Is it time to upgrade your business Wi-Fi?

Do you need to invest in a faster, more reliable wireless network? Steve Cassidy asks the key questions

- Steve Cassidy

The convenience of wireless networking can’t be denied, but it’s almost always slower than an Ethernet connection – especially if, like many businesses, you’re still relying on last-generation standards. As high-speed Wi-Fi 6 hardware becomes ubiquitous, and the first Wi-Fi 7 access points start to trickle onto the market, many businesses will be wondering whether it’s time for a wireless networking boost.

Naturally, a key question to consider is whether the potential gains of buying new hardware are worth the expense. And if they are, do you need to replace your existing system, or supplement it? As so often happens, once you look more closely into the matter you’ll find it breaks down into several smaller questions.

The first thing to talk about is what we mean by “business Wi-Fi”. There are plenty of smaller, rural businesses that get by very well with a domesticgrade internet line and whatever boxy little router was bundled with it back in 2013. Such networks can chug along untouched for very long periods, because the demands placed on them are so basic: the router operates only as a gateway to online email, CRM and accounting services, so the users’ experience depends purely on the performance of the back-end internet line, and the websites they’re accessing in the course of their working day.

This isn’t what we’d normally understand as a business network, however. That phrase typically implies that someone is responsible for performance management, advanced traffic handling and secure authentication. It will also usually work in tandem with a wired infrastructure: there are organisations out there relying entirely on Wi-Fi client connections, but even these are likely running old-fashioned cabling to their access points, gateways, security appliances and printers.