Business WiFi & High-Speed Internet Solutions

Internet Access

Internet access and WiFi is now an essential for everyone but with the move to VoIP lines the quality of your Internet connection is becoming more and more important.

Not all Internet connections are equal, this is down to the ISP, the distance from the exchange and the type of connection. Some ISPs provide a cheap Internet connection with unlimited usage, but they are unlikely to also give you the full speed your line will support and will likely experience quality and speed degradation during busy periods such as when the kids get home from school or during the school holidays.

The race is on to get direct Fibre connections to every building in the UK, this is also properly breaking BT's monopoly of provision of service. From small villages to cities new companies are bring the fibre connection to people, trying to get full coverage before BT turns off the traditional copper phone lines which is scheduled for the end of 2025. There appears no logic to who is going to be your fibre provider, as in some areas OpenReach is also installing fibre connections. Unfortunately just like their ADSL, VDSL and FTTC services OpenReach's FTTP service is asynchronous, meaning that the uploading speed is significantly slower than the headline download speed. This is important with the growth of things like Video conferences, where you are sending up a lot of data and really start to need a synchronous connection - as provided by some the independent fibre providers.

Nobody appears to be tracking who plans too / provides fibre across the country, so to discover your new fibre provide you have keep an eye open for the construction teams digging up the street, and hope there are signs saying for whom they are working.

We can organise service from an ISP that will provide the maximum speed your line will support and gives usage information that helps fix faults as soon as possible.

Call us on 01242 621641 or email sales@cti-uk.com for more details.

Routers

The range of routers and firewalls we supply can support Dual and a Mobile Phone Internet connection, so everyone is still able to access the Internet from their ordinary computer connected to the office network even if the normal broadband service fails using the backup mobile Internet connction, the quality of the mobile Internet connection depends on the mobile network coverage.

We recommend Draytek routers and firewalls, we supply them fully configured with one year's support, starting at £330

Call us on 01242 621641 or email sales@cti-uk.com for more information or a quote tailored to your requirements.

WiFi

Wi-Fi comes with increasingly large headline speeds and if you have good enough aerials in your device you can connect fast via Wi-Fi then via cable. But more often your aerial isn't good enough, you are just too far away and there are too many other things sharing that signal that your speed is in just in the low hundreds. The 2.4Ghz band has been used so much that in many areas it is so congested that people just can't get a stable or fast connection.
The 5Ghz band is now filling up so with Wi-Fi 6 (6th generation) the 6Ghz band is being made available so you can now get a better quality signal even in the most populous areas, as long as your Wi-Fi Access point and computer or mobile phone support it.

The best WiFi experience comes from 6 elements:

Best Internet Connection

The best wifi system is going to be limited by the quality and reliable of the Internet connection it uses. Is your connection fast enough for everything you need it to do? Are there delays on the line? Thinkbroadband provide a free service that will help you monitor the quality of your Internet connections.

Best Data Cabling

Only cabling can give that top quality link back to the Internet. MESH Wi-Fi is okay extending coverage around an open plan office, but its performance will drop if it has to connect back through any obstruction, via any kind of wifi extender or wifi booster in the same way your phone has problems getting a Wi-Fi signal from the other side of a thick wall, the wifi linked Wi-Fi access points connection back through it will also be poor.
Stand alone Wi-Fi points will require a mains power points, limiting their locations, while the better access points will also receive power over the network cable via a PoE switch or injector.

Best Wi-Fi access points

The best wi-fi points are currently Wi-Fi 7 access points, they have a few advantages over Wi-Fi 5 access points and better devices can connect at Wi-Fi 5 / 6 / 7 speeds.
These Wi-Fi 5 / 6 / 7 access points are a large step up from anything that went before, have multiple aerials allow many more devices to connect and at much higher speeds if the devices support it.

Best Wi-Fi locations

The Wi-Fi access point needs to be free from obstructions which is why they no mount on the ceiling, and can beam down through a floor or two, Where as mounting on a wall, often means there are more obstructions in the way, including the wall. They need to be free from things that produce electrical interference, and the Wi-Fi channels they use should be the least busy for each WiFi access point.

