Blog
This holiday season I helped a dear old friend who is not computer literate upgrade her home to high speed internet. I didn't do much, really, except chit-chat with the installer. The work (and the fun) actually began once he left. My friend and I started exploring an online world with more speed and ease than ever before. It reminded me of how exciting it was when I began working for 7SIGNAL and experienced fast, reliable Wi-Fi for the first time at any organization I had previously worked for. You see, Wi-Fi was treated like a second-class network. Not deemed important enough by the IT staff to receive consideration for performance management. If it worked, great. If not, then plug into Ethernet, and the situation wasn't given much more thought.
But times have changed. Personal productivity, as well as operational efficiency now depend upon fast, reliable Wi-Fi networks. To just say your organization "has Wi-Fi" is joke. To say you have fast and reliable Wi-Fi is sketchy at best. In fact, you really don't know how your Wi-Fi is performing unless you're systematically monitoring it because (let's be real) relying on feedback from your co-workers runs counter your scientific sensibilities.
Wi-Fi is extremely dynamic. It changes everyday all the time as people and equipment move in and out of an environment. So why don't you have a proactive system keeping an eye on it? Is it suddenly okay for your organization to lose time and money due to slow, unreliable network connectivity? No, it isn't. Yet, we see poorly performing Wi-Fi and frustrated professionals everywhere we go.
To give your organization the gift of great Wi-Fi requires a little bit of an attitude adjustment for some of you this holiday season. It asks for humility and a change of heart.
- First, admit that Wi-Fi is a critical infrastructure asset that your people depend on to perform their jobs. Not a "nice-to-have."
- Second, accept the fact that even though you don't hear people complain, it's likely your Wi-Fi is not serving your people adequately.
- Finally, humble yourself and ask for help in the form of a system that stays on top of your Wi-Fi network - monitoring and measuring Wi-Fi experiences 24 by 7, alerting you when things go bad and pointing you directly to issues with access points, interference and client devices.
2018 is the year you give your organization the gift of great Wi-Fi. Upgrading your access points to 802.11ac Wave 2 is not the end - in fact it's only the beginning. The higher MCS rates and features of Wave 2 are more sensitive to interference, therefore, the network needs to be managed more closely than what you might be accustomed to. But a system of Wi-Fi performance management will help you tune on an on-going basis, as the environment changes, to ensure great Wi-Fi experiences for all. It will make your job easier in the New Year - and this is 7SIGNAL's gift to you!