If you’re a small business not currently offering customers Wi-Fi then there might be some reasons standing in your way – Reasons that may actually be myths stopping you from connecting with your customers.

Do you think that it will be too costly, or too technical to run? These are just 2 of the reasons research found that stopped small business owners offering Wi-Fi, even though 3 out of 5 said they were planning to or considering it.

Of course, you’re warranted to feel hesitant, but here are 5 myths that could be standing in your way unneccessarily.

MYTH #1: We’re only a small business – There will be too much technical support required

This may have been true when Wi-Fi first came on the market – many technologies are pricey when they first begin, especially purchasing the equipment required. It also all seemed a lot more tricky to use. But it’s been around a while now, most people know the basics and it’s a lot simpler to get online than ever before. You don’t need to be particularly technologically savvy to get connected!

Most equipment is set up with wizards that guide you through the entire installation process. Quite literally – It’s plug and play!

If you’re still not confident in getting it set up yourself, then there are companies that can do this for you. Here at Geekabit we can take you from the planning stages through to installation, and then be that port of call if you were to need some fault-finding and fix any issues.

MYTH #2: Employees will be too easily distracted

Perhaps you think that as soon as there is Wi-Fi available, your employees will sit scrolling rather than working. But the opposite may actually be true, and they become more productive!

Wi-Fi is a convenience and a very useful tool – Employees can find information easier should they need to and thus perform their jobs better. There is often a business network available anyway, or they’ll have 3G or 4G on their smartphones so Wi-Fi wouldn’t be adding any additional distractions.

If you are still worried about productivity then you could prevent potential distractions by introducing rules such as no mobile phones during work hours.

MYTH #3: It’s too expensive to offer Wi-Fi

As with most things, price has tended to fluctuate. As we said earlier, the technical Wi-Fi equipment started off very expensive but has come down in price. Devices have pretty much halved in price!

It’s also possible to rent the devices required to offer private and public Wi-Fi hotspots.

Believing that offering Wi-Fi will be too expensive does seem to be the biggest perceived obstacle for small businesses, despite them wanting to offer the service.

Give us a call and one of our Wi-Fi experts can advise on what Wi-Fi options we can offer for you and your business – We operate out of London, Winchester and Cardiff. It’s much more affordable than you probably think. And the returns from enticing new customers could make it more than worth it!

Wi-Fi has been found to draw in customers and increase sales and repeat business. In particular, food and beverage businesses find higher sales per customer rates when they offer Wi-Fi.

On the bad side, it might actually go so far as to put customers off by not offering Wi-Fi.

MYTH 4: Customer misuse

Small business owners have previously been warned that offering internet access comes with a security risk.

What if customers engage in unlawful activities online using your internet?

There are however security measures that you can put in place. If you use an encryption service and place a password on your Wi-Fi network, then you can make sure that it is only shared with paying customers.

You could also limit the type of websites that customers can visit by blocking them for example, maybe you don’t want customers or employees to access gambling websites in your establishment, so you could block these.

MYTH #5: If I offer Wi-Fi, customers will loiter and block new business

Customers may well loiter if there is Wi-Fi available, but generally they are polite about it and tend to order something for the duration that they are there. They came in for a quick coffee, but got caught up in work emails, so they end up ordering another drink and a sandwich to tide them through lunch.

On the flip side, it may also depend on peak times. If it’s not a busy period, then customers may be more likely to linger but then when it starts to fill up with people, they’ll give up their table and be on there way,

Research has shown that there is a belief that by offering Wi-Fi, you will be encouraging customers to loiter and block areas of the business.

However, it would seem that actually the opposite is true, and that you could see increased sales.

And what about a doctor’s waiting room? No disrespect meant to the NHS as they do an amazing job, but how often do you go to the doctors and actually see the doctor at the right time? How often do you overhear a patient complaining at reception that they’ve been waiting 20 minutes and when will it be their turn? Offering Wi-Fi in this scenario could provide a perfect distraction to those kept waiting and even have an advantage over a GP surgery without that service. It could even encourage people to turn up in plenty of time for their appointment, as they know they’ll be able to stay in contact with the office or have a scroll through Instagram while they are waiting.

