Why Wi-Fi Performance Assessments Are Important
Wi-Fi is a must-have investment for businesses. It provides several benefits and is critical for productivity, collaboration, and everyday operations. As a business, you want to get what you pay for and have your Wi-Fi perform as well as possible so you can avoid losses caused by poor connection and ensure operations go smoothly.
To identify and fix problems with your Wi-Fi and optimize your setup, you need to have your Wi-Fi performance assessed.
What Is a Wi-Fi Performance Assessment?
A Wi-Fi performance assessment analyzes your current wireless setup. It looks at various factors that affect your system’s performance, such as access point placement, walls and materials that block signals, and network interference.
When you have an engineer assess your Wi-Fi’s performance, they will analyze the following:
- Your RF network’s coverage and capacity, access point distribution throughout your premises, and where users need Wi-Fi
- What’s happening within and around your RF environment that might be affecting its performance
- Determine appropriate density for both device count and application performance
- How access points and antennas were mounted and their orientation
- Cabling infrastructure that supports network backhaul
- Your WLAN’s design and configuration, including power settings, channel arrangement, data rates, and other factors that affect performance
- Integrated components and network services like network access control (NAC), Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting (AAA), and Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)
The engineer will likely also request an overview of the switching infrastructure you use for handling network traffic.
Why Is It Important?
A Wi-Fi performance assessment examines every part of your wireless system and gives you a complete picture of how each part affects the other and the system as a whole. It’s needed to find sub-optimal configurations and components and tell you how to improve them to make the whole system work better.
What Do You Get at the End of an Assessment?
After the Wi-Fi performance assessment, the engineer will give you a Wi-Fi assessment report with:
- An overall summary
- A comprehensive list of the findings, itemized and noted with what the engineer found to be of concern
- A list of recommendations for improving your network’s performance. It details the needed changes, why they are needed, and how they’ll improve your system’s performance.
The goal of a Wi-Fi performance assessment is to identify any issues with your network and resolve them. An assessment service will improve your Wi-Fi’s performance, extend your system’s lifespan, and increase its viability for conducting operations when you expand your business.
When Should Assessments Be Performed?
Wi-Fi performance assessments should be done whenever modifications are made to your system. This includes new hardware installations, adjustments made to the hardware, and the updating of drivers, firmware, and software. That way, you can compare your system’s current performance to its past performance.
What’s Involved in an Assessment?
Wi-Fi performance assessments involve the following:
- The engineer will ask you for as much information about your current system as possible and schedule a site visit
- During the site visit, they will need access to the areas where the access points are deployed, the switch closets, and the configuration of the WLAN system
- The engineer will use analysis software to gather performance data from the WLAN system and identify performance challenges. They may also conduct an RF site survey.
Maximize Your Wi-Fi’s Performance
HarborTech Mobility will help you maximize and improve your Wi-Fi system’s performance with our managed IT services. We’ll assess your system, identify problems, and give solutions for improving performance to increase productivity within your business and make everyday operations easier.
Call us at (425) 424-0444 and discuss your needs with our support team.
