Is It Time to Update Your Business WiFi?

Like a 10-year-old car, your metabolism or that yogurt in the back of the fridge, things generally do not improve with age. They become unreliable, they slow down and they can really ruin your day. (Note: when in doubt, throw the yogurt out.) This applies to your business WiFi as well. Glitchy video conferences, dead spots and uploads that take forever are indications that your wireless connection may not be getting the job done.

The thing is, WiFi is no longer a perk you offer your employees or customers. It’s a requirement. Not only that, it’s expected to run great. A slow or unreliable wireless connection or network isn’t just an annoyance, it’s bad for business. It leads to less productivity and lost revenue. A study by Sandisk revealed the average employee wastes one week per year waiting for their network to respond. Now multiply that week by the number of employees you have. Scary, right?

Here are some telltale signs that it’s time to give your office WiFi an upgrade.

A lot of small businesses think they can get by with consumer-grade WiFi routers, which are made for the average U.S. household, which averages just 2.6 people. Chances are good that your business has several more people than that. On top of that, you may plan to add more employees as your business grows. But there’s more at play than just people. Consider the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) culture in the workplace, and that each employee is probably working three devices at a time…running a multitude of applications all at once. That’s asking a lot of your current routers.

The symptoms of an overworked WiFi are often excruciatingly, infuriatingly obvious. Skype meeting freeze-ups. Large files and software upgrades that take eons to upload or download. System lockups for No. Discernable. Reason. These are sure signs that your company’s bandwidth demands are more than your current wireless router can handle.

Seemingly every day, new cybersecurity threats arise, some of which are directed at routers. If yours is more than a couple of years old, security updates may no longer be available for it, leaving your business vulnerable to attack. With updated WiFi, you can upgrade your protections with new wireless security enhancements, such as WPA2 plus the latest UTM and firewall hardware.

The only part of “automatic failover” your router knows is “fail”. Is continued connectivity important to your company? Like most businesses, the ones that like to stay operational anyway, we’ll assume the answer is, “Yes, please.” Then you need a router that provides a backup plan when there’s a fixed-line outage. New Dual WAN routers offer two ISP connections, so when one Internet connection fails, the other one automatically takes over, keeping your network (and your business) up and running.

The need to make your WiFi faster, boost your WiFi signal or find other WiFi solutions isn’t limited to the office. If your business sees a lot of guests or customers coming and going, you’ll need a managed WiFi service, and we can help.

Astound Business now offers eero, a simple, affordable, secure WiFi solution that can support hundreds of devices and keep everyone connected.