So there you go. 5 myths that could be standing in the way of your small business providing Wi-Fi!

Most importantly, offering this service seems to be a statement of professionalism – that you are up to date with technology and you want your customers to be happy.

To discuss how Geekabit could get your business online and keep your customers connected, give us a call on the numbers below and one of our Wi-Fi experts will be in touch with you.

Winchester – Tel. 01962 657 390

London – Tel. 0203 322 2443

Cardiff – Tel. 02920 676712

Our Mission here at Geekabit is to help people overcome the challenges of Wi-Fi at work, the daily frustrations their users face and to support people to use Wi-Fi better in their business.

Contact us now to see how we can help you. We have Wi-Fi experts working out of Winchester, London and Cardiff ready to help get you online.

Winchester – Tel. 01962 657 390

London – Tel. 0203 322 2443

Cardiff – Tel. 02920 676712

With thanks to https://www.tanaza.com/blog/5-good-reasons-to-invest-in-public-wi-fi/

Coming next year is the next generation wireless standard. Faster than 802.11ac, it will provide better performance in areas that get congested – Whether that’s in a stadium full of thousands of people, or in your home full of various devices.

Wi-Fi Has Version Numbers Now

The terminology 802.11ac might not mean much to you, and we wouldn’t blame you for getting confused between the different versions. But not only will 2019 see the introduction of a new Wi-Fi, it will also see version numbers replacing these easily interchangeable ones.
So instead of 802.11ac you’ll have Wi-Fi 5. Much more user friendly!

The versions of Wi-Fi you’ll be seeing are:
802.11n will be Wi-Fi 4, released in 2009.
802.11ac will be Wi-Fi 5, released in 2014.

The new version, Wi-Fi 6, is due to be released in 2019 – It’s technical name will be 802.11ax.

Hopefully, these new version numbers will be seen in software so that it’s clear how new and fast the network you are connecting to is. The Wi-Fi Alliance (yes there is a Wi-Fi Alliance!) are encouraging this so you may start to see these numbers on your smartphone, laptop or tablet soon enough!

You’re pretty unlikely to come across the older versions of Wi-Fi nowadays as they are not widely in use, but if you were to officially brand them using the new version numbers they would be:
Wi-Fi 1 – 802.11b, (1999)
Wi-Fi 2 – 802.11a (1999)
Wi-Fi 3 – 802.11g (2003)

Faster Wi-Fi

Obviously, with each new Wi-Fi standard comes a faster connection and thus data transfer speed. So if you’re using Wi-Fi 6 instead of Wi-Fi 5, based on the use of a router with one deivce, you would be seeing a maximum speed increase of 40%.

This is done through more efficient data encoding which results in higher throughput. It’s the same radio waves but more data is being packed into it. The chips that encode and decode the signals can handle the extra work because they keep getting more powerful.

Generally, most Wi-Fi is on a 5GHz network as it gets less interference, but 2.4GHz is better at getting trough solid objects so it’s good to know the new standard will increase speeds on these networks too.

Longer Battery Life

Perhaps one of the most exciting new features, especially for those of us that constantly have a phone in one hand, is the new “target wake time” (TWT) feature.

Basically, the access point talks to your device (e.g. your smartphone) and tells it precisely when to wake up its Wi-Fi radio and when to put it to sleep, making sure it’s only ‘awake’ to receive the next transmission. A this will mean that the Wi-Fi radio can be in ‘asleep’ mode more, this then in turn conserves power and thus means that your smartphone, laptop, tablet and any other Wi-Fi enables device should have longer battery life.

Recently we keep coming back to the “Internet of Things” and this blog is no different – These typically low-powered devices that connect via Wi-Fi will also benefit from the TWT feature.

Better Performance in Crowded Areas

As I’m sure you are well aware, Wi-Fi tends to get clogged up when you’re in a busy place with everyone trying to use one of their Wi-FI enabled devices. Think stadium, hotel or even a busy office with employees each having multiple devices connecting to the Wi-Fi. The likelihood is that it will be running pretty slow.

Thankfully, this is something else that the new Wi-Fi 6 (or 802.11ax for the old schoolers), will help with, by incorporating new technologies. Intel are shouting from the rooftops about how each user’s average speed will improve by ‘at least 4 times’ in congested areas with loads of connected devices, with Wi-Fi 6.

