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Wi-Fi Advice
Cardiff Wi-Fi Help in South Wales

We are Geekabit and we provide Wi-Fi help in South Wales from our offices in Cardiff.

We support business Wi-Fi helping to fix broken Wi-Fi in South Wales, for businesses that are suffering from issues which may be causing their business to slow down – through dropped connections, misfunctioning VOIP telephony, slow internet speeds and Wi-Fi issues at different times of day.

We work with organisations across South Wales, including offices, manufacturers, warehousing and hotels where there are Wi-Fi issues.

Why work with us?
Whilst there are a number of companies – such as electricians, old BT phone engineers and a variety of small residential computer companies, when you have a true Wi-Fi issue in your business, it is time to call in the Wales’ specialist Wi-Fi Consultants.

Using our skills, extensive field experience and Wi-Fi qualifications, we have the ability to quickly diagnose and fix the Wi-Fi issues at your workplace, and will work with your IT teams in order to provide a resolution. Indeed, we often just diagnose the issues and provide advice to your existing suppliers on how to fix it themselves – we’re flexible.

Wi-Fi for Events in Wales
We provide event hire for Wi-Fi and Mobile Broadband for events in Wales from Cardiff. With the growing field of social media marketing, there is a need for attendees to immediately check in, share video and post on their feeds showing what they are up to.
In often rural areas, we have the skills and equipment for Wi-Fi event hire for large numbers of guests, helping to provide a solid internet reliable internet connection.

We also do this for press conferences, concerts, festivals and sporting events in Wales.

Planning a Wi-Fi network in Wales?
Our Welsh Wi-Fi Planning and Design service offers you the chance to ensure full network coverage for your users, look at the future capacity of your network and support your installation team in specifying the right equipment.

Using a consultative approach, we work with your IT teams, end users, facilities management and construction teams to understand the requirements of your future installation and perform site visits to plan the most future-proofed Wi-Fi network for your business in Wales.

We use the latest software to build predictive models of your future Wi-Fi network, whether your building exists or not, helping you to ensure a perfect Wi-Fi network that saves time and money.

Wales Wi-Fi Provider for Wi-Fi Installs
We won’t lie – anyone can install a box on the ceiling and plug it in. But installing a successful Wi-Fi network requires a great deal more thought and expertise.

But do you have the experience to recognise the exact positioning of Wi-Fi access points and network cables can have a huge impact on your network coverage, speed and capacity?

We visit many sites throughout Wales from our Cardiff office, where the main signal is pointed in the opposite direction of the users, interrupted by metal ceilings or access points are dangling from their own power cables. Many IT companies in Wales do not have the daily experience of bad Wi-Fi to understand what they are doing is often damaging the very problem they were there to fix.

Contact Wales Wi-Fi Experts
If you need assistance installing, fixing, extending or hiring business Wi-Fi networks in Wales, our team of Cardiff-based Wi-Fi experts is here to support you. You can email info@geekabit.co.uk or call 02920 676712.

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Wi-Fi Advice
The Farce of Broadband Advertising and better ‘Wi-Fi’ boxes

Recently there has been a massive increase in the TV, Radio and Online advertisements from Broadband providers saying they’ve got the best Wi-Fi.

Indeed, they might have the most strongest signal they’ve ever had, claim to reach further in your house than they previously did or cover an entire mansion. But they are misleading people significantly into thinking that by swapping broadband provider, they will solve the Wi-Fi issues in their house.

We’ve seen this with a number of clients recently, tricked into changing their provider, and lo and behold, they are still suffering the same issues. They go away thinking that by changing provider, often locking themselves into 18 month contracts, that all their problems will be solved by a shiny new box.

Indeed advertising watchdogs have found that companies such as BT shouldn’t be doing this (click here for the link).

What will it do?
For anyone suffering with Wi-Fi issues, changing your broadband provider will mainly only help if the issue is with your broadband.
There’s already enough confusion over whether it’s your broadband or your Wi-Fi that’s the problem, with many users getting confused by both these terms. The advertising for the broadband industry does nothing to help this.

