Networks & Wi-Fi
Bad office Wi-Fi is almost always a design problem, not a hardware problem — we find out what is actually wrong, then build a network that holds up.
Full bars, and the call still breaks up
The complaint nearly always arrives in the same shape. A laptop is showing a strong signal, the broadband bill says the line is fast, and the video call still stutters while a shared file crawls open. The obvious conclusion is that the router is not strong enough, so somebody orders a better one. Six weeks later, the bad meeting room is still the bad meeting room.
That assumption is worth unpicking: it is why a lot of money gets spent on equipment that changes nothing. Signal strength is not the same as a working connection. The bars on the screen describe how loudly your laptop can hear the access point. They say nothing about whether the access point can hear the laptop, whether the airtime is already full of other people’s traffic, or whether the fault is even inside the building.
Wi-Fi is a conversation, and one side is shouting
An access point is mains-powered, mounted high, and built with proper antennas. A laptop runs on a battery at desk height with a person in front of it, and transmits at a fraction of that power. The return leg — device back to access point — is the weak one, which is why more power is so rarely the fix. Turning the access point up makes the far corner of the office hear it better and does nothing for the whisper coming back.
It can make matters worse: a device that can still hear a distant access point will often cling to it rather than hand over to the closer one, and it then talks slowly. Wi-Fi devices take turns rather than speaking at once, so a slow device holds the channel for longer to move the same amount of data. One struggling laptop in a back office genuinely can drag down a whole floor.
This is why density beats range in a real office. Several access points, each covering a smaller area at moderate power, keep every device close to one and keep the airtime moving.
The building writes half the design
Coverage is shaped by the premises far more than by the kit. Solid brick and plaster soak up signal. Glass partitions reflect it. Plasterboard with foil-backed insulation behind it behaves like a wall of metal as far as radio is concerned, which catches people out in refurbished and newly fitted spaces. Lift shafts, risers, metal shelving, filing walls and a kitchen microwave all leave their mark on the result.
Then there are the neighbours. The 2.4 GHz band travels furthest but offers only three non-overlapping channels here, and in a terrace or shared block you share them with every business around you. The 5 GHz band has far more room and shorter reach, which in a busy building is an advantage. Newer generations of Wi-Fi are aimed mostly at handling many devices at once rather than at covering more ground, so upgrading the standard without fixing the placement tends to disappoint.
None of this can be judged from a floor plan, which is why the survey comes before the shopping list. That was the whole job in a private office network inside a serviced building: the comms room and floor ports were checked first, and only then was hardware specified.
Before you spend, prove where the problem is
Plenty of “the Wi-Fi is terrible” jobs turn out not to be Wi-Fi at all. A broadband line that is contended, or whose upload is quietly saturated by a cloud backup every morning, will break video calls no matter how good the wireless is. A firewall inspecting every packet can become the bottleneck once the team grows. A misconfigured or slow DNS server makes everything feel sluggish while a speed test still looks fine.
Diagnosis first, purchase second. If a cabled computer performs and a wireless one does not, the answer is inside the building. If neither performs, the answer is the line or the equipment at the edge of it, and our guide to fibre versus leased-line broadband is a better place to start than a new access point.
A guest network is a security control, not a courtesy
Most small-office networks are flat. Everything can reach everything: laptops, the printer, the card terminal, the video recorder in the cupboard, and whatever the visitor connected this morning. That is convenient right up to the moment one device is compromised, because a flat network hands an attacker a free run at the rest.
Segmentation splits that into separate zones with rules about what may cross between them. Staff devices in one. Guests isolated on their own, online but with no route to anything internal. The quiet equipment — printers, cameras, terminals, building systems — kept away from the machines holding your finance data. Printers deserve singling out: they often arrive with default credentials, they keep copies of what has been scanned, and they are among the last things anyone updates. There is no good reason for the printer and the payroll laptop to sit side by side with nothing between them.
