Fundamentals of Optimising Your Wifi Network in Warehouse Environments.

In recent months we have seen an increase in organisations with warehouses or in the warehouse industry reaching out to us requiring help and assistance with their infrastructure. After further discussions and fact finding we see that there is often a gap in advice, recommendations, and procedures from network vendors on industry best practices around deployment best practices.

I want to highlight a few easy and fundamental ways to ensure (and sorry if some of this is obvious to you, however based on what we have seen this past year, it is still worth highlighting) you have some quick and easy wins in deployment and some do’s and don’t’s from the experts.

My first piece of advice is to CALL US we specialise in professional WIFI surveys & audits. Whether you are deploying for the first time or have existing network infrastructure and are looking to make improvements and understand how it is performing, we can help. 

However, we understand that you may want to keep this in house and keep the cost down. Here are a few steps to help optimise your network.

Try to get this right first time – by following the steps of – Wifi planning, design, surveying and deploying then post surveying, will help to mitigate problems further down the line. We recomend it is always best to survey when shelves are stacked, and the warehouse is in production. A survey will take into consideration factors such as reflection and attenuation of shelves, walls and object what can distort coverage. This ensures you place access points in the best possible area. Ensure you use the correct survey tools out there.

Mount Access points correctly – You would be amazed as to what we have seen over the years. Access points in draws, upside down, sat on desks. In Warehousing it may seem that there are limited places to mount access points but there are specific mounts that can be purchased to help. Access points should usually be mounted at specific heights from the ceiling, horizontally facing down or can also be mounted on walls with directional antennas, (only in specific scenarios) speak to the experts.

Check Power levels in the network – This is a very common issue. Most vendor access points out of the box have the access points power levels set to maximum power. This is too much! this causes issues with too much noise effects roaming. A device will connect to the first access point they see and when the device is moving far away from that access point it will remain connected as there is too much noise around to clearly move to a more suitable signal strength access point. This alone causes coverage issues and interference. 

Plan for overlap in coverage – We advise a 3-access point overlap. This ensures when you are roaming with a device such as zebra scanner or robotic devices are in motion, moving from access point to another (with the correct power levels in place) are seamless with no pockets of no coverage.

Plan your channels manually – Manual channel selection can be better than automatic channel selection in certain situations, particularly in environments with high Wi-Fi interference. While automatic channel selection simplifies setup, it may not always optimise performance, whereas manual selection allows for fine-tuning based on specific network needs and environments.

Keep non-work-related devices away – Microwaves, PlayStation remotes, Bluetooth speakers. These can all cause interference on the wifi network and have caused network teams headaches as to why the network goes down at lunchtime. We have even seen door scanners bring networks down. So, try to keep none production devices away from work area.

More often a few tweaks can vastly improve the infrastructure and it’s not always a case of rip and replace. These are just a few easy and quick ways in ensuring your network can be improved. As our wifi consultant always says “wifi is friendly and will try to work, but you need to give it a helping hand” There are tools and solutions that can also help you with this, helping you to understand channels, interference, channels, and overall client experience.

Why not discuss with us what you are looking to achieve, and we can offer some help and advice along the way.

Author Ross Clark