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craig mathias
Principal

5 best practices to boost Wi-Fi performance

News
Oct 10, 20182 mins
MobileSmall and Medium BusinessWi-Fi

Wi-Fi experts share best practices for establishing and maintaining optimal WLAN performance

Wi-Fi tools
Credit: Thinkstock

Wi-Fi experts from Cisco, Aruba, Ekahau, Extreme Networks and Mist Systems talked with Craig Mathias, principal with advisory firm Farpoint Group, about Wi-Fi performance optimization. Based on those interviews, a few best practices for establishing and maintaining optimal WLAN performance clearly jump out.

Perform Wi-Fi needs analysis

Start with an initial needs analysis, with a careful enumeration of requirements relating to throughput, applications and coverage. Experiment with potential equipment in the production freespace environment to establish a baseline for initial performance expectations and evaluation. Add in the impact of any planned or even anticipated infrastructure additions, new applications and growth in numbers of users and devices.

Set reasonable Wi-Fi performance expectations

Assume the availability of no more than 50% of peak specified product throughput given the baseline technology (such as 802.11ac Wave 2), channel bandwidth and assumed client density in any given location.

Be judicious about Wi-Fi site surveys

Avoid detailed site surveys except in settings where RF-related challenges are suspected – hospitals, power plants and facilities with unusual building construction, for example. A sweep with a spectrum analyzer to understand interference and RF propagation behavior is always useful, and occasional exploration with an independent assurance tool is also often valuable as well.

Explore enterprise Wi-Fi product features

A massive range of useful functionality is integrated into the management console of enterprise-class Wi-Fi system. Plowing through hundreds of settings and features can take a while, but the time spent learning and using these features offers excellent ROI. Ditto for analytics capabilities as well.

While it’s important to work with users directly as even suspect problems appear, it’s equally vital to monitor trends over time. Don’t expect perfection on Day 1. Refinement over time is a much more reasonable expectation and strategy.

craig mathias
Principal

Craig J. Mathias is a principal with Farpoint Group, an advisory firm specializing in wireless networking and mobile computing. Founded in 1991, Farpoint Group works with technology developers, manufacturers, carriers and operators, enterprises, and the financial community. Craig is an internationally-recognized industry and technology analyst, consultant, conference speaker, author, columnist, and blogger. He regularly writes for Network World, CIO.com, and TechTarget. Craig holds an Sc.B. degree in Computer Science from Brown University, and is a member of the Society of Sigma Xi and the IEEE.

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