What’s the problem then?
Often the problem has nothing to do with their broadband, it is more likely to do with the wireless environment that the router sits in.
Wrong placement in the house, people not manually setting up the Wi-Fi from the broadband router, expecting it to be like the adverts and to have a great signal around a property the size of Buckingham Place – it just doesn’t happen.

If the true problem is Wi-Fi, I’m afraid the solution is to fix the Wi-Fi issue at hand. Changing a box for another one with a lot of false marketing promises, that won’t do the trick. But by the time you’re signed into another 18 months, that’s when you’ll realise.

What can I do about it?
There’s lots of advice across this site that explains how to make the Wi-Fi better, and we are pleased to be able to offer this as one of our core services. By using technical industry software, we can provide on-site Wi-Fi Site Surveys that help to diagnose your issues.

Please contact our team by emailing info@geekabit.co.uk or by calling one of our offices.

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Technology Wi-Fi Advice
KRACK Attack – Internet Panics Over Big Wi-Fi Flaws in WPA2 Security

Bad news for WiFi wireless networks everywhere has been revealed by security researchers. Several key management vulnerabilities have been found in the 4-way handshake of the WPA2 security protocol, which helps to keep modern Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN) secure via encryption, 

Everyone has hopefully ensured now that their home wireless network and devices are all connected using the latest Wi-Fi Protected Access II (WPA2) method of encryption, which has so far served us all well. The bad news is that a string of new vulnerabilities have been discovered that could result in WPA2 secured networks being decrypted, hijacked and generally abused (it works against both WPA1 and WPA2 – personal and enterprise networks – and against any cipher suite being used like WPA-TKIP, AES-CCMP and GCMP).

As the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) states, “The impact of exploiting these vulnerabilities includes decryption, packet replay, TCP connection hijacking, HTTP content injection, and others. Note that as protocol-level issues, most or all correct implementations of the standard will be affected.”

The details of all this are due to be published shortly via several vulnerability announcements (CVE-2017-13077, 13078, 13079, 13080, 13081, 13082, 13084, 13086, 13087, 13088) and the collection of flaws are being referred to as KRACK (aka – Key Reinstallation Attacks). Researchers have set up a dedicated website to provide information on the incoming problem – https://www.krackattacks.com.

Statement by the Researchers

We discovered serious weaknesses in WPA2, a protocol that secures all modern protected Wi-Fi networks. An attacker within range of a victim can exploit these weaknesses using key reinstallation attacks (KRACKs). Concretely, attackers can use this novel attack technique to read information that was previously assumed to be safely encrypted. This can be abused to steal sensitive information such as credit card numbers, passwords, chat messages, emails, photos, and so on.

The attack works against all modern protected Wi-Fi networks. Depending on the network configuration, it is also possible to inject and manipulate data. For example, an attacker might be able to inject ransomware or other malware into websites.

The weaknesses are in the Wi-Fi standard itself, and not in individual products or implementations. Therefore, any correct implementation of WPA2 is likely affected.

So, are we all doomed? Well.. yes and no. Certainly if you read a lot of the media coverage then you’d be forgiven for thinking that the sky was about to fall and hackers are due to break into all your home networks and / or devices. KRACK is certainly no laughing matter and it is indeed a very a serious problem, although it’s important to put these things into some common sense perspective.

The detailed research paper on KRACK  covers what appears to be quite a complex method of breaking through WPA2 and it’s one that, due to some flaky implementation of WiFi standards (802.11), won’t work effectively (yet) on Microsoft Windows or Apple iOS machines / devices. Most of the problem resides with Android based Smartphone and Tablets, where the paper largely focused.

On top of that there’s currently no known public attack code available to exploit the vulnerabilities, although that will no doubt change. Any hacker would need to be both very skilled and also situated in close proximity to your network kit in order to conduct the attack.

