Asus Business Hub

Why Your Internet Setup is Failing Your Business

Like any modern business, your internet is the lifeline of your day-to-day operations. Without being connected, files can’t be sent, clients can’t be contacted, and employees don’t have the ability to get work done without access to all those cloud-based apps that are part of their workflow.

While your internet might not be completely out of commission, it might be causing you issues, issues that are costing your business valuable time and money. Here are the top connectivity issues many businesses face, and why they’re occurring.

Wi-Fi Dead Spots

Your IT department has set up a Wi-Fi hub in the middle of the office; that should be good enough, right? Wrong. Those on floors above or below you, or in the corners of the building might be getting weak signal, causing the following issues:

Calls and video conferences lagging or dropping out entirely
Files take much longer to transfer than necessary
Difficulty in playing online media files

Often, standard Wi-Fi setups aren’t designed to manage the kind of area a modern office occupies. Aside from signal strength, you also have many more blockages for signals to pass through; concrete pillars, multiple floors, and so on all present barriers to a strong Wi-Fi signal. The ASUS AC2600 VPN Wi-Fi router offers stable Wi-Fi throughout your office with 4x4 MIMO antenna design and ASUS AiRadar beamforming: ASUS AC2600 Wi-Fi Router

Bandwidth Limitations

Much like a road, routers only have so much bandwidth available. Too many ‘vehicles’ on the road, and traffic slows to a crawl; the same goes for your internet. If everyone is accessing the internet at the same time, and requesting large files, streaming media, and other heavy-traffic demands, internet connections will suffer for all. The ASUS AC2600 VPN Wi-Fi router provides up to 250 simultaneous client connections: ASUS AC2600 Wi-Fi Router

Outdated Modems/Routers

Wi-Fi has come a long way in a short time; you only need to look at the different standards that have come since Wi-Fi became standard:

802.11a
802.11b
802.11g
802.11n
802.11ac

The ac variant is the most recent, but even that is becoming dated, with the introduction of Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax), the new standard, which raises maximum theoretical Wi-Fi speeds from 3.5 Gbps to 9.6 Gbps; an increase of nearly 3x the previous standard. Your current router could be outdated, still operating on an old standard. It’s worth checking your router and connection points to see if your hardware needs updating, especially if you’re also suffering problems such as those mentioned above like dead spots. The ASUS AX3000 Dual Band Wi-Fi router supports the latest Wi-Fi standard, 802.11AX/Wi-Fi 6: ASUS AX3000 Wi-Fi Router

Your Network Wiring

If you’re not using Wi-Fi for your internet needs, you might be suffering from poor ethernet connections. Wired connections are most often the strongest and most reliable way to access the internet, but much like routers and Wi-Fi standards, network cabling also has standards that represent the level of speeds available to systems wired to the internet. Category 5 (CAT 5) is still widely used by many businesses and homes, offering up to 100 Mbps speeds. CAT 5e is the enhanced version of CAT 5 cabling, offering better connection and less interference. However, many new categories have come along since then, with CAT 6 and 6A offering up to 10,000 Mbps and a much wider bandwidth of 500MHz, while CAT 7 is already being offered. That’s a 10x increase in maximum theoretical speeds alone, and with gigabit and above internet progressively becoming the norm in the UK, old cabling simply won’t be able to take advantage of such installations.

Your Internet Speed

You may have an installation that has worked successfully for your business throughout the first decade and a half of this century, but as media files increase in size and quality, and applications send more data, your current installation may simply not be adequate for your current needs. Review your current internet installation, including speeds and data caps, if any. Compare those factors against increased demand from business growth, a growing employee-base, and so on.

Want to know what internet speed is right for your business? Check out our article on business internet speeds.

Web Security

It’s worth having your IT staff check what’s actually on your network. Ideally, your network should consist solely of company-owned property – systems, servers, phones, tablets, etc. If members of staff are also connecting personal devices such as phones, that represents a few issues:

A potential intrusion point to your network not covered by IT department policies.
An additional speed draw on your network; phones are constantly syncing, updating, and receiving notifications and other data packets.

Have your IT staff check what devices are connected to your network, and if possible, reduce the amount of connections, especially if you can’t account for where certain devices are connecting from. There’s a lot to consider when it comes to your business connectivity; with some tweaks and minor installation updates, your business network can go from sluggish to super-fast in very little time at all. Stay connected, with ASUS Routers