Great in public places and perhaps even greater if you live in an apartment building, or even a home with lots of people and lots of devices.

But How Does Wi-Fi 6 Battle This Congestion?

Good question, that I bet you’re wondering. There are various features that make up “11ax,” now Wi-Fi 6, but to be honest you don’t really need to know all the ins and outs.

In simple terms: A new Wi-Fi 6 access point with a Wi-Fi 6 device is going to work better.

And here’s the technical bit: It all comes down to OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access). The new Wi-Fi 6 will be able to divide a wireless channel into a large number of subchannels, which can then each carry data intended for a different device. Basically, the Wi-Fi access point can talk to more devices at once.

Here comes another acronymn – The new riderless standard also has improved MIMO—Multiple In/Multiple Out. This allows the access point to talk to multiple devices at once using multiple antennas. While this is something Wi-Fi 5 could do, in that the access point was able to talk to devices at the same time, what it couldn’t do was allow those devices to respond at the same time. An improved version of multi-user or MU-MIMO that lets devices respond to the wireless access point at the same time is seen in Wi-Fi 6.

Another way it will improve performance in congested areas is ‘spatial frequency re-use’. Wireless access points may be transmitting on the same channel in close proximity to one another. Usually, the radio listens and waits for a clear signal before replying. With Wi-Fi 6, wireless access points near each other can be configured to have different Basic Service Set (BSS) “colors.” This “color” is just a number between 0 and 7. If a device is checking whether the channel is all clear and listens in, it may notice a transmission with a weak signal and a different “color.” It can then ignore this signal and transmit anyway without waiting.

What To Look For

I’m sure some of you are itching to know what to look for when it comes to buying a new device and how to make sure it is Wi-Fi 6 certified. Thankfully, you won’t need to be wracking your brain whether it’s 802.11ac or 802.11ax that you’re looking for. The device manufacturer can label it with the latest standard of by stating it has “Wi-Fi 6” or “Wi-Fi 5.”

Devices that have gone through the Wi-Fi Alliance’s certification process will also start to have a “Wi-Fi 6 Certified” logo which will be really helpful.
These Wi-Fi 6 routers should hopefully support WPA3 for easier secure connections to Wi-Fi networks, too, but WPA3 support is not required.

We’ve heard the what and the how, so when?

The final standard isn’t actually finished yet so even though there are manufacturers who have announced that their router, for example, will incorporate some Wi-Fi 6 technologies, they can’t supprot the final standard yet.

Similarly, you won’t yet find any Wi-Fi 6 client devices, either.

The Wi-Fi Alliance expects the standard to be finalized and hardware to be released sometime next year.
To be honest, it’s not something you really have to even think about. When it’s finalised, new routers, smartphones, laptops, tablets and other Wi-Fi enables devices will just have it built in as standard.

Just remember that as with any Wi-Fi technology, to gain the advantages of the latest generation both the sender and the receiver need to support it.
So it’s no good having a smartphone that supports Wi-Fi 6 if the router or access point it’s connected to doesn’t. Similarly, if you have a Wi-Fi 6 router, but your laptop only supports Wi-Fi 5 then it will only operate in Wi-Fi 5, but could operate in Wi-Fi 6 if your enabled smartphone was also connected.

Version Numbers are Great But Aren’t Mandatory

What we think is great is the change in version numbers. It’s just a lot simpler for all, and makes the world of Wi-Fi easier for ‘normal’ people to understand. Unfortunately, the Wi-Fi Alliance can’t force companies to use these new version numbers, but we’re hoping many will get on board and start using Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 6 to label their devices really soon.

With thanks to https://www.howtogeek.com/368332/wi-fi-6-what%E2%80%99s-different-and-why-it-matters/

Imagine this. Your team move to a larger office and on moving day, discover a bundle of rough-cut unterminated ehternet cables on one end, ripped-out punch-down jacks on the other, and no Wi-Fi!

You haven’t got an IT team so who you gonna call? Not ghostbusters! You could call us here at Geekabit to come out and fix your new premises Wi-Fi woes and get your office online super quick.

Or if you’re lucky enough to have your own in-house software engineer, they might be able to get you a reliable network running fast.

