Introduction
In recent times, WIFI has become a integral requirement for all businesses. When it comes to deploying WIFI network, the most important part is planning and designing the WIFI network. Today, businesses rely heavily on their WIFI Networks. More and more applications and IoT devices are becoming important network component. They all depend on stable jitter-free wireless network.
Successful wireless network deployment is a full fletch activity and is more then just installing number of access points and hope that they work as per requirement. WIFI networks have grown more complex and required correct design to function properly.
Planning Ingredients
If customer already has WIFI network deployed recently and are facing network issues, there is a high chance that network design was not done right. And they need to go back to basics to design current network in a better way instead of going for a new hardware on the same design as there is a high chance that it will not solve their issue.
Following are the basics of a WIFI network design:
· Site Surveys
· RF Plan
· Wireless Capacity Plan
· Proper Hardware Check
· Project Scope
Site Surveys
There are 2 types of site surveys that are conducted while planning for wireless design. Onsite Survey and off-site survey. In off-site survey, building blueprints/CAD drawing are studied and a predictive plan is designed which is later confirmed during onsite physical survey. Although Huawei WLAN Planner and Cloud WLAN planner are available from Huawei for off-site WLAN design in which we upload the CAD drawing of a building and we can design a state-of-the-art WIFI design. But there are some ground realities that can only be confirmed after the physical survey like if there is any interference from the neighboring buildings or in case of high raise tower, if there are any cross-floor interference. After physical survey, we can incorporate the findings in online Huawei WLAN planner and get the desired perfect plan.
A validation site survey is performed when an engineer has finished with your new design in order to make sure that the new network has been installed and configured correctly. This verification test is the final test to ensure that the business receives exactly what they required.
RF Plan
An RF plan shows the predictive coverage of the building. Normally while designing the WLAN, blanket coverage is appreciated but there can be some particular spaces where end-customer doesn’t want to have a WLAN coverage like bathroom stalls, stairs or may be record room. It depends on the customer business requirements. This RF plan document shows the heatmaps of signals, their strength for both 2.4G and 5G signals.
Source: WLAN Planner output
Wireless Capacity Plan
Now that we have figured out what’s the coverage area should be, next step will be to identify the network load that is how many devices will be connecting on the WLAN. This is called Capacity Planning. Over here, some of the building areas like conference rooms, huddle rooms, seminar halls etc should be addressed more sensibly.
It would also be important to highlight that a list of all applications accessing the WLAN should be devised properly so accurate network load can be estimated.
Proper Hardware Check
This is another very important step. All access points are not made for a single purpose. They all have different user capacity and WLAN standards support. For example, same access point that is being proposed for an office floor, can’t be used for the big conference room. It’s a famous saying that you can’t make a bad product good but you can make a good product perform bad by designing it poorly.
Role-Based Security Design
Almost all the enterprises have some vendors or external users who visit occasionally so it is not suitable to give them access to enterprise network. So, limiting access or giving tailored internet access policies should be devised to properly manage network traffic.
Project Scope
This is the last step where a design document turns in to an executable project where all the constraints have been addressed properly. Based on the network design document, a bill of quantity is created and order is placed to the principal.
Conclusion
A complete and detailed WLAN design is absolutely mandatory for a satisfactory network performance. There are amazing support guidelines are available on Huawei WLAN Documentation page. Do visit it to learn more about it.