The industry doesn’t need to create WPA3 in order to tackle the problem because WPA2 is patchable, which is the good news. The bad news is that some broadband routers and other software or device manufacturers, as well as many users themselves, can be quite poor when it comes to keeping their systems up-to-date. Suffice to say, keep an eye out for the latest patches and deploy them.

One other thing to note is that the main attack is against the 4-way handshake, and does not exploit access points, but instead targets clients. “So it might be that your router does not require security updates. We strongly advise you to contact your vendor for more details. In general though, you can try to mitigate attacks against routers and access points by disabling client functionality (which is for example used in repeater modes) and disabling 802.11r (fast roaming). For ordinary home users, your priority should be updating clients such as laptops and smartphones,” said the researchers.

The researchers are now moving on to ponder whether other protocol implementations are also vulnerable to key reinstallation attacks. Protocols that appear particularly vulnerable are those that must take into account that messages may be lost. “After all, these protocols are explicitly designed to process retransmitted frames, and are possibly reinstalling keys while doing so,” said the team.

 

Contact us: London 0203 322 2443 | Cardiff: 02920 676 712 | Winchester: 01962 657 390 |  info@geekabit.co.uk

 

www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2017/10/krack-attack-internet-panics-big-wi-fi-flaws-wpa2-security.html

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Technology Wi-Fi Advice
4 Different Site Surveys That Will Improve Your Wireless Network

We’ve had a few recent requests for this, so we thought it was the perfect topic for our blog this week!

Site Surveys are kind of like all the ways you can cook shrimp. You know, like in that scene in Forest Gump when “Bubba” goes on and on about the many different ways you can cook them?

Whilst there aren’t quite as many as Bubba rattled off, there are quite a few and they all have their specific place in the wireless network design process.

Before we get into the various site-survey types, it’s important to mention that site-surveys are not the design process but merely a component in the process.

Here are the many faces of a site-survey; what they are for and when they should be used.

1 – Predictive Site Survey

This type of site survey offers cost and time effectiveness as well as being extremely accurate. Using both RF and specialized algorithms, a predictive site survey simulates RF in your specific environment.

This software has become very accurate and gives an incredible view of their environment. When combined with an experienced Wi-Fi service provider, a successful design even in high-density areas can be achieved. The key to a good predictive survey is to have as much information as possible; we recommend using floor plans and building blue prints.

2 – On-Site

This type is highly recommended for more complex wireless objectives. This usually encompasses applications that roam from AP to AP and also tend to be latency sensitive. For example, RTLS in hospitals, wireless video surveillance and multi-media over wireless.

Typically with an on-site survey you use the predictive results to test them against the wireless design to prove that design in the real world, paying close attention to interference or noise. It’s important to simulate the applications that will be running on the network to make sure they work seamlessly.

3 – Passive

These types of surveys are good for validating your design requirements and used to collect RF data from all of the access points in a given area. It allows you to plot heat-maps giving you a nice view of where your coverage spans and where there are holes at different levels.

Some of the main design elements a passive survey can help validate are primary and secondary RSSI, Interference (noise), SNR and co-channel interference.

4 – Post Validation

A wireless network design can be great on paper but real success is when it performs exactly as it should for what it was designed to support. A post validation site survey makes sure your new network is performing as it was designed to, using the requirements you established at the beginning of your design.

Testing and measuring every detail guarantees you can support your applications or processes successfully with your new network. Some areas to take a closer look at are: data rates, device to radio ratios, jitter, latency and QoS, high density areas and co-channel interference as well as other RF characteristics.

You can even use an application performance test to test your network from the application side of things for a unique view of your networks performance.

It’s important to understand the various types of site-surveys; to know when each is needed, and to make sure your next wireless network is successful. In doing so we’re sure your stress levels will without a doubt go down.

Why?

With high quality analysis and detailed planning from using the right combinations of site surveys, you’ll be confident knowing your wireless network will not meet your requirements but in most cases exceed them. Proper planning allows you to quickly adapt and address issues (should they arise) precisely and timely, meaning less stress on you!