Either way, here are some suggestions that could help you get back online.

Use one SSID for automatic roaming

Multiple access points and multiple bands (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz) should share the same Service Set Identifier. They must have exactly the same security settings (same password, exact same mode, i.e. WPA2-PSK Personal) for clients to be able to automatically roam between APs.
In simple terms, use one Wi-Fi network and make it easy for users to connect within overlapping coverage ranges so that they don’t have to manually connect and disconnect (this would cause a bad user experience).

Statically assign Wi-Fi channels

Automatic Wi-Fi channel selection is problematic because the AP can change channels whenever it likes, which causes a global disruption in service for connected clients.

Statically assign different access points to different channels.

Back to interfering neighbours (they come up a lot don’t they?) Use a tool (such as the Wireless Diagnostics app built into macOS) to identify channels that aren’t in use by the people next door – This will avoid unnecessary interference.
Use non-overlapping channels. On 2.4 GHz, you should only be choosing channels 1, 6, or 11. On 5 GHz, it’s not quite so easy, but any channel number is OK and non-overlapping if you’re following the below advice about 20 MHz bandwidth and avoiding DFS frequencies below.

Use narrow bandwidths (20 MHz only)

If you’re in a large office building, force your AP radios to use only 20 MHz bandwidth on both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands. (If you’re in a more suburban or rural setting and have few other transmitters in radio range, you may be able to increase this.)

Wider radio bandwidths of 40, 80, or 160 MHz definitely increase the maximum theoretical throughput — for example if you have only a single client and a single AP in a patch of rural farmland. Don’t get much farmland in London though! In a real-world noisy radio environment, like many of our city based clients, a wider bandwidth also increases the probability of a radio packet loss, because a collision with a competing transmission on any sub-channel corrupts the entire signal — whether due to random noise or interference from another transmitter.

Collisions are incredibly expensive as both transmitters have to back off and retry sending the packet again. In a noisy environment it may take a while before the wider bandwidth channel is entirely clear again, and devices may spend yet more time negotiating their channel bandwidths up and down dynamically.

Another way to think about this is in terms of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Using a wider bandwidth spreads the same signal power over a wider slice of spectrum, so there’s lower power spectral density (W/Hz), and higher total noise integrated over the wider frequency band.

Optimize your user experience for minimal packet loss, rather than maximum theoretical throughput.

Avoid DFS channels

On the 5 GHz band, there are a set of extra channels which are made available using Dynamic Frequency Selection (DFS). This is a complicated process that involves clients listening for whether weather radars are using those frequencies, and changing channels if they are.

The problem is that, by law, any detected interference must trigger the AP to stop transmitting immediately and go to a listen-only mode to find a new, unused channel. Obviously, this silencing behavior provides for bad user experience.

To compound this problem, DFS channels may not be clearly marked on your AP’s configuration! The macOS Wireless Diagnostics tool shows the DFS status in the Info pane.

If most of that sounded a lot like technical jargon; just avoid using channels 52 through 144 on the 5 GHz band.

Learn to crimp and punch ethernet

If you’ve just moved into new premises or are setting up a new Wi-Fi network, you will likely find existing ethernet cables running through the walls and floors of the building, but they might all be unterminated on both ends.

For male cable ends: Buy an RJ-45 crimping tool and a bag of connectors. Cleanly cut the cable end. Trim away about 3/4” of the outer jacket without nicking the wires inside. Un-twist the twisted pairs and straighten the wires. Order them in a row in the correct order (orange-white, orange, green-white, blue, blue-white, green, brown-white, brown) with the wires facing toward the ceiling. Trim them all flush in a single cut. Slide the plug onto the wires with the latching tab facing away from you until the wires are flush with the end of the plug. Insert into the crimping tool, and crimp firmly. Double check the color ordering, that all pins are all seated puncturing down through the wire insulation, that the strain relief is on the cable jacket, and that the pins and plastic are undamaged.

For female keystone jacks: Trim away the outer jacket. Un-twist the twisted pairs. Bend them at approximately a 90 degree angle to reach the appropriate teeth on the left or right sides of the jack. Use a punch-down tool (or even a small flat-head screwdriver) to push each wire down firmly until the teeth engage, puncturing through the insulation and grabbing the wire.

