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What is Slowing Down Your Internet? 5 Things Hurting Your Connection Speed

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what could be slowing down your internet speed

Bad WiFi service frustrates employees, hurts productivity, and can send customers to your competitors. Even if you use your wireless access point (AP) vendor’s management tool, there are still things that may be hurting your WiFi service quality or slowing down your internet speed without your knowledge. Read on below to learn about network connectivity, and the top five issues we usually see slowing down your internet speed.

Here are five thing that are likely slowing down your internet speed

  1. Network traffic actually transmitted over the air:
    APs know that they attempted to transmit data to a client, but cannot detect if a malfunction prevented transmissions.  Wireless access points cannot detect their own transmission problems, such as dropped packets, chatter, and jitter.
  2. Clients consuming channel bandwidth that are not connected to your infrastructure:
    Not every device using channel bandwidth connects to your network. These devices often interfere with connected traffic, hurting performance for others.
  3. Misconfiguration within your infrastructure:
    APs cannot self-detect if they are configured improperly or if neighboring APs are creating interference. APs are not clients on the network, so they can only see what they transmit and what they receive.
  4. Clients connected to APs not managed by your AP controller:
    While your AP management tool may identify unmanaged or unauthorized APs on your network, they cannot detect or analyze clients connected to those APs and/or the impact these unmanaged devices have on your WiFi performance.
  5. Interference from devices and networks outside of your control:
    Vendor AP management tools are built to manage the vendor’s APs. These tools do not identify or analyze neighboring networks that interfere with yours. Bandwidth and channel conflicts go undetected and unresolved.

Your vendor AP manager misses these issues because your APs are not WiFi clients.

How to Fix Slow WiFi Speed

The best way to monitor and manage WiFi performance and reliability is to place a passive sensor client in your environment.  Unlike expensive WiFi assessments of the past, done by on-site technicians lugging around specially equipped computers and meters, innovative services like the Wyebot Wireless Intelligence Platform™ (WIP) give you a plug-and-go solution for about 1/10th the cost.  WIP is a vendor agnostic tool that can see and monitor your entire WiFi environment, analyze and prioritize issues with alerts, make knowledge-driven solution recommendations, and provide remote network testing tools.

Tools like Wyebot help you ensure your WiFi network best serves your business.

Please download our eBook, Understanding WiFi Quality, for more information, or contact us to arrange an initial WiFi Assessment.

 

WiFi Quality is About the User Experience

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WiFi QualityAn ever increasing number of businesses are learning that WiFi is more than a convenient network connection.

  • Restaurants, bars, and coffee shops that want patrons to linger and spend more lose business when customers can’t check the score, answer an email, or scan their social apps.
  • When your mobile app doesn’t work in your establishment because of poor WiFi service quality, your patrons go elsewhere.
  • WiFi quality influences which conference rooms get booked, where teams choose to huddle, where individuals choose to sit and work, and where people choose to socialize.

WiFi service quality is becoming a competitive factor that can help or hurt your business.

Most network managers rely on vendor management tools to monitor and control their wireless Access Points (APs). These tools provide basic statistics on traffic volume and patterns.  The more sophisticated solutions provide cool looking color-coded heat mats that overlay WiFi signal strength onto blueprints of your business. Some tools even use APs to triangulate users’ locations within their business.

What vendor AP management tools do not show you, however, is the client experience. You can have great WiFi signal coverage, but applications time-out if client devices experience too much interference. Your network may be setup to support a high density of users, but if clients end AP-hopping for signal strength, management overhead can cripple performance.

To understand WiFi quality: Understand the user experience.

By definition, your Access Points are not and cannot be clients on your WiFi network. The data your APs gather represents only what goes in and out of (or is simulated by) each Access Point. WiFi clients will see your network performance and reliability differently than your APs.

Think of it this way.  A chef creates a new signature dish. The chef knows that she’s used the best, freshest ingredients. The chef has sampled dozens of variations to get the taste just right.  The chef believes that this her best new meal ever. Even so, a few, many, most, or all customers may not like the taste, texture, or presentation of the meal. Fortunately, WiFi quality and reliability is not subject to personal taste and preferences; WiFi service quality is determined by the client experience.

The only way to understand, monitor, and manage WiFi service quality is to monitor your network from a client.

Historically, this has meant expensive service engagements in which technicians bring in monitoring and analysis systems for a “point in time” assessment. These assessments, which can cost thousands of dollars and only capture one point in time, are beyond the budget of most small and midsize businesses and schools.

New solutions, however, provide vendor-agnostic analyses of your WiFi network using passive sensor WiFi clients, prioritize identification of service issues, and offer knowledge-driven recommended solutions.  With the Wyebot Wireless Intelligence Platform™ (WIP), for example, in most instances we can provide periodic WiFi Assessments for less than 1/10th the cost of a traditional assessments. Ongoing monitoring becomes affordable for nearly all businesses and schools, the the added value of historical data analysis, real-time alerts, and remote network testing.

If your business relies on WiFi, you can now afford to make sure your WiFi network is reliable and performs well.

