We’ve spent the last week out and about, luckily enjoying the sunshine and making a difference to the connectivity of our clients.

What has completely surprised us is how many of our clients have in-house or contracted external IT support, yet these organisations aren’t prepared to create, design and install temporary or permanent Wi-Fi connectivity solutions outdoors.

Our work continues to increase in this sector – on the roofs, on top of portacabins and digging holes through fields – and its probably one of the most rewarding parts of our activity.

From our offices in London, Hampshire and Cardiff, we are able to hire out for a day, week or longer period, or sell permanently, a wide range of solutions that enable a complete IT network in a field.

Whether you need to get a point to point connection to an outlying barn, increase the network connectivity between buildings, or setup festival offices that can take advantage of every cloud app going through the power of satellite internet, we are quite prepared to get “down and dirty” in order to keep our clients happy.

Our IT installation services now include such technically challenging items such as spades, duct tape and steel toe capped boots, and we’re in the process of completing all the health and safety qualifications to ensure we can provide you with the best temporary internet and Wi-Fi solutions.

Plus we love a bit of mud.

We’ve worked with one of the biggest festivals in the world to ensure that each year they have fast and reliable Wi-Fi for their stages, fed from a dedicated and secure network. We have that particular challenge nailed so feel that we can say with absolute confidence that the Geekabit Wi-Fi team can help you take the internet to any event you are planning.

Are you a university planning a research project or dig that might take you into the wild Welsh moors for a fortnight? Don’t rely on 4G; why not see if Geekabit could help you out. We would love the chance to get our teeth into providing Wi-Fi at some more challenging locations.

Holding a party in a marquee next to a polo pitch in the posh part of Surrey? Make sure your guests can share every moment on their favourite social networks (without using up their data allowance for the next year) and let Geekabit install a temporary network.

Managing a three-day conference showcasing some incredible new computer software or sharing HD sales videos? Don’t be like the poor organiser of an EU ‘Digital Focus’ conference in Italy where the I.T. tech went on strike, leaving the unimpressed delegates with no internet at all… Geekabit will ensure you have fast reliable Wi-Fi to showcase products and impress your delegates.

So, in summary – we work anywhere. We can bring the internet to a field in Hampshire, a rooftop in London or a conference hall in Cardiff. Fast, reliable and secure Wi-Fi internet. Just pick up the phone and tell us what you need.

We were very interested to read Rotten Wi-Fi’s blog about the best airports in the world for Wi-Fi. It’s long been one of the Geekabit team’s biggest gripes when travelling: being stuck in a terminal building waiting for a flight, or worse waiting hours for a connecting flight, and the wireless network is sooo slow you could have found whatever you were after in a giant encyclopaedia. The sheer dismay when you have to engage with fellow travellers in order to stave off going crackers from sheer boredom can also put a downer on any Geek’s holiday!

Anyway, back to the all-important survey – out of the 185 airports worldwide that were assessed, the Rotten Wi-Fi team ranked Don Mueang Airport in Thailand as the best. The American airport of Bill and Hilary Clinton (yes, that is the official name) in Little Rock, Arkansas came in second place. Four other Thai airports made the top 10, proof that Thailand seems willing and able to provide Wi-Fi to waiting travellers better than any other country. 3 European airports made the top 20 list – Lennart Meri Tallinn Airport in Estonia, and Munich and Frankfurt in Germany.

Gatwick and Heathrow are nowhere to be seen, with no British airports making the top 20 list, so perhaps it’s time to start asking for some better wireless services in our major hubs. People have come to expect a quality Wi-Fi service, particularly when they are spending money to be there, and profits from airports certainly seem large enough to get a Wi-Fi project under way. It’s nearly holiday season here at Geekabit HQ and we’ll report back on our airport Wi-Fi experiences, once we have all returned from overseas jaunts.

It is generally true that fewer devices are currently working on 5GHz and causing interference, compared to 2.4GHz devices. But this is changing over time. It wasn’t that long ago everyone moved from 900 MHz to 2.4GHz to avoid interference, and this ‘band jumping’ effect will catch up with 5GHz eventually.