Both of these skills take some physical practice and finesse. Don’t be disappointed if you don’t manage to produce working cables on your first try!

Always use EIA-586-B color coding

If you search for the specific mapping of wire colors to pins for ethernet cables, you’ll find two color-code standards: EIA-568-A and EIA-568-B. These color codes are also usually marked on female keystone jacks.

Always use B. It’s the de-facto standard. Never use A unless you’re intentionally making a cross-over cable, which is effectively deprecated in today’s gigabit Auto MDI-X world, which automatically crosses over when needed within the device.
Definitely don’t invent your own color ordering. It’s important for signal integrity to keep particular twisted wire pairs together.

Always test for gigabit

Ethernet ports autodetect whether to use 100 or 1000 Mbps when they’re first connected. Counting both ends of a cable, a working 100BASE-T (100 Mbps) connection requires only 8 of the 16 physical connections to be made successfully. A working 1000BASE-T (gigabit) connection requires all 16 of 16!

If you’re new to making cables — or even if you’re experienced — it’s easy to have 1 not-quite-right connection every now and then. If you don’t explicitly test, you’ll end up with a seems-OK-but-actually-degraded user experience.

You can check this with something like ifconfig | grep media, or you can look at the LEDs on some ethernet switches.

Note: if you have wireless clients connecting to an AP that seem to be maxing out internet speed tests almost exactly at the ~90-100 Mbps level, you probably have a bad ethernet connection to the AP.

Identify power users and provide a wired option

There’s likely 2 types of internet power users. On one end you’ll have the big power users (like engineers) who have extremely large bulk downloads. On the other end you’ll have communication centric workers that rely on things like voice and video conferencing.

The difference between these on the spectrum is throughput vs latency. Big power users like engineers with large downloads place more importance on throughput. Users that are trying to make a video conference call put more importance on latency.

For the big power users, make wired gigabit ethernet easily available For example, you could wire up every engineer’s desk plus all conference and call rooms and distribute a stockpile of USB-C gigabit ethernet adapters. Not only does this ensure big power users a trouble free network, it also lessens traffic from the shared radio bands. Win-win!

Physically protect networking equipment

It sounds silly, but a fibre-to-ethernet transceiver, primary router, and gigabit ethernet switch can be easily located in a lovely cabinet that to other office staff looks really rather tempting to use for general office storage. But this is a no-share zone unfortunately! No reams of paper in here please.

Be that person that makes a sign and posts it! It’s okay to notify people that this is fragile, important equipment — not a general storage area.
Repeat offenders could always be punished with the removal of said Wi-Fi…

Use static IPs for infrastructure

Assign static IPs for infrastructure like access points. This makes them easy to reach when reconfiguration is needed, and avoids them having to pull their own addresses dynamically.

Have a large enough DHCP pool

In a busy office, especially in today’s times of hot desking and remote working, it’s likely that you’ll have a team of permanent employees based in the office as well as those who rotate round. If each person at a desk has 2 devices with them (laptop and phone at least!) then the number if IP’s can easily sky rocket.

Many routers are configured with a fairly small IP pool allocated to DHCP out of the box. This will cause issues if the DHCP pool is exhausted. I configured our primary router to reserve 200 IPs for DHCP, leaving us about ~50 for static IP assignments. We use a 1-day DHCP lease time so unused addresses can be returned to the pool fairly quickly, while not requiring DHCP renewals during the workday.

If you have multiple APs, make sure only a single device (usually your primary router which is doing NAT) is configured as a DHCP server.

Label and document everything

It makes a lot of sense – For you, and future users – to individually number and label ethernet cables with permanent marker.

You could also create a shared document detailing configuration settings for all APs and routers, screenshots, static IP assignments, wireless channel map, and upstream provider support contact info.
Be your future friend and do this! Then if you do run into any problems they are more easily solved.

Stick to these suggestions and you’ll likely have a trouble free network – And a happy life free of disgruntled end users. What you want is excellent speedtest results for both wired and wireless users, as well as a network that you can reply on.

