There aren’t many businesses that can operate without a strong wifi connection these days. If your connection goes down, the whole office grinds to a halt and you can’t get anything done until your internet is back online again. This kind of downtime can be incredibly expensive, so you need to avoid it at all costs. Unfortunately, many businesses make mistakes in the way that they manage their wifi and they are unaware of the potential problems that can cause it to keep going down. If your office wifi is unreliable and it’s costing you money, these are some of the potential problems to watch out for.
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Inadequate Wifi Connections
Often, the problem is that the wifi connection is inadequate in the first place. People make the mistake of thinking that their office wifi is the same as their home wifi, so they get a connection, plug the router in and go. This might work in a small office that has a few computers, but as you grow, you need to scale your wifi connection at the same time or you will consistently run into problems. Ideally, you should use a Managed Services Provider to deal with your wifi for you. They will be able to assess your connectivity needs and put a reliable system in place, so you experience less downtime. They can also diagnose and deal with problems before the wifi stops working altogether.
Badly Placed Routers
Placing the router in the wrong place is another mistake that businesses make. In a large office, those that are far away from the router will get a terrible connection and it will take them twice as long to do anything. The good news is, you can usually get around this issue by installing some signal boosters around the office. They’re not expensive to buy and they will ensure that everybody gets the best possible speeds.
Personal Use From Employees
When you are determining the speed of connection you need, that calculation will be based on your business activities. What it doesn’t account for is employees using it for things they shouldn’t be. Unfortunately, businesses often have problems with people downloading music or movies at work or watching videos on social media. Not only is this a distraction from work, but it also eats up all of your bandwidth. It’s important that you have a clear policy in place about the use of personal devices in the office to avoid this.
Somebody Stealing Your Wifi
This is one that people don’t always consider but it can slow your wifi down a lot if the office next door is leeching off it. This is a particular problem when working from home because people don’t secure their router properly and one of the neighbors has easy access. Make sure that your router is password protected and encrypted and be careful about who you give access to. It’s especially important that you limit access to personal devices because this can open up weaknesses in the system.
When the wifi goes down in the office, it causes no end of problems. However, if you can avoid these common problems, you should be able to eliminate network connectivity problems.