WiFi for Home Offices

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WiFi Installation For Home Offices

Over the past year, the majority of us have had the need to work from home amid the coronavirus pandemic. Though the success of the vaccine rollout has businesses and consumer confidence continuously increasing, it is likely that working from home might be a phenomenon which is here to stay.

This is because working from home allows employees a greater level of flexibility surrounding their working patterns and working hours. In turn, this allows people the opportunity to regain a better work-life balance, and better juggle other responsibilities such as childcare, the school run, and looking after relatives.

However, the transition to working from home was rather sudden, leaving many to purchase a cheap desk off the internet during lockdown, or make do with what they have. Now that working from home may be here to stay, you may be considering a more permanent office space with better boundaries, perhaps by repurposing an outbuilding as your new garden office.

But with the extra freedom that comes from keeping your home and home office as two distinctly separate spaces, there also comes the issue of installing the infrastructure you need in your new office, such as electricity, lighting and, of course, Wi-Fi.

Extending your Wi-Fi range with Point to Point

One method of extending your Wi-Fi range to a garden outbuilding is by using the Point-to-Point wireless networking technique. This links or connects physical networking devices by using wireless technology. This means that Point-to-Point can extend internet connectivity across a large area without any need for cabling.

Point-to-Point wireless works by setting up a single high-speed connection in an optimum location. It then uses antennas and radio connectivity to set up a physical line of site sequence of connection points across the required area.

In short, Point-to-Point wireless connections provide a bridge for data and signals to cross from one place to another. In this sense, they work similarly to a normal network, except without using physical wires as the connecting media.

Extending your Wi-Fi range with mesh networks

Another way that you can extend your Wi-Fi range to your home office building is by using a mesh network. At its most basic level, a mesh network is a series of interconnected devices or ‘nodes’. These nodes allow for multiple clients, including laptops, phones, and other devices, routers, and gateways.

The benefit of a mesh network is that each node can communicate with one another and work both together and individually. This means that when one node can no longer operate, such as in the case of an error, the rest can still communicate with one another and thus you will not lose your Wi-Fi connection.

There are two types of mesh networks available for you to consider- wired mesh networks and wireless mesh networks:

• Wired –

Wired mesh networks use shortest path bridging to allow Ethernet switches to be connected into a mesh network. In other words, it is a mesh network made up of physical Ethernet connections.

IP routing is used to support multiple paths from source to destination, allowing all paths to be active at once.

• Wireless

A wireless mesh network takes the Wi-Fi signal and repeats it using repeaters. This ensures that clients get a good signal over a larger area.

The benefit of a wireless mesh network is that they can self-form into groups by communicating and can also self-heal. For this reason, they are often used to take smart meter readings, and with smart hubs and smart homes.

Which Wi-Fi solution is best for my garden home office?

When it comes to installing Wi-Fi in an external building, every project is different. The requirements and needs should be weighed against a variety of factors, including:

• Environment
• Time scale
• Budget
• How far the outbuilding is away from your home
• Existing infrastructure
• Reliability
• Aesthetics of your garden

Some solutions may require running a physical line through your garden, which can also come with its own limits, difficulties, environmental risks, disruption to your everyday life and your plants, and potentially more hassle.

If you need help or advice on installing a reliable internet connection to your outbuilding, contact WiFi Heros today to discuss your options. We install professional external WiFi solutions, cabled networks and wireless connections to get you Wi-Fi exactly where you need it.