If you have any questions about your next wireless network design or you would like to have a site-survey started for your business/organization today, you can get in touch in one of the following ways:

Contact us: London 0203 322 2443 | Cardiff: 02920 676 712 | Winchester: 01962 657 390 |  info@geekabit.co.uk

 

https://www.securedgenetworks.com/blog/4-site-surveys-that-will-improve-your-wireless-network

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Technology Wi-Fi Advice
Selecting The Best Antenna

 The following post talks about the importance of selecting the best antenna and understanding coverage patterns.

In any RF system, the antenna is the radiating element. RF waves are to be propagated through free space, and it is this component that causes this to happen. The antenna device also receives the RF signals from other transmitters. Available in various forms, the antenna results in varied radiation patterns and, therefore, various coverage patterns given the same RF power input. The antennas design impacts the reception of RF signals, in addition to varied radiating patterns.

Key factors when selecting an antenna are the gain of the antenna and the radiating pattern, as well as the frequency range for which the antenna is designed. Antennas should be either 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz antennas in most AP or bridge implementations today. Once you have identified the appropriate frequency band, the appropriate gain and radiating pattern must be selected.

Today, antenna gain is usually listed as dBi and is measured in decibels. This metric is achieved by comparing the antenna’s gain in the intended radiation direction against that of a theoretical isotropic radiator. The isotropic radiator is a theoretical antenna, radiating energy equally in all directions out of the antenna. Whilst it is considered spherical, no such antenna actually exists. For example, the common antenna included with a consumer-grade wireless AP or router is a 2-3 dBi antenna. This simply means that the antenna has 2-3 dB gain in the direction of intended propagation.

A higher gain antenna (for example, 11 dBi as opposed to 2.14 dBi) will radiate a receivable signal further in the intended direction in free space. Of course, indoors there will be reflections and other RF behaviours, so the signal may not radiate as far at acceptable signal levels as it would in free space, but it would still radiate farther than a lower gain antenna.

Now, the final part to consider when selecting an antenna is the radiation pattern or simply, the antenna pattern. Antenna charts are the most frequent mode of communication of antenna patterns. The horizontal and vertical radiation patterns of the antenna are shown in the charts. 

In the elevation charts, the vertical pattern is shown, and the Azimuth chart shows the horizontal pattern. 

Helpful tip! Remember that the elevation chart shows the radiation pattern of antennas as if you are looking at it from the side. The Azimuth chart shows it as if you are looking down on the top of the antenna (assuming the antenna is vertically upright).

Elevation = side view

Azimuth = top view

The following images show each chart type:

 

Once you’ve got the hang of this information, you can use it to easily select the appropriate antenna for you and understand the different coverage patterns you can expect from them.

 

London 0203 322 2443 | Cardiff 02920 676 712 | Hampshire 01962 657 390 | info@geekabit.co.uk

 

https://www.cwnp.com/selecting-best-antenna/

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Technology Wi-Fi Advice
Calculating RF Wavelengths

Calculating RF Wavelength

Why would you need to calculate RF wavelengths I hear you ask? Well, an antenna needs to best receive the intended frequencies, thus the length of RF waves impacts decisions being made during the design process. This means you need to understand the wavelength of the RF waves being generated in a given frequency.

There are 2 basic formulas you can use to calculate RF wavelength. One is used for feet and the other for metres.

The following post will provide the formulas you need, plus an Excel spreadsheet for calculating the wavelengths for each 20 MHz channel centre frequency in the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands.

802.11 channels work on a centre frequency. In the below spreadsheet, you will find the centre frequencies for each 20 MHz channel in 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz.

Wavelength Calculator

To calculate the wavelength in feet, the common formula is:

wavelength = 984 / frequency in MHz

The common formula to calculate the wavelength in metres is:

wavelength = 300 / frequency in MHz

 

So what are you waiting for? Get calculating!

Alternatively, you could give us a ring here at Geekabit – We are the Wi-Fi Expert afterall! With offices in Hampshire, London and Cardiff you could just get in touch with us and avoid the potential mathematical headache by letting us sort it out for you.

