If your Wi-Fi works fine first thing in the morning and falls over once the lunch rush starts, you're not imagining it. Most business Wi-Fi problems come down to a handful of causes, and most of them are fixable without replacing everything.
1. One router trying to cover the whole site
The modem-router your internet provider sent is built for a small home. Put it in a back office behind a coolroom, a kitchen or a few brick walls, and the signal at the front counter is weak before anyone even connects. Weak signal means devices keep dropping and reconnecting.
The fix: one or more proper access points, mounted high and spread out, each wired back with a data cable. Devices then move between them as people walk around.
2. Too many devices on one network
Staff phones, customer phones, the POS, EFTPOS terminals, cameras, the music system, the TV. A cheap router can only juggle so many connections at once, and busy times are exactly when it runs out.
3. Crowded channels
In shopping strips and office buildings, every business nearby is broadcasting Wi-Fi too. If you're all on the same channel, you're talking over each other. Business-grade equipment picks quieter channels automatically and makes better use of the 5 GHz band, which has far more room than 2.4 GHz.
4. Guests sharing your business network
When customers use the same network as your EFTPOS and computers, a few people streaming video can slow everything down. It's a security problem too. A separate guest network with its own speed limits keeps customers happy without touching your business systems. Our guide to setting up guest Wi-Fi covers how.
5. It's actually the internet, not the Wi-Fi
Sometimes the Wi-Fi is fine and the NBN connection itself is dropping. A quick test: plug a laptop straight into the router with a cable. If it still drops out, the problem is the connection or the plan, not the Wi-Fi.
What you can check yourself
- Restart the modem and router, then note whether problems come back at the same time each day.
- Walk the site with your phone and see where the signal drops.
- Check how old the router is. Anything around five years old or more is due for replacement.
- Ask your internet provider whether there have been outages on your line.
When to call someone in
If dropouts are costing you sales, or your EFTPOS falls off the network mid-transaction, it's worth having the whole site tested. We check the signal across the whole site, look at what's connected and how it's set up, then fix the cause, often in one visit.