Last Thursday I met with a potential new client to see how we could be of service. Basically they were a little(understatement) disappointed in their last consultants. They had an immediate issue that they wanted me to look into, which was a pc that was behaving badly on the network.
Now for some reason the last company installed a complete wireless network for all their computers(5). So the first thing I notice was the signal strength and link quality was horrible at this computer. So I advised them that the location for the AP was pretty bad and the reception for that computer was proof. They just put the AP on some shelf in the showroom that was at about waist level and pretty far away. So the signal not only had to penetrate the block walls to get to the computers but all the displays in the showroom as well(This is a motorcycle dealership).
Well, we threw together a little paperwork showing our suggestions and prices and they accepted.
We performed the work today, and much to my surprise getting the AP up in the room didn’t yield much better results. So for giggles we brought the AP into the same room as the computer and the link quality still sucked eggs. At that point we did firmware and driver updates on the AP and NIC. We noticed an improvement right away being the link quality indicator actually held steady as opposed to fluctuating between 1% – 100%. After getting that we starting trying different channels, and sure enough we found a channel that gave us good results.
On to problem number two. The other company who did the wireless install left every setting at their defaults. Which means this network was about as open as it can get. Now in my opinion this is completely unacceptable. This company took no steps in protecting the data of their client. The client was unaware of this until we let them know. Needless to say they were a little concerned and upset. So we took care of the minor issue as well.
BSN comes in and saves the day again!