London Office: 0203 322 2443 /  info@geekabit.co.uk

Cardiff Office:  02920 676712 /  info@geekabit.co.uk

Winchester Office: 01962 657 390 /  info@geekabit.co.uk

https://www.cwnp.com/calculating_rf_wavelengths/

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Technology Wi-Fi Advice
WiFi Faces Technical Challenges

The emerging wireless standard promises better WiFi but the promise introduces significant complexity.

IEEE 802.11 standards (g, a, n, ac) delivered WiFi performance improvements out of the box. They focused on progressively increasing the data rate over the wireless link. All that was needed to take advantage of any new standard, was a radio chipset that incorporated the new radio and MAC enhancements.

The situation is different for the upcoming 802.11ax standard. The focus of 802.11ax is not on increasing the data rate but on improving the overall wireless network performance. This introduces significant new radio and MAC enhancements such as OFDMA and BSS colouring.

Ranking high among the issues is a transmission-scheduling mechanism. The downlink transmission scheduling in WiFi has been a simple FIFO (First In First Out) system. 802.11e introduced a small variation regarding the maintenance of multiple transmission queues for different priority classes.

However, 802.11ax introduces significant complexity in wireless transmission scheduling due to its OFDMA and MU-MIMO enhancements.

  •  With MU-MIMO, there is now an option to transmit a single wireless frame to a single client or concurrently transmit different wireless frames to multiple clients using multi-user beamforming.
  • With OFDMA, there is now an option to transmit a single wireless frame to single client using traditional OFDM or concurrently transmit different wireless frames to multiple clients using subsets of channel width.
  • 802.11ax introduces multi-user transmission in uplink direction too. The AP needs to schedule multiple clients for concurrent uplink transmissions according to their requirements.

These methods need to take into account service requirements of traffic flows, radio conditions on the channel, client capabilities and client state feedbacks. It is no easy feat to come up with scheduling mechanisms that will work in most practical scenarios with relative ease of configuration and fine tuning.

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Technology Wi-Fi Advice
Do you know the difference between mbps and mb?

Data and download speeds are all that we barter for when it comes using the internet nowadays. How much data you have is all the phone companies have left to reel you in with on a new offer. Lets break it all down and look at what the differences are.

A bit is the fundamental unit of information that we use in our computing and also in communications. The word ‘binary digit’ is shortened to form the word ‘bit’.  Therefore, we use bits in all our binary digit computations. The computation and communication here mean the digitals ones.

A byte is the unit of information that is used in digital fields and is equals eight bits. We generally address the memory spaces in terms of bytes and it forms the smallest addressable unit of memory space that is been used in computer related technologies. It is referred as ‘B’ in the digital electronics and we should note that it forms the different notion from that of a bit. So an eight-bit can also be called as a byte or simply with ‘B’.

Notions for Bits and Bytes:
We shall write the above-mentioned notions here, to understand it better.

1 bit = is denoted as ‘b’.
For example, it can be written as 1 b.
It’s bit length = 1.
1 Byte = 8 bits is denoted as ‘B’.
It’s bit length = 8.

The capitalisation of alphabets means a lot in these notions. A bit is simply written as ‘b’ whereas a byte is written as ‘B’. As already noted, what they are and what values they can hold. The letter ‘m’ here means Mega. The value 103 is noted simply as Mega so that we can use it in our digital computations with better understandings. When we find a notion as ‘mb’, it means megabits and ‘MB’ means Mega Bytes. So noting the capitalisation of the betters can mean a lot.

The abbreviation ‘mbps’ means megabits per second and it is always used to denote the speed of transmissions. You might have heard it when you opted for a broadband connection. This is what you are sold your broadband on and what you are sold and what you get are two very different things. You can always check the download and upload speeds you are getting online.

Hopefully this will arm you with the information to help you make better decisions in understanding the differences between mbps and mb.

