Wireless Best Practices

What Wi-Fi means? - It is a common conception that Wi-Fi stands for Wireless Fidelity, however this is not true, it is just a marketing term. There is no official meaning for Wi-Fi acronym.

Home Wireless

Wi-Fi is easy to set up and is one of the default features in most home routers. So, for home use, you do not need to worry about setting up a separate Wireless device, commonly called an Access Point. It will also depend on how big your house is and whether the router can cover the entire house. If not, then you need one of the Access Points.

Office Wi-Fi

Office Wi-Fi is not the same as home Wi-Fi. Multiple devices, tens or hundreds of users, connect to Wi-Fi. These users can be your office staff, vendors, contractors. So the office Wi-Fi needs to be more secure and reliable.

How to plan the office Wi-Fi?

It depends on the various factors :-

• Size of the office floor
• Number of devices
• Interference like microwaves, concrete pillars.
• Type of Walls - concrete, dry wall, metal etc.
• Security - production vs guest wi-fi

So where to start? - if the floor is big enough for a few APs

• It is always a good idea to start with a heat map. You will need the following
  • Heat map software like Ekahau AI Pro
  • Floor Diagram
• Choose the right APs, considering their support for the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, VLAN support, power requirement, and the number of antennas for transmitting and receiving data.
  • Cheaper AP from Unifi can suffice the requirements most of the time
  • However, for better management and seamless user experience, costlier APs like from Aruba are more resilient and reliable.
• AP settings
  • 2.4GHz Channel-
    • Keep it enabled as some devices may not support 5GHz channel. 20MHz width can suffice and can be increased to 40MHz, however this is rarely used.
    • Transmit power - Low to start with and then change it if required
  • 5GHz Channel
    • 40MHz width can suffice and can be increased to 80MHz, if there is a specific requirement
    • Transmit power - High to start with and then change it if required
  • Wireless Meshing - Keep it off, this can reduce the speed if turned on.
• Create a separate corporate and guest SSIDs. Keep them on separate VLANs for security
• It is recommended to use atleast WAP2-Enterprise method for corporate and Captive portal for the guest SSIDs
• Other settings need to be assessed if there are issues with the connections like Band steering, BSS Transition, QOS.