It’s not just wi-fi based devices that are operating at 5GHz, cordless phones, radar, perimeter sensors and digital satellites already are.

On Friday, we visited a client in London, and when conducting a survey found 30 devices working at 2.4GHz in the immediate area causing interference, but only 3 working at 5GHz. Interestingly, they were all using the same channel, so it made sense for our smart router to find a free channel to work from which has increased the strength of the network significantly in their offices in a crowded part of the city.

Changing the channel of your wi-fi router can often be one of the most effective fixes for wi-fi problems that you are experiencing.

When helping to fix wifi problems in London offices, we always try to get at least five channels away from the source of interference. So we use channels 1 and 11 quite a lot, but look for the clearest channels on the spectrum (difficult in a built-up area!).

Your cordless telephones, microwaves and wireless games console controllers can often be a large problem too, and most tend to interfere with channel 11 of your wi-fi router. The telephone solution here is to use a DECT 6.0 phone which works at 1.9GHz frequency, far enough away from the likely 2.4GHz your wifi works on.

Your wi-fi router may not be pretty, but don’t hide it away in the corner of your office or your shop. The ideal placement is centrally, high up. Make the router a feature of your home, or install between the floors or in the attic for the strongest possible signal.

If you’re looking for more wi-fi help in London, Surrey and Hampshire offices, please feel free to give us a call and we can assist with some free consultation.

Have you seen the amusing screenshot image that shows where someone has used their wireless network name to moan about their neighbour’s loud music? The neighbours have then used theirs to highlight the bad grammar in the first network name… We spotted it again this week, and it made us laugh as much as it did the first time we saw it, but it also made us think about wi-fi network names, and how they might impact your network security.

Many people don’t bother to change their network name or password at all, which leaves your network vulnerable to hackers, but what about those who change the network name to something to do with their address or personal details?

It might sound rather silly, but many people do this, not least because it means friends or family who drop by and want to connect to their network can easily identify which network is the correct one. But if you make it too easy for hackers to figure out which network belongs to which property, they can then use social engineering to get your password and gain access to your network.

If someone is gaining access to your wi-fi network and hacks into your computer, anything they then access on the internet could be traced back to you. So ensure you call the network something that doesn’t connect it to your property, and make sure you change the network password to something that couldn’t easily be guessed by looking at your Facebook page!

Here at Geekabit we just love to talk about wifi. Bad wi-fi, good wi-fi and where there is access to free wi-fi that you just would not expect to find it (there is wi-fi in some graveyards in the States…honestly), but this week we got thinking about public wi-fi right here in the UK. Research released recently has shown that the UK now has at least 1 public wi-fi spot for every 11 people… Pretty impressive growth considering the Office for National Statistics conducted a survey in 2011 which stated that 4.9 million people connected to the internet through wifi hotspots – there are now over 5 million BT hotspots in the UK – let alone from other providers!

Global hotspot numbers are expected to reach more than 340 million over the next three years, which (accounting for population growth) is the equivalent of 1 wi-fi hotspot for every 20 people on the planet. But the distribution will not be equal, of course – in the States this is thought to be 1 hotspot for every 4 people, in African states the average would be 1 for every 408.

A quick read of an online report from the BBC in 2011 on the proliferation of wi-fi in public places reminds us how far businesses have come, as we are reminded that The Cloud offered free wi fi in restaurants such as Pizza Express and Pret A Manger, but only when you were eating a full meal – no wi fi for those dropping in for a coffee! Progress has been made, and most places offer free wi fi to all customers, but those who have the most fans are the companies with the most straightforward log-in process… who wants to be faffing with too many details and passwords?

We end today’s mini round-up of wi-fi facts with a quote from the digital advisor to Boris Jonson in 2011 “Wi-fi is not something we would put money into. We put money into things with a direct application to public service, like transport.” No wonder private companies such as BT and Google are pioneering free wi-fi hotspots to the masses!