your wireless network in the future.

Well, if you need help - contact us! :-)