Every enterprise, no matter its size, plans to add more WiFi-connected devices to its network over the next few years. More and more, what we see is that automation, AI, and IoT devices are the best ways to streamline operational efficiency, safeguard business continuity, and improve the digital experience for all employees.

With this in mind, enterprises need strategies in place that will scale their WiFi networks effectively. In this blog, we share actionable insights that will work across industries, so that businesses can scale their WiFi networks to accommodate growth, ensure continuous operations, and protect their brand reputation.

Understanding the Need for WiFi Scalability

While WiFi networks are pervasive throughout organizations, not all networks are the same. Some were designed to support constant video conferencing from thirty people, and others to support hundreds of manufacturing IoT devices. 

However, what they all have in common, is that each network will eventually reach capacity. Any device that attempts to connect after this point, or any attempt to use more data-intensive applications, will result in performance degradation for every connected device.

This will look like everything from a delay in sending emails and opening business portals, to websites that won’t load and frozen videos during conferencing. In other words, business continuity is impacted negatively.

If problems persist, enterprises can expect to see:

• Employee morale degrade
• Higher stress rates amongst IT professionals
• Higher turnover rates
• Dissatisfied customers
• Loss of revenue

To avoid these issues, WiFi networks must be scalable. The alternative is an enterprise network that must be completely redesigned every few years as business grows. This is an unsustainable business model.

Assessing Current Network Capabilities

The first step on the path to scalable network infrastructure is assessing current WiFi network capabilities.

Network Audit

WiFi network audits are a deep dive into the security, behavior (effectiveness), and performance of a WiFi network. An enterprise can hire a third-party organization to perform the audit, or can adopt technology solutions and perform the audit in-house.

Either way, what will happen is an analysis of the data traffic sent and received throughout the network. Professionals will review the analytics to understand who or what is connected to the network, what they are doing, and how this activity impacts the network.

This not only reveals any security vulnerabilities, but also gives IT a detailed understanding of current utilization. Audits answer questions such as:

• Is a network nearing capacity?
• What is the network used for? (What portals, applications, and technologies are used?)
• How does utilization differ throughout the day, week, or month?

With answers to these questions, decision makers begin to see what is needed to maintain current performance levels and what will be needed to scale the network.

Professional Tip: While network performance audits can be run at any time, they are costly. To save money, enterprises can work with a solution like the Wireless Intelligence Platform (TM) (WIP) that provides continuous, real-time, and proactive audit-level insights. Insights are generated from the user-level, providing detailed digital experience metrics.

Network Performance Metrics

If an enterprise doesn’t work with a continuous monitoring solution like WIP, they need to outline the performance metrics that most matter to them. These metrics must be consistently evaluated so that any performance degradation is spotted as soon as possible.

At a minimum, we recommend monitoring:

• Wireless connectivity and internet connectivity (speed)
• Video conferencing technologies
• Applications
• Servers
• SSIDs
• Bandwidth

We also recommend identifying each and every device connected to the network. This allows you to track device density and identify any high density environments. It also keeps the network secure.

As we mentioned above, these metrics must be continuously evaluated. This requires someone to run a test on a schedule. The schedules will vary. Some elements should be tested as frequently as every ten minutes. Others only need to be tested once a day.

These tests can be performed manually, but this is challenging. Manual testing:

• Pulls IT away from other responsibilities
• Can’t be instigated when IT is offsite
• Runs the risk of alerting IT to issues after end users have already been impacted

To compare, proactive solutions like WIP:

• Run automatically 
• Support remote troubleshooting
• Alert IT in real-time if any test fails or falls outside of established parameters

Capacity Planning

There are a few key parts to capacity planning.

1. Companies must understand the number of employees they hope to employ over the next three to five years.
2. Companies must evaluate the technologies that will best support these employees in their responsibilities.
3. Companies must know the bandwidth requirement of these technologies.

Now, there are two main issues when it comes to calculating WiFi capacity. We recently wrote a blog on this very topic. What it comes down to is that accurate capacity estimates depend on an accurate understanding of user behavior and bandwidth utilization.

If you want to grow your company to a thousand employees, but only fifty of them will use the network for data-intensive tasks, your network capacity and needs look very different than a company with nine hundred employees performing data-intensive tasks.

Capacity planning is so nuanced that accurate estimates require complete network visibility. 24/7. 

We recommend using an AI-powered digital experience management solution, like WIP. WIP not only delivers continuous real-time analytics, but also automatically identifies long-term network performance trends. With these insights, executives have a much better understanding of their unique network’s needs, and can better predict what sufficient bandwidth looks like to ensure employees have a reliable network experience.

Key Strategies for Scaling WiFi Networks

Here are the strategies needed for cost-effective and efficient network scaling as businesses grow.

Complete Network Visibility

Complete WiFi network visibility keeps IT professionals in control. With this visibility, IT eliminates network mysteries. Teams can see exactly how many users and devices are on the network at all time, and track how fluctuations in utilization change performance.

With complete visibility, IT can better determine when network upgrades are needed, and what form those upgrades should take.

Vendor Agnostic Technology

When adopting the latest technologies, keep an eye on whether they are vendor agnostic or not. Not all technologies will be, and it’s important to determine if that works with your business plan.

Will non-vendor agnostic technologies lock you into a specific path and inhibit growth and adoption of currently unheard of technologies? If so, you might want to look at other options.

Helping companies avoid this problem is why we built the Wireless Intelligence Platform as a vendor agnostic solution. It continuously provides uninterrupted network visibility and WiFi assurance, no matter what technologies you adopt, or what decisions you make regarding internet and other vendor partnerships.

Relevant Adoption of New WiFi Standards

New WiFi standards can lead to significant improvements and better performance in WiFi networks. However, that doesn’t mean that every company needs to do a complete overhaul of their network every time a new standard is released. That reaction would not be budget friendly.

Instead, enterprises need to understand exactly what benefits new technologies deliver, determine if their unique network has challenges that would be resolved by those benefits, and then determine the urgency and importance of an upgrade.

This is because upgrades are time-consuming and expensive. In the case of new standards such as WiFi 6 and WiFi 6E, a network upgrade requires that all network infrastructure and connected devices be 6/6E capable to obtain the full benefits of the new technology. That can mean upgrading thousands of devices for large enterprises.

If an enterprise is in a refresh cycle – i.e. already budgeted for significant upgrades – and has reviewed the technology and determined it will improve the digital experience of the company’s users, then upgrade away.

If both these terms are not met though, push pause on any upgrades. This doesn’t have to be a long pause, but do your due diligence. Yes, your network must be scalable, but you don’t have to break the bank to get it there.

Optimize for Remote and Hybrid Work

The mobile workforce is growing. Enterprises with an eye on the future must design their scalable networks to support remote and hybrid work. This requires both security policies that address the challenges of remote employees, and also supporting IT so that professionals can resolve all network issues, whether employees are onsite or not.

A few elements to consider here include:

• Virtual Private Networks
• Multi Factor Authentication
• Requiring regular data backups
• Remote access to data and troubleshooting

Final Thoughts

It’s never too late (or too early) to plan for scalability. If you want to know more about how Wyebot and our AI-powered solutions can help ensure your WiFi infrastructure supports future growth, contact us for a demo or free trial.