Where CCTV, door entry or alarm systems are involved, we handle the network and the cabling those systems run over. We do not install the security hardware itself. The firewall policy that enforces all of this belongs with your wider cyber security work, and whether a managed firewall is worth paying for is a question we will answer honestly either way.
The wired network underneath
Wireless gets the attention and the cabling does the work. Access points need a cable back to a switch, and Power over Ethernet lets that one cable carry their power as well, so they can be mounted where coverage needs them rather than where a socket happens to be. Desks that shift large files, printers, and anything that must not drop mid-task all earn a wired port.
A labelled, patched comms cabinet looks like a nicety and behaves like an insurance policy. Faults get traced in minutes instead of hours, a change can be made without unplugging something important by accident, and the network survives the departure of whoever built it. That is the difference between kit that was installed and kit that was designed, and it is why office network setup and cabling is a job in its own right rather than an afternoon’s work during a fit-out.
Consumer kit, business kit, and what actually separates them
The price difference buys less impressive-sounding things than the boxes suggest. Business access points are managed centrally, so settings, channels and passwords stay consistent across every unit instead of drifting apart. They help devices move between access points, so a call survives the walk to the kitchen. Firmware gets maintained on a schedule rather than whenever someone remembers. They produce logs, which is what turns “it was slow yesterday” into something anyone can actually diagnose. And when a unit fails, there is a replacement path and somebody to call.
One honest caveat: some business platforms carry an ongoing licence for their management layer. That is a real running cost, and we will say so before you commit.
Where this becomes a job
We design for reliable coverage across the areas that matter to you, then verify it after installation using the same devices your team works on — rather than promising that no corner will ever be imperfect. For the wireless side of that work, see Wi-Fi setup and signal improvement; for the wired side, business network setup; and for the machine everyone blames next, printer and scanner setup. Cabling, mounting and cabinet work happen during an on-site visit, and once it is all in, keeping firmware, segmentation and monitoring current sits inside managed IT support.
Frequently asked questions
Our Wi-Fi shows full bars but everything still feels slow. What is happening?
The bars only show how well your laptop hears the access point. They say nothing about the reply travelling the other way, and nothing about how busy the channel already is. If a dozen devices are sharing one access point, or one distant device is soaking up airtime, everybody slows down while the signal indicator still looks healthy. We measure what devices actually experience, not what they display.
Would a more powerful router fix our coverage?
Rarely. Access points already transmit harder than laptops and phones do, so turning the power up makes distant devices hear the router better without helping the weak signal coming back the other way. It also pushes further into neighbouring offices and adds to the interference everyone is fighting. The usual answer is more access points at sensible power, placed for the layout, rather than one louder box.
How do we tell whether the problem is the Wi-Fi or the broadband?
Test from a computer plugged straight into the router, then run the same test wirelessly in the room people complain about. If the wired result is healthy and the wireless one is not, the problem is inside your building. If both are poor, the line, the firewall or DNS is the more likely cause. It is a short check, and it stops you buying the wrong thing.
If everything is wireless now, do we still need cabling?
Yes, and arguably more than before. Every access point needs a cable back to a switch, and that cable normally carries its power too, so there is no need for a socket at ceiling height. Desks that move large files, printers, and anything that must not drop mid-task are all better wired. Wireless coverage is only ever as good as the wired network feeding it.
We are in a serviced building where the landlord provides the Wi-Fi. Can we have our own network?
Often yes, though it depends on what the building allows and what already sits in its comms room. Tenants are usually patched through a floor port, and that can be enough to run your own router, access points and address range behind it. We survey the building and confirm the approach with the managing agent before anyone spends money on hardware.
Do we have to replace everything at once?
No. Most of this work is phased — fix whatever is causing pain now, keep the kit that is genuinely fit for purpose, and plan the rest around a budget or an office move. Cabling and the comms cabinet usually come first, because everything else depends on them. What we will not do is stack new equipment on top of a design that is already the problem.
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Areas we cover
Networks & Wi-Fi across South London, Croydon and Surrey — on-site where you need it, remote everywhere.
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