Welcome to our new
WiFi Ninjas Podcast episode.
We have reached the
final P in our 4 part 4Ps Survey type!
Matt has spent last
few weeks on site again working on projects every single day and has recently
attended the Wireless Lan Association conference in Reading in the UK and was a
total blast with some great speakers talking about WiFi all day.
Mac has been swamped
with project work recently too and has just got back from a well-earned yoga
& meditation break to Italy with his wife Magda! Food was amazing and
despite it being extremely light and healthy, they haven’t lost any weight due
to pigging out every day.
Here is what we have
discussed:
- What is a Periodic Survey?
- Ensure that wireless network is
STILL performing optimally by conducting periodic site survey to account for
changes in the dynamic WLAN environment in brownfield sites.
- Similar to Post-Deployment (see
previous episode)
- Is RSSI & SNR still good?
- Channel overlapping check
- Spectrum utilisation check
- Interference check – rouges and
non-WiFi wireless interference
- Problems? Still Periodic or
tshooting focused Assessment?
- Why is it important to do it?
- Important to always do it, no
matter the vertical nor how big or small the deployment is. Clients have
general tendency to push back on doing periodic survey to save costs
- Physical environment may have
changed:
- New tenants may now occupy floors
above or below and have brought new wireless devices with them causing
interference on the network
- New neighbouring buildings might
have been erected
- Some walls might have been put in,
removed or changed
- Requirements may have changed:
- Wireless network designed for
basic data connectivity might now be expected to cater for voice, video, RTLS
or high density.
- Rule of thumb is to check your
WiFi condition every year
- Amazing chance to tweak existing
WiFi or flag a need for potential re-design to be better suited for purpose
- Periodic Survey Tools
- See episode 2 for more info
- How do you perform Periodic Survey?
- Prepared survey plans, scale them,
etc.
- No need for drawing walls, but
need to define areas and success criteria
- Standard passive or hybrid survey
- Office full of users, under normal
load, in hours
- On-site and off-site documentation
Thanks for listening and please
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