How do you place APs in a multi-floor office without them fighting between floors?   

Wi-Fi Design & Planning
1

I’m working on a WiFi design for a 3-story office and I’m getting a little confused about how much I should care about APs bleeding into the floors above/below.

My first attempt was basically one set of APs per floor, placed in roughly the same useful locations on each level.

Coverage looks fine, but now I’m wondering if stacking APs almost directly above each other is a bad idea.

Should I be deliberately offsetting them between floors? Lowering transmit power? Or am I overthinking the vertical overlap?

2

I wouldn’t automatically stack them in the exact same locations. When I do multi-floor designs I usually start with the top floor and work down. As you add the lower floors, look at what coverage is already leaking down from above before placing more APs. You may find you need fewer APs or different positions than you expected.

3

@SignalHunter95 I was treating each floor almost like a separate network and then stacking the designs together afterward.

4

Yeah, that’s how you end up with three APs having a conversation through the floor while the clients wonder why everyone is yelling.

5

What are you using to model it? NetSpot 6 has multi-floor Planning now, so you can build the floors as one building instead of designing each level separately. That makes this kind of thing much easier because you can actually see the predicted signal spreading vertically as well as across each floor.

6

Double-check your AP height too. I’ve seen people accidentally place the AP at the same height as the ceiling in the model instead of slightly below it. Sounds trivial until the prediction starts doing weird things.

7

@ED_Sniper Mine are currently set exactly at ceiling height.

8

There’s your first thing to fix before redesigning the entire building.

9

@Senior_Manager I actually ended up getting NetSpot after reading your comment, haha. Any chance you could walk me through how you’d go about planning a Wi-Fi network with it? I’m totally new to this kind of software and honestly have no clue where to start with a multi-floor project.

10

Sure! It looks a bit overwhelming at first, but once you get the hang of it, it’s actually pretty straightforward. Here’s how I’d tackle your three-story office.

1. Start with the building itself. Open NetSpot, go to Planning, and hit Create New. Give the project a name and make sure you select Multi-floor building instead of a single Zone. You’ll also need to name the building.

2. Get your first floor in there. Click +Add level on the left. If you’ve got actual floor plans, definitely use those. Much easier than drawing everything from scratch. Upload the plan, enter the dimensions (including ceiling height), and hit Create. Then calibrate the map using a known distance or area so NetSpot knows the actual scale.

3. Add the walls and other stuff. Use the tools at the top to draw walls, doors, windows, etc. You’ll also want to assign the right materials in the panel on the right. This part matters more than you might think. A concrete wall and a drywall partition can have very different effects on Wi-Fi coverage.

4. Don’t forget the floors themselves. Once you’ve got the layout, click Start planning and select Floor slab. Set the material and thickness. Since you’re working with three stories, this is a pretty important step. If there are stairwells or open spaces between floors, you can add those using Cutout Editing. Hit Apply when you’re done.

5. Do the same for floors two and three. Once they’re all in, you’ll need to line them up using Align floors with each other or the Align Levels tool. Just match the walls and other structural features as closely as you can. NetSpot needs the levels aligned before it can generate multi-floor heatmaps.

6. Now for the fun part — placing APs. Add an access point, pick the brand and model, and configure its settings. You can adjust the antenna properties too, or import an antenna pattern if you’ve got one. I’d start with the APs you were already planning to use and see what kind of coverage they give you.

7. Play around with the placement. This is probably the most useful part for your situation. As you move an AP, NetSpot shows how the predicted signal changes in real time, including on the other floors. You don’t even have to generate heatmaps yet. Try shifting an AP so it’s not directly above the one downstairs and see how that affects coverage.

8. Check the heatmaps. Once you’ve got a layout that looks promising, click Heatmaps in the upper-right corner. I’d look at Signal level and SIR first, then check Quantity of APs and Overlapping channels (SIR). If something looks off, move the APs around and compare the results.

One thing I’d keep in mind: you don’t need to get rid of every bit of overlap between floors. Some overlap is perfectly normal. The goal is good coverage without creating unnecessary interference.

And of course, this is all predictive. Once the APs are installed, it’s worth doing an actual survey to see how closely the real-world coverage matches your plan.

11

@Senior_Manager Oh, that makes so much more sense now. I completely missed the floor slab settings, was too busy messing around with walls and AP placement lol. And being able to move an AP and see how it affects the floor below is exactly what I was looking for. Looks like I need to redo my project as one multi-floor building instead of three separate layouts. Thanks a ton!