Managed Access Points

Using a Wi-Fi controller to manage the access points allows devices to seamlessly move to the nearest WiFi access point (AP), the one with the best Wi-Fi signal and allows the load to be shared between all the wifi access points so no access point is overloaded and each user is getting the best share of the available Wi-fi speed.
If you have a number of individual Wifi access points, then your device (phone / laptop) makes a list of them and even if it is next to the perfect WiFi connection, if it can still see the access point at the far end of the building it will connect to that much weaker signal.

Devices per Point

With Wi-Fi 5, 6 and 7 this is less of a problem but the capacity of the wifi point is still shared among the devices connecting to it so don't have lots of devices connecting to an access point.
With an old “n” speed wifi point sharing 150Mbs between 10 or 20 devices, each might get 15Mbs or 7.5Mbs, if they all had great wi-fi connections, but more likely the actual speed would be far lower.

Wall / Ceiling mounted WiFi Access Point	Long Range WiFi Access Point

Long Range Outdoor Wi-Fi Access Point / Bridge can be used to link different buildings together / back to a main centre for both data and telephone calls, we have set up and support systems that cover many kilometres.

Please call us on 01242 621641 or email sales@cti-uk.com so we can help specify what is right for your location.

Multiple Connections

Any one of these connections can fail, which would leave you without Internet access. This could leave you unable to work if your data is the cloud. The routers and firewalls we supply support dual internet connections so that you can have a back-up service. A back-up service is often less than £1 per day and the way we configure it means that it’s not just sitting there, doing nothing, just waiting for things to go wrong. Our back-up service is being used in parallel with your normal ISP effectively doubling your internet speed with pages loading in half the time as data making up the page with pictures etc. flows down both the connections simultaneously.

The routers we supply can also support a mobile phone internet connection, so if the normal broadband fails, you will still have internet connectivity via a mobile connection. The quality of the connection depends on the mobile network coverage.

Call us on 01242 621641 or email sales@cti-uk.com to see how our solutions ensure that your business keeps working with minimal disruption.

Linking Sites

Our routers are able to provide links between remote sites, which is essential if you want to share resources and make free calls between sites. There are a number of options availble, including load balancing and fail-over so you can choose the one that best fits what you are trying to achieve.

Load balancing uses both connections for optimal throughput between your sites

Fail-over only uses one connection at a time

Call us on 01242 621641 or email sales@cti-uk.com for more information.

Service Graphs

We can organise service from an ISP that gives information about what is happening on your service, via a graph.

An ideal connection

A connection experiencing issues

This is an excellent tool in troubleshooting problems with your internet as you can see what's going on. This is of particular use when you are experiencing speech quality issues when making VoIP calls, either between your remote sites / workers or with a SIP service

Call us on 01242 621641 or email sales@cti-uk.com for more information.

FAQs

• Why is my WiFi slow?
  

  There are may factors that affect Wi‑Fi coverage, these include: speed supported by access point, distance from access point, how many things are connecting to the access point, what bands other access points in your area are using, construction of building...see more

  
   
• There are 3 basic WiFi set-ups for full coverage - what are the advantages / disadvantages?
  

  The table below shows the advantages / disadvantages of each of the 3 basic set-ups

  	Advantages	Disadvantages
  Lots of Access Points	It's relatively cheap	Many access points to maintain (change passwords, etc.) Can’t separate secure network from guest network Each access point needs it’s own power supply and network socket
  Access Points linked to a managed PoE switch	Guest network separate from secure network(s) Each unit just needs it’s own network socket, no seperate power requirement	Many access points to maintain (change passwords, etc.) Each AP needs a dedicated network socket
  Master controller Access Point system	Guest network separate from secure network(s) Each unit just needs it’s own data socket, no seperate power requirement A single point of control for the entire Wi-Fi system	Each AP needs a dedicated network socket