Why K12 Schools Need Wi-Fi Design

Enterprise Wi-Fi is expensive, very expensive. For schools with limited budgets and a responsibility to be good stewards of tax dollars, it is important to get it right, without spending more than necessary on the initial deployment, ongoing support, or fixing costly mistakes. Any savings can be used in other ways to improve education, so unnecessary spending on Wi-Fi can have an impact on the quality of education in schools.

That’s why it is critical for schools to work with Wi-Fi professionals to develop a sound design for the network before it is purchased and deployed. Fixing mistakes after the fact costs a lot of money. The usual “fix” of installing extra access points in areas where performance is poor can often make the situation worse, when the real solution might be to remove an AP or correct a bad channel plan.

What often happens is this: A vendor talks the school into purchasing one AP per classroom and then the channel planning is left up to auto-channel algorithms (known as RRM, or radio resource management). This is a very simple and seemingly easy way to get Wi-Fi in schools that doesn’t involve the headaches of procuring CAD drawings, performing multiple site surveys, collecting client device data, and other things that delay the installation of the Wi-Fi network and increase the up-front costs.

Don’t do it!

The big problem here is that this is extremely inefficient. Do schools need one AP per classroom? Some do, some don’t. You’ll only find out by doing a proper network design. Maybe the design process reveals that a school only needs one AP per two classrooms. A school like this that doesn’t bother with a design and just does one AP per classroom has spent 100% more money than it needed to.

Capacity issues aside, what about channel planning and radio transmit power control?Nearby AP’s on the same channel interfere with each other. Vendors love to tout their RRM as effective means to automatically set these controls optimally. Just turn it on and let the magic happen.

The truth is, RRM just can’t be trusted. It may work for a while, and then it changes something and it doesn’t. My experience has shown that RRM is fine for simple networks with few neighbors, but in the high density, busy RF environment of K12 schools it often fails miserably. Neighboring AP’s end up on the same channel resulting in interference with one and other. Transmit power goes up and down unpredictably. Your Wi-Fi network is an unpredictable moving target. What you measured and validated at one location one day is different the next day, and so on. The ongoing cost of supporting a network in this state is much higher than one that began with a proper design.

While some vendors’ RRM is better than others, no vendor is immune to this. A better solution is a proper design where channels and transmit power are determined by a Wi-Fi professional who is informed by years of experience and site survey data that RRM algorithms can’t factor into their decision making.

It is critical that schools include a proper Wi-Fi design in their Wi-Fi deployments to save tax dollars that would better be spent on other educational needs, and prevent many future headaches that result from over/under capacity networks and bumbling RRM algorithms. The Wi-Fi design process avoids these issues, and leaves schools with efficient, stable networks and the confidence in knowing that the network was validated against their needs, with the data to prove it.

Beyond the tax dollars, in a 21st century classroom, what is the true cost of poor Wi-Fi?