Situation

In a modern office environment, users require seamless connectivity across the building. However, when staff from a global consultancy firm moved into their new London office, it quickly became clear the WiFi infrastructure was underperforming.

Employees and guests were experiencing difficulties connecting to the WiFi and there were many ‘black spots’. Also, the throughput speed of the WiFi was very poor, especially when compared to the wired infrastructure. This was having an adverse impact on the productivity of office staff and visiting contractors. The poor WiFi infrastructure was also detrimental to employee satisfaction – staff were complaining that they were unable to use the WiFi infrastructure reliably.

WhiteSpider – having been recommended by a US technology partner – was approached by the consultancy firm to assess the current infrastructure and improve the WiFi. WhiteSpider’s experts, having worked with enterprise wireless networks for over 20 years, had the experience to recommend and implement the necessary changes. The company’s initial assessment ascertained that:

• The original, predictive WiFi survey had been completed on an empty building, with some partition walls not built. Once the refurbishment was complete, the furniture, walls, equipment and people significantly changed the building’s interior characteristics.
• Many of the existing Access Points (AP) had been mounted close to exposed metal beams. This was causing problems with signal reflection and interference.
• The WiFi infrastructure had been designed and configured to be used for light web and email browsing. It transpired, however, that the WiFi was being used to run heavy, production workloads that is was not optimised to support.

WhiteSpider approached this project using its ea⁴ framework, a proven methodology that standardises the delivery of IT services. This 4-stage approach can be flexibly adapted to fit projects of differing scopes and scales. During this engagement, the emphasis was on the ‘Audit’ and ‘Alignment’ parts of the framework.

Audit

Once the consulting firm’s business objectives were understood, WhiteSpider started by building a detailed knowledge of the environment and the capabilities of the existing wired and wireless infrastructure. This assessment was undertaken in three stages:

• An analysis of the physical environment was undertaken, identifying construction materials, office layout, location and the mounting of Aps. Any objects that could have a significant impact on performance were noted.
• A Radio Frequency (RF) analysis of the building was carried out to create a comprehensive picture of the wireless coverage across each floor. This analysis included Dynamic Channel Allocation (DCA), Transmit Power Control (TPC) and Coverage Hole Detection, which all provide mechanisms for managing the performance and power delivered to wireless channels. The survey also identified the cell overlaps to understand potential redundancy and over-provisioning.
• A full spectrum analysis was recorded at various times of the day which delivered a picture of the RF environment. This revealed numerous different signals from mobile phones, microwave ovens and WiFi signals from nearby buildings. These were causing interference and needed to be accounted for in the updated WLAN design.

WhiteSpider, with their deep knowledge of WLAN technologies, worked alongside the company’s IT team to assess the existing design and implement changes that transformed user experience and enabled the use of high-bandwidth applications. WhiteSpider undertook a detailed assessment of the WLAN environment and, after implementing the recommended changes, users were able to reliably access the WiFi for ‘production’ capabilities.

The improved WiFi infrastructure helped the consultancy business ensure:

• More reliable WiFi infrastructure – the WiFi coverage was far more consistent and the throughput speeds increased
• Improved productivity
• Improved network performance
• Improved employee satisfaction