There is a lot of technical jargon in this so I have to go back to where I started and say… Who you gonna call? Call us here at Geekabit and leave the Wi-Fi deployment to us. We’ll get your network up and running and your office online faster than you can say slimer!

We all know about smart devices – Phones, tablets, watches, AI gadgets for the home… The list is getting longer. We are even starting to make our home smart, with the ability to turn on the heating or lights via an app before we get home.

The network called the “internet of things” is ever expanding, with billions of objects now having wireless sensors of their environments.

As a society we are moving more and more towards connecting all of our objects to the internet – even our furniture and office supplies. Thus, the technology that enables us to do this is scaling up.

A new fabrication method developed by researchers at Purdue University and the University of Virginia involves makes tiny, thin-film electronic circuits that are peelable from a surface – Basically, smart stickers.

Not only does the technique eliminate several manufacturing (and thus costs – win!) but it also allows any object that it is stuck to, to be controlled through an app and sense its environment. That is one high-tech sticker.

In a paper recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers start to demonstrate the wireless communiccation capabilities these stickers could provide on various objects.

Purdue assistant professor of biomedical and mechanical engineering Chi Hwan Lee tells how a sensor sticker could be customised to be stuck onto a drone and go into environments too dangerous for a person – His example was to detect a gas leak.

We mentioned earlier how the method used her cut down manufacturing processes. Lee’s new “transfer printing” method is a new fabrication technique that means that the damage that occurs from high temperatures and etching in standard manufacturing are avoided, meaning only one silicon wafer is used rather than one each time.

Today, most electronic circuits are built individually on a silicon “wafer,” a flat and rigid substrate. Although it can withstand the high temperatures and chemical etching that are used to remove the circuits from the wafer, it gets damaged which means that a new wafer is needed for each manufacturing process.

Using Lee’s method, only a single wafer is used to build a nearly infinite number of thin films holding electronic circuits. These can then be peeled off at room temperature with just water. Energy saving and lower cost!

A ductile metal layer, such as nickel, inserted between the electronic film and the silicon wafer, makes the peeling possible in water. Virtually any object can then be granted electronic features by the thin-film electronics being trimmed and pasted onto any surface.

For example, you could place one of the stickers on a standard flower pot, and then enable that flower pot to sense temperature changes that could affect the plant within’s growth. Pretty clever!

What kind of sticker would you use and on what object? I think I’d stick one to the kettle so that it could switch itself on before I even get up on the morning.

This technology holds a non-provisional U.S. patent. The work was supported by the Purdue Research Foundation, the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL-S-114-054-002), the National Science Foundation (NSF-CMMI-1728149) and the University of Virginia.

For more information head to https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180716164508.htm

A YouTube video is available at https://youtu.be/8tNrPVi4OGg.

This is our third and final blog in our Ubiquiti UniFi series. We’ve looked at what it is, as well as what the brains are behind Ubiquiti UniFi are – This time we’ll see the other elements to it are.

We have dedicated Wi-Fi experts working out of 3 locations across England, one of them being Cardiff in Wales, with a very varied client base. If this article gets you thinking that you could do with Ubiquiti UniFi for your business, our contact details can be found at the end of this blog.

So last week it was brains, this week it starts with the bread and butter…

The UAP-AC Range

UAP AC Range is Ubiquiti UniFi’s setup’s bread and butter. They might look like a UFO but don’t worry, it’s not aliens invading our hotels, universities and conference centres – It’s just a Ubiquiti UniFi invasion for the better connected business.

If you’re able to run a network cable to each of your devices, then this is the UFO, I mean device, for you. INn an ideal world, you would get best results from the following…

To stop bottlenecks and low latency, any device that is connecting to your network would need to have the least amount of ‘hops’ before it gets to the internet.

This is what the UAP ACs do. There is also various devices which cater to different needs. These include factors such as range, throughput, and bandwidth.

The four main devices in the UAP-AC Range are as follows:

• UAP-AC-Lite: Compact
• UAP-AC-LR: Long range
• UAP-AC-Pro: More throughput
• UAP-AC-HD: Most throughput, MU-MIMO

If you’re not able to run cables to each of your devices, then Ubiquiti UniFi Mesh may be able to help you.

