Hi everyone! We moved to a new office, and we started receiving complaints about poor Wi-Fi and slow internet in various parts of the building.
The problem is intermittent: for some, Teams freezes after lunch, for others, websites take a long time to load, and one department is complaining about the area near the conference rooms.
I’m tired of guessing and rebooting switches at random. Could you share your working checklist for troubleshooting the problem?
First, test the wired connection. Select the same VLAN, the same zone in the building, and the same time of day. Ping the gateway, then the outside world, and then check DNS.If the gateway is experiencing heavy traffic and pings are poor, the problem is internal. Check the switches, cables, VLANs, access points, and client network cards.If the gateway is clear, but external traffic is dying, look for the firewall, the provider’s uplink, routing, and filtering. Everyone usually looks for a single magic utility, but the key to troubleshooting is simply dividing the problem in half, time after time.
I’d check the Wi-Fi first. Devices could be locked to the wrong access point, operating at -78 dBm, struggling with interference, or operating on some congested 2.4 GHz channel with all the printers and mysterious IoT devices in the building. Conduct a full inspection. NetSpot is suitable for this, or Ekahau if your budget allows. Pay attention to SNR, SIR, and Noise Level. Also, more access points isn’t always the answer. Sometimes lower transmit power, better placement, and clearer cell boundaries are needed.
My quick triage is:
-Can I reproduce it?
-Is it wired or Wi-Fi?
-Is it one app or everything?
-Is it one floor or everywhere?
-Is latency bad, packet loss bad, DNS slow, or throughput low?
@Subject-Gap-4864 This might be a dumb follow-up, but when would you actually run the Wi-Fi survey? After hours when the office is empty, or during the day when everyone is working?
Not dumb at all. Ideally, both. The differences are usually where the interesting stuff is.