A wireless solution, or a Wi-Fi network, is a necessity now for businesses, schools, and pretty much any type of facility. Allowing your employees, students, or visitors the ability to work and connect effectively with their devices is now assumed.
But how do you do this? You need to have a Wi-Fi solution that will provide the needed coverage and reliability for all devices on your network.
OXEN has completed many wireless projects for a wide range of clients, including schools, manufacturers, medical facilities, and financial institutions. We have experience with many wireless needs…and what can go wrong!
What kind of wireless network do you need?
Depending on the size of an organization’s facility, setting up a strong, dependable wireless network may not be as straightforward as you think. A very small office might get away with setting up a secured wireless router for a few employees to connect to.
If your facility is larger and more complex, and if you have many people connecting to the network, the demand will quickly overwhelm the reach and capacity of a simple wireless router. If you need outdoor connectivity, special hardened equipment may be necessary.
And this is where a well-planned wireless network project comes in!
How Do You Start Your Project?
If you’re implementing a wireless network for a business or researching wireless solutions for a school, where do you start? If you can’t just unbox routers from Best Buy and line them up, what’s the first step in discovering what you need?
Step number one is always a wireless survey. A pre-project assessment will help scope your project. It will identify all the areas, inside and outside your facility, where you need wireless connectivity. It will also identify problem areas, perhaps where a physical feature of the building is interfering with connectivity.
This type of survey can help map out how many wireless access points you need and where they need to be located. With this information, estimates can be provided for the right type of hardware to meet bandwidth demand, physical conditions, and budget.
Types of Wireless Network Surveys
OXEN can provide three types of wireless assessments, depending on your needs, your facility, and your project scope.
- Predictive Survey: A remote “best effort” estimation based on information you provide, such as the building map, wall types, ceiling types and heights, number of users, and so on. This survey generates a simulated heat map with locations of the wireless access points. This is a good starting point to estimate the necessary budget and type of network hardware.
- On-site Survey: This type of assessment is done on-site and builds on the predictive survey. We use surveying tools and hardware to generate a heat map of the surrounding areas. This helps to show if the structure has any obstructions that will cause signal loss that may not be seen on the predictive survey. It does require more time, up to 4 days on-site of billable work.
- On-site Post-Survey: A survey done after all wireless units are installed and functional. We perform this after deployment and installation to create an accurate heat map of the building, to check for configuration issues and to document the state of the installation. It can also take up to 4 days of on-site billable work.
What next?
You need agile, secure, and scalable Wi-Fi that is designed and built for your specific needs. OXEN Technology can help you with your wireless project, including:
- initial surveys and site audits
- planning and design
- product recommendation
- installation and deployment
- documentation and ongoing maintenance
To get started, reach out to our team! You can contact us at 888.296.3619 or use our contact page to send us a message.
