Rotherham City Council contacted Performance Networks to conduct a wireless site survey covering their Riverside House venue. The coverage area in this building spanned six floors with three wings per floor.
The Remit
The council had two different sets of WiFi hardware onsite. Cisco & Cisco Meraki. The Cisco access points provided their staff network & the Cisco Meraki provided guest access.
The Survey
Performance Networks started to investigate the reported issues by performing a full WiFi site survey using Ekahau Site survey/Spectrum Analysis along with Wireshark captures.
This provided the client with a full report detailing the current network configuration and performance along with the effects both the physical and Radio Frequency environments were having. The WiFi survey used the building floor plans to create highly accurate graphical visualisations of the current network and any issues, including coverage heat maps, data rates, channel bandwidth and channel overlap.
The Process
Performance Networks engineers then analysed the data from the WiFi survey to provide a list of specific recommendations to remedy the issues and further optimise the WiFi network‘s performance.
The WiFi equipment used was high-quality enterprise-grade, and the client had invested significantly in a solid network infrastructure. However, environmental factors, configuration, and access point placement affected the wireless network.
Performance networks listed all the required configurations to bring the WiFi network up to speed. This included optimal power, data rates, and channel sizing, amongst other things.
The Results
We provided detailed, data-driven recommendations to optimise power settings, data rates, and channel sizing, significantly improving the network’s reliability and performance across all six floors. The enhanced configuration ensured connectivity for staff and guests, using the high-quality Cisco and Cisco Meraki hardware to its full potential and meeting the Council’s connectivity needs.
