Wireless Networking
From the smallest single AP install, to whole site / campus wide / multi-site deployments, wireless networking is what we do! With over 15 years’ experience designing, surveying, installing and supporting wireless networks you’re in safe hands.
Whether it be a small office install, bespoke internal / external warehouse design, site-wide hospital / campus-wide university consultancy, or a national managed contract supporting thousands of sites, we’re here to help. We’ve worked in some pretty varied environments over the years, to some of the most stringent specifications, and have successfully fulfilled each and every project.
We don’t just profess to be good at wireless, we love wireless! From the initial enquiry right through to network handover we pride ourselves on thoroughly understanding the requirement set out before us and making sure that we meet and exceed even the most optimistic of expectations.
Our technical know-how combined with our professional installation teams means that we can provide a hassle-free turnkey solution for your wireless networking requirement.
Wireless Network Surveys
Completing a thorough wireless network survey and design exercise is absolutely key to achieving satisfactory results post-deployment.
We provide both Predictive / Offsite and Onsite Surveys, both of which have their merits. We have highly skilled wireless surveyors with a plethora of tools in their arsenal including, Ekahau Pro and Ekahau Sidekick software and hardware. In addition, we have a variety (far too many to mention) of wireless access points, antennas, battery packs and tripod kits to ensure that onsite surveys (pre-deployment) are always conducted thoroughly and using the same model of AP and antenna as is proposed for each particular install.
Whether using Offsite, Onsite or a combination of these surveying techniques to determine Access Point numbers and locations for new deployments, the care and attention we pay to our wireless surveys (and our work in general) is second-to-none. It is this experience, care and attention that allows us to deliver our promises by designing and installing a wireless network that actually works.
It saddens us to say that an alarming amount of companies that profess to be wireless networking experts simply don’t understand the technology, concepts or principles. It is unfortunately these shortcomings of others that lead clients to us to correct those designs and installations attempted by others.
The wireless network survey and design is a critical element of any successful and robust deployment, and we pride ourselves on guiding our clients through this exercise in a professional and proficient manner.
Wireless Network Design
During the wireless network design stage, we consider the specific challenges and requirements of the network, the environment and the client.
A one size fits all approach does not work with wireless - each environment requires its own bespoke solution – offices have different needs to warehouses, and airports have specific criteria that commercial yards do not.
We design wireless network solutions ranging from single autonomous AP deployments, right through to multi-site / multi-campus lightweight cloud- or controller-managed fully resilient solutions. We design wireless networks consisting of many thousands of access points across the world, we design fully resilient wireless networks (quite a big claim), we design wireless networks to our clients’ specific requirements (if they have them), in whatever flavour it comes… we love designing wireless network solutions (and we’re pretty good at it too)!
Clients can rest-assured that we guarantee our designs, we provide comprehensive reports and design documentation, and we continue the project and relationship into the installation and commissioning phases.
Wireless Network Implementation
The best of designs can be installed badly, and they won’t work - it seems like an obvious statement, but we’ve seen it time and time again.
In the same way that our wireless surveyors have cabling experience so they can consider cabling requirements when determining Access Point locations, our installation engineers have knowledge of wireless principles and the full support of our wireless surveyors and designers throughout all installation activities.
This knowledge, and the support structure between our engineers and project managers is absolutely critical and a key strength of ours when completing and overcoming challenges during an installation. We even take this a step further - our wireless network implementations are proactively overseen by the network surveyor / designer to ensure the process runs quickly and efficiently, to liaise with the client and to better make preparations ready for the Commissioning phase.
Where clients instruct one company to complete the wireless network survey, then another to complete the cabling survey, then a combination to complete the install, this rarely ends well. We pride ourselves on taking ownership of the project from start to finish - this gives the client a single party to deal with and allows us to ensure quality and conformance is maintained throughout the solution.
Wireless Configuration, Commissioning & Testing
The configuration of wireless networking equipment is frequently completed offsite in our test-bench environment.
This is the most efficient way of delivering a project and helps to minimise time onsite. We regularly complete offsite configuration and testing of large and complex WLANs for shipment to site (often in other countries) to be installed and commissioned by our skilled and trusted installation engineers.
During the Commissioning and Testing phases we work very closely with our clients to help integrate the new wireless network solution into their existing network environment (assuming we aren’t providing a new LAN also). Many clients have to maintain 100% uptime as we commission and test the new solution then migrate users from old to new. In these cases, we produce detailed migration procedures to ensure that business operations remain uninterrupted.
Following successful commissioning of a WLAN we begin the testing and verification procedure. Connectivity, resilience and failover testing is completed with the client (if applicable) then post-deployment wireless verification surveys are conducted to help verify the coverage provided by the new solution. The coverage is rarely optimum to begin with, so our skilled technical engineers spend time adapting the WLAN configuration to the specific environment and testing each change with both industry-leading survey tools and client devices. Post-deployment verification surveys are often overlooked but are a critical component of the overall solution.
Following all of the above, handover documentation is created and provided to the customer containing all of the necessary technical, coverage, support and warranty information. We really do provide a comprehensive package when it comes to wireless networking – one of the many reasons why so many national and international organisations come to us for their wireless networking needs.