A home router is designed for a handful of devices, spread over a house, used by people who can reboot it when it misbehaves. An office asks for something different: more devices, in a smaller space, being used by people who lose money when it stops.

The problems start when the office grows but the router stays the same.

Where the ISP router runs out

Device count. Phones, laptops, printers, EFTPOS terminals, cameras, a smart TV in the meeting room. A dozen people can easily mean forty connected devices, and consumer routers start to struggle well before their advertised limit.

Coverage shape. Homes are open. Offices have partition walls, filing cabinets, glass, and a comms cupboard the router is invariably shut inside. One box in one corner rarely covers the whole floor evenly.

Roaming. Walk from your desk to the meeting room and your laptop clings to the weak signal it already has rather than switching. This is the “the Wi-Fi drops in the back room” complaint, and range extenders usually make it worse.

No visibility. When it does misbehave, there’s nothing to look at: no way to see which device is saturating the connection, or that an access point has been dropping clients for a fortnight.

The guest network is not optional

If visitors, contractors or personal phones use your Wi-Fi, put them on a separate guest network. It keeps devices you don’t manage away from the ones holding your business data. A phone with malware on it shouldn’t be on the same network as your server, and most business routers can set up a guest network in a few minutes at no cost.

The same logic applies to the growing pile of smart devices: TVs, cameras, sensors. They rarely get security updates and shouldn’t share a network with the accounts computer.

What “proper” means

Business Wi-Fi doesn’t have to be expensive. What it does mean:

  • Two or more access points placed for coverage, rather than one placed for cable convenience
  • Wired back to the network, not repeating over the air — a repeater roughly halves throughput
  • One network name across all of them, so devices roam cleanly between them
  • Separate guest and staff networks
  • Something that reports on itself, so a problem can be seen rather than guessed at

For most small offices that means two or three access points and a small managed switch.

Before you buy anything

Check two things first. Between them they explain a lot of “slow Wi-Fi” complaints, and they cost nothing.

Is it actually the Wi-Fi? Run a speed test on a computer plugged in with a cable, then on the same computer over Wi-Fi. If both are slow, the problem is the internet connection, and new Wi-Fi hardware won’t help.

Is anything wired that could be? Desktops, printers and anything that streams should be on a cable. The fewer devices on Wi-Fi, the better it works for the ones that need it.

When to upgrade

If people work around the office rather than at one desk, if you take payments over Wi-Fi, or if “the internet’s down again” has become a recurring conversation, the wireless is probably costing you more than fixing it would. With the right access points in the right places, most small offices can be sorted out in an afternoon.