Ubiquiti UniFi Mesh

If you need Wi-Fi in places that are tricky (or impossible) to reach with a cable, then Mesh networks are great. What’s brilliant about Mesh points is that they communicate wirelessly with each other to route traffic from connected clients.

image 7

The quality of the signal affects the way that traffic is routed. If you look at the diagram above, you’ll see that there a few mesh point options for the smartphone to connect to.

So there’s either Mesh Point 3 or Mesh Point 4. You might say that the smartphone is closer to Mesh Point 4, however, it actually has an additional hop to make before it can get to the internet and you want as few hops as possible.

In blog 2 we talked about the brains of the operation – The controller. The type of logic that decides which mesh point is best is just what the controller will handle for you.

Performance takes a hit for every hop that’s made. If running a cable really isn’t possible then the issue is solved with UniFi Mesh.

Unified Security Gateway (USG)

Looking less like a UFO and more like a familiar piece of internet kit is the Unified Service Gateway. While it looks like your conventional router, the USG does all of that and then some.

This devices functionality includes:

• DHCP
• QoS
• VPN
• Firewall
• Deep Packet Inspection

WAN Failover

You can either use your own router alongside UniFi, or you can cmoplete the Ubiquiti UniFi family and use the USG to let you manage all of the above through the UniFi Controller interface. Despite it being a modular system, you can control all of your devices through one single interface.

Deep Packet Inspection (DPI)

Also worth looking at, especially for your network administrator’s sanity, is the DPI. This can provide loads of information about your network. It examines data coming through your network and can even help in the detection of spam or viruses.

You can access the information via app, protocol or on a per-user basis. This kind of information can be invaluable, especially in shaping your network.

This enables a much better user experience overall. An example of this in action would be if you got people complaining that there was a slow network – Your netwok administrator could look at the DPI statistics and see where the most traffic is.

Conclusion

Over the 3 blogs, we’ve covered a lot on Ubiquiti UniFi and the many benefits it could provide for your business and network.

As with everything in life, it’s not perfect but really the main con would just be how complicated it can be to set up (although with organisations like us here at Geekabit, this can be done for you!).

The benefits more than outweigh the cons:

• They are scalable, stable and customizable
• Ubiquiti have a demo site where you can view all of the controller functionality
• There are a wealth of resources and support should you need it, via Ubiquiti forums and Ubiquiti subreddit
• Ubiquiti UniFi also has integrated products that can all work together like cameras and VoIP phones.

If this has caught your interest and you’re keen to find out how using Ubiquiti UniFi could help you, get in contact with our Cardiff based Wi-Fi Experts and find out how we could help with your installation.

If you need assistance installing, fixing, extending or hiring business Wi-Fi networks in or around Cardiff, our team are here to support you. You can email info@geekabit.co.uk or call 02920 676712.

With thanks to https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/ubiquiti-unifi-wifi-explained/ for the images. Find out more there.

At the end of Part 1 we looked at what Ubiquiti UniFi was, how this type of network differed from what you have at home, and the benefits of this in a business environment.

We work out of 3 locations in England, one of them being Winchester in Hampshire, with a very varied client base.

This blog will focus on the controller and UniFI Cloud Key.

UniFi Controller

This is the brains behind the whole operation – The Ubiquiti UniFi Controller. In essence it’s a piece of software that enables you to store all of the settings for your network. Impressively, this software is free of charge (yes, free! Unlike it’s competitiors…). It can also run on nearly any operating system.

What makes it even easier for network installers like us here at Geekabit, is that it can be installed in the cloud. This means that many different sites can be maintained from one single interface.

The controller can be thought of as a designer. You use the software to design your network, and then the controller looks for the devices that you’ve plugged in to make it happen. This means that you can configure things such as DHCP, IP ranges, wireless networks and much more.

When you plug in a UniFi device, they can be adopted by the controller, and thus the programmed settings will be pushed to that device.

The convenience of this doesn’t end there – It provides great functionality. For example, you can use a map in the controller where you can upload plans of your building(s). In this map you can draw walls, adding in to it such things as scale and wall thickness which enables it to to work out coverage and signal strength from where you place your UniFi devices.