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Wi-Fi Advice
How to improve Free Wi-Fi – and what does it actually mean?

It’s interesting to see the new fleet of buses in Southampton that quite rightly offer Free Wi-Fi on each of their vehicles.

Whilst this may quite useful for the people sat in the city’s frustratingly busy corridors of travel, what intrigued our Geekabit team the most was the branding surrounding this.

Each of the vehicles is clearly labelled as free ‘4G Wi-Fi’. This got us thinking as we sat wondering how long it would take to get anywhere – “does anyone care if the Wi-Fi is powered by 4G?”. Additionally, do half the people even know what that means? 4G internet may be the source of the internet on that particular bus, but what does it mean to the average consumer?

We see “Free Wi-Fi” posters and signs across Europe now as standard, and although it can be a big draw, there does need to be some consideration over exactly what they mean.

Sat writing this in a coffee shop offering such a facility (I’m glad you’ve now got Wi-Fi Coffee #1), can we please consider a few things?

1) Terrible experiences lead to loss of customers – I am connected to my 4G iPhone, as I know it will work. I can’t trust the Wi-Fi here. For people with significantly less data allowances, I can see them changing to a venue where we know it will work properly.

2) If you promise free Wi-Fi, then make sure it’s easily accessible – confusing and broken captive portals that need your waist measurement are frustrating for everyone.

3) Free Wi-Fi in a venue means that – everywhere. Make sure it works in every nook and cranny, not just one end of your coffee shop, bar or restaurant. You can’t do this by hiding an access point in a back room or under the counter.

One of the biggest frustrations, and let downs with the technology, is the over-marketing and over-promise of free internet wherever you go. If you’re intending to offer this service, be clear what you mean, and make sure that it is as faultless as possible.

If we continue to let people down with Wi-Fi, then they will slowly learn to not trust the technology, and migrate to the 4G and 5G platforms as quickly as they can.

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Wi-Fi Advice
Wi-Fi Site Surveys are important in pubs too

Today is Blue Monday as we understand it, the day when all credit card bills get paid, and we are all at our most saddest post-christmas. Which is a shame!

January is a great month for enjoying all the greatest UK traditions – reading large newspapers, country walks and finding a great pub for an English roast (always with a Yorkshire pudding, always).

Steve, our founder, took the opportunity to spend Sunday afternoon in the heart of the New Forest in Southern England, near Southampton. Taking to a country pub in the middle of nowhere, surrounding purely by ponies and bushes, there was an open plain, and very little sign of life.

Little sign of life is often accompanied by a distinct lack of connectivity, and indeed phone signal, which was the perfect place to inject a little Wi-Fi to improve the pub experience for those who wish to remain in contact.

Apart from the marketing benefits of allowing you to share your meal and friendship with the rest of the world, it’s also good to have a connection so you know people can get in touch with you if needed. It makes everything all the more relaxed.

wififorpubs

Being the Wi-Fi experts that we are, Steve was intrigued to see how the Wi-Fi in this venue would perform whilst waiting for his roast.

Noting three access points in two very small rooms, which made little sense considering the model and manufacturer of equipment that had been chosen (with the likely number of connections), it was interesting to measure the response.

Initially the captive portal login took over a minute to load (terrible user experience), and it forced Steve to enter over 6 different bits of information, with some very strong user validation, and then about another minute to authenticate and connect.
Eventually, we have Wi-Fi. Which kept on ‘dropping out’ and we suspect the iPhones that we tested it in were trying to connect to the furthest away access point.

It’s important to really think about the number of access points needed, to perform a site survey to check signal strengths and ensure, that even with little interference from surrounding properties, that there is no interference from other devices. Perhaps the over-powered microwaves in the kitchen, the credit card machine Wi-Fi connection and the like had something to do with it.

Additionally, even when trying to pay the bill on the remote credit card machine, it had trouble connecting via the Wi-Fi, despite the fact we were sat underneath it.

Installing more access points and hoping for the best rarely works, it is always worth calling the experts.

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