Chapter 4: Designing Your Wi-Fi Network

Overview

By this point, I hope you're comfortable enough with the basic principles of Ethernet networking and Wi-Fi to sit down and start working out what your new wireless network is going to look like. The design process is really one of gathering facts and making decisions. For small networks deployed in a single-family home, the design process is trivial, although there are some speed bumps to think about, which I will show you how to overcome. For something requiring multiple access points that serve a medium-sized company, the design process may be infuriatingly difficult. (The behavior of radio waves in the real world of bricks, mortar, and steel framing is notoriously hard to predict.) In fact, my experience has shown that the design process bleeds seamlessly into the deployment process. Certain things you just won't find out until you put a Wi-Fi access point up somewhere and start feeling out the 'microwave presence' of the building you're in. Certainly remember this: Canned solutions will fail. Manufacturer's specs are for rough guidance only-emphasis on rough.

My rule of thumb: The design won't be complete until the network works.

In this chapter I'll present the basic concepts involved in developing a Wi-Fi network. We'll start by exploring the requirements that you will likely have for your home or small office. After we walk through the critical design requirements and questions you should ask yourself, I'll present a basic design solution that will likely work for many readers. Of course, there is no such thing as a 'one-size-fits-all' Wi-Fi solution, so I'll devote the second half of the chapter to design solutions for the unique problems and situations that you might encounter while setting up a Wi-Fi network for your home or office.