For more information, download our eBook, Understanding WiFi Quality, or contact us about arranging an initial WiFi Assessment.

 

The Best WiFi Solutions for Small Business

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best WiFi for small business Businesses depend on WiFi service. From employee laptops, tablets, and phones, to visitors in conference rooms, having the best WiFi for your small business is a critical component of your network infrastructure. And yet, for many small businesses, WiFi performance and reliability degrade over time. Most WiFi installations start with a focus on coverage — ensuring all areas and users have access to the service. Often neglected is capacity, the availability of bandwidth to ensure fast, reliable service for all users. For companies with small offices, and SMBs in general, the odds seem stacked against us. See why our services are vital if you need the best WiFi for a small bussiness.

  • Installations typically use default settings, placing WiFi traffic on slower bandwidth service and on channels most susceptible to interference
  • Wireless routers and access points sold to SMBs and small offices often lack settings (bandwidth steering, antennae power control, etc) needed to manage and tune performance
  • Most SMBs and small offices do not have active monitoring of WiFi performance, or even periodic reporting about the quality of WiFi service

When SMBs and small offices have WiFi connectivity or performance issues, the typical response is to add additional access points or to increase signal power, “solutions” that often exasperate the problem.

You can and should have the WiFi connectivity and performance you need.

Even if lower cost wireless routers and access points have been installed, SMBs can still take steps to ensure WiFi connectivity and performance. And, you can do this without expensive equipment upgrades and installations. Take an approach recognizing that the quality of your WiFi service is not static. The environment in which your WiFi operates will change over time. Make sure you understand what might be slowing down your WiFi, and take preventative measures to ensure connectivity and performance over time.

Three Ways to Ensure Performance and Connectivity With the Best WiFi for Small Businesses

In today’s digital age, reliable network connectivity and high-speed WiFi connection is essential for small businesses to operate efficiently and stay connected with customers. However, with so many WiFi services available in the market, choosing the right one can be a daunting task. That’s why we have compiled a list of top WiFi services for small businesses that can ensure seamless connectivity and optimal performance.

1. WiFi Assessments:

Historically, WiFi assessments have been expensive; most SMBs cannot afford a few thousand dollars for a one-time assessment. These one-time assessments capture a point in time and may not recognize shifting usage, demand, and interference patters. These types of assessments are often vendor-led and recommend significant equipment upgrades and installations.

New technologies and services allow for one-time assessments to be completed for hundreds, not thousands, of dollars.  Drop-in devices capture all WiFi traffic and feed the data to cloud-based, AI-driven analysis engines that diagnose and prioritize issues. The AI analysis engines are able to recommend specific solution actions addresses both your WiFi infrastructure and devices accessing the network. The drop-in devices capture all WiFi signals in the area, looking not only at your networks, but the behavior and impact of WiFi signals reaching your space from other locations. And, our recommendations focus on setting changes in existing equipment rather than upgrades and overhauls.

With this lower cost, SMBs can afford to run assessments as-needed when performance or connectivity issues arise, or on a periodic schedule. With periodic assessments, you capture and adapt to changes that occur over time, often preventing issues before they impact your business.

2. WiFi Monitoring:

Using the same intelligent technology and services, SMBs can now also afford on-going WiFi Monitoring. With continuous monitoring, the AI engine and analysis tools can look at historical trends and address changes to the WiFi environment. This service offers incredible value to restaurants, retail, warehouses, schools, and other locations where the number of WiFi connected devices (customer, employee, IoT, etc) and usage patterns change hour-to-hour, day-to-day, or over time. As the drop-in devices also provide remote network testing, the monitoring infrastructure saves valuable time and effort when testing or re-configuring WiFi services.

Because the monitoring is not depending on your existing infrastructure of vendors, the analysis is agnostic and the recommendations are not biased to any vendor solution.

3. Managed WiFi Service:

For the first time, SMBs can now afford to have a managed WiFi service. With managed services, WiFi routers, access points, and (hopefully) attached physical switches are connected to central management console. The console allows for active performance and connectivity alerts that can trigger service tickets and responses. The console also provides remote access to manage configurations and settings, diagnose issues, and resolve problems in real time.

As a managed service, we configure, monitor, and maintain your WiFi network to ensure it meets the needs of your business.

When combined with WiFi monitoring, Managed WiFi Services provide a complete WiFi service that adapts to the changing needs of your environment, ensuring connectivity and performance.

Implement the Best WiFi for Small Business Today

In conclusion, a reliable and high-speed WiFi connection is crucial for small businesses to operate efficiently and stay connected with customers. By utilizing the top WiFi services we have outlined above, small business owners can ensure seamless connectivity and optimal performance. These WiFi services offer a range of features that cater to the specific needs of small businesses. By selecting the right WiFi service, small business owners can stay ahead of the competition and provide the best possible customer experience.

We offer WiFi Assessments and Monitoring services powered by the Wyebot Wireless Intelligence Platform along with a range of Managed WiFi Service offerings.  Please contact us for more information.