By Jaco Labuschagne, Managed Services Specialist - Connected Business
Some weeks, the most exciting thing in our job is a box of brand-new kit. This week it was something far older.
We'd just rolled out a shiny new Wi-Fi network for a client. The ground floor behaved. The top floor didn't. People got about two bars, laptops connected and dropped, and staff did that thing everyone recognises: walking around the office holding a laptop up like it's a divining rod.
The culprit nobody thinks about
Part of the 5 GHz Wi-Fi band is shared with weather and airport radar. When an access point on one of those channels hears radar, the rules say it has to get off the channel right away, and anyone connected gets dropped while it moves. On a top floor with a clear line of sight to the sky, our brand-new access points were hearing radar and getting bumped off their channels.
Jaco, who builds networks for a living, couldn't stop telling people about it that day. Radar is technology most of us haven't thought about since school geography, and it was quietly bossing around a high-tech deployment. It's a nice reminder that this work still finds new ways to surprise us.
So we moved every access point onto channels radar doesn't use. That leaves fewer lanes to spread the access points across, but no more forced exits.
A quick word before you put us in a box
Yes, that's two Wi-Fi stories from us in quick succession. We can hear you thinking "ah, the Wi-Fi people". Please don't typecast us. We're like an actor who got famous for one role and keeps getting sent scripts about access points.
The truth is less glamorous and more useful. Pretty much everything clever a business runs today needs a strong on-premise network underneath it: the smart building, the cameras, the cloud apps, the Teams calls that freeze right on your best point. Nobody sees the network until it stops working, a bit like plumbing, or a good accountant.
So when the business case justifies it, that's exactly what we build for our customers: a network that makes everything above it look effortless. Then we get on with the rest of the job, which covers backup, security, Microsoft 365 and keeping an eye on things around the clock.
If your top floor, boardroom or warehouse has its own "two bars and a prayer" spot, or you're planning something smart and want it to stay smart, come and say hello. We promise to talk about more than Wi-Fi. Probably.