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Onion Approach to Wi-Fi Troubleshooting Basics: Heed Caution Judging Others’ Wi-Fi Designs

By George Stafanick, Blog Contributor

As someone who runs a large Wi-Fi network and owns a thriving Wi-Fi consulting firm, I can tell you from experience heed with caution when you poke holes in the Wi-Fi designs of others, as it is easy to have holes poked in your own designs.

Wi-Fi networks can be designed around constraints. These constraints can be budget, hardware, PoE, access to exact locations for installation of access points, cable run lengths, having the necessary wired configurations, limited time, etc. Other times it may be a really poor design due to inadequate planning, lack of knowledge, lacking the proper tools, not understanding how WiFi works, the list goes on, and I'm sure you can fill in the blanks.

Around the issues above you may not know what those constraints or issues were when the network was designed, configured, and deployed.

Looking back over the last few years, I pondered the idea of how many networks I designed compared to networks where I was asked to come in and remediate. The answer came to me quickly. As I carefully reviewed my project folders, I remediated more networks then I designed new and deployed. This speak volumes when you really think about it. There are many older networks needing love, while others were designed for data and now voice and data applications need  to be supported.

Remember you may be designing a network today around some type constraints. Make sure these constraints are well documented and covered with the project's owner.

If you enter someone else's design respect it for all it's glory good, bad, or ugly!