If this isn’t something you would want running all the time, you can switch off the controller software apart from in the following cases:

1. Changes to network or device settings
2. Using the guest portal
3. Collecting Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) statistics
4. Using Ubiquiti UniFi Mesh
5. Upgrading device firmwareSome of these will be touched upon in Part 3, but essentially if you’re not using any of these, you can turn off your UniFi controller.

Perhaps one of the most useful things about this software is that the controller sports an amazing live chat function that has an actual real life human being waiting to talk to you on on the other end! What’s more helpful than that?

UniFi Cloud Key and PoE

One of the more unique devices in the UniFI family, this isn’t something used to start the internet (nor is it a stick of gum!). Designed specifically for the UniFi Controller, the UniFi Cloud Key and PoE is low powered with a Linux operating system on it.

Perhaps you didn’t want the controller running all the time because you’re mindful of the environment, however this worthy little contender means that you can have the controller running but don’t need to leave your workstation switched on. It’s special function is that it can be powered entirely using Power Over Ethernet (PoE).

What’s great about the UniFi range is that the majority of devices are PoE enabled. This means that they gets its network and power over a single cable. This means that there is less hassle when setting it up as you don’t need to run power as well as network cables to each device. As these switches are managed rather than the regular unmanaged switches, they are slightly more expensive but you can see why.

In order to prevent you forking out extra money fora PoE switch, UniFi does supply power injectors with some of their devices. While UniFi devices do adhere to the PoE standards, some of their legacy devices use passive PoE. It would be wise to ensure you check that your switch and UniFi device support the same PoE standard before purchasing. If not, that’s where the PoE injector comes in.

In our third and final blog on this subject, we’ll be looking at further elements including UAP AC Range as well as concluding what we know about Ubiquiti UniFi and how it could help your business network.

If this has caught your interest and you’re keen to find out how using Ubiquiti UniFi could help you, get in contact with our Winchester, Hampshire based Wi-Fi Experts and find out how we could help with your installation.

If you need assistance installing, fixing, extending or hiring business Wi-Fi networks in Winchester or around Hampshire, our team are here to support you. You can email info@geekabit.co.uk or call 01962 657 390.

With thanks to https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/ubiquiti-unifi-wifi-explained/ for the images. Find out more there.

This article will be the first in a series of 3 blogs on Ubiquiti and UniFi and how a business installation of this can aid your business. We work out of 3 locations in England, one of them being London with a very varied client base. In fact, Steve spent his Sunday there last weekend getting a hipster coffee shop in Central London back online!

Wi-Fi has become absolutely essential for everyday network needs in both a consumer and business sense. It’s useful for it’s convenience but occasionally very irritating as well, usually when it doesn’t give the functionality that is required.

The standard consumer devices are fine if you’re only running a few devices in your home, and you have little to no interference from neighbours. Particularly in a business environment, there can be issues and conflicting devices that make things tricky.

The solution may just be Ubiquiti UniFi.

The Benefits of Ubiquiti UniFi

The market for devices is varied with differing prices, but Ubiquiti UniFi have a place in the market with plenty of devices to choose from.
They can cover wider areas, are capable of being customised to meet individual business needs, and thus are a little more expensive than your standard consumer hardware.

The diagram below demonstrates the typical home.

Generally, this type of consumer will have one device to do various jobs in a small home network (modem, router, switch, and WAP).

In the home this is absolutely fine, and will likely work well over just a few devices, however in a larger building with multiple floors and more network traffic, a one-man-band of this nature isn’t going to cut it.

The next diagram illustrates how a Ubiquiti UniFi can solve problems for a larger network, by dividing the above roles into several devices.

This enables it to cover a wider area and prevent faults from happening.

We’ve spoken about access points in previous blogs; by having more than one around a large network, should one stop working it means only that point will need replacing without impacting the entire network.

In our next blog on this subject, we’ll be looking at how these elements all fit together.

But in the meantime, if this has caught your interest and you’re keen to find out how using Ubiquiti UniFi could help your business, get in contact with our London Wi-Fi Experts and find out how we could help with your installation.

If you need assistance installing, fixing, extending or hiring business Wi-Fi networks in London, our team of are here to support you. You can email info@geekabit.co.uk or call 0203 322 2443.

With thanks to https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/ubiquiti-unifi-wifi-explained/ for the images. Find out more there.