Hard Evidence On The Benefits of Utilizing 5ghz Bands in The Wireless Workplace

In a previous blog I discussed the growing need to move as many devices as possible over to the 5ghz band. Since that blog post, a customer of ours experienced some issues in his environment that I would like to share with you.  This is a warehouse environment where handheld scanners are used for the purpose of inventory.  There was an area in one of his facilities where the scanners did not work consistently.  After some investigation we determined the default configuration of the scanners was to utilize the 2.4ghz band.  With the use of a wifi scanner we could see that the local AP (servicing the scanners in that area) was configured to use channel 6 on the 2.4ghz band. We could also see additional unknown SSIDs also using channel 6 with strong signal strength.  At this point we had a few choices.  First, we could change to either channel 1 or 11.  This would cause us to re-channel the rest of the facility.  Second, we could ask the neighbor to change to a different channel but same as us, this would likely cause them to re-channel. Finally, we could investigate utilizing the 5ghz band.  In this case we were fortunate that the scanners are dual band and could be reconfigured to use the 5ghz band.  After we made the change the connection issues were resolved.  Keep in mind there are 24 non-overlapping channels in the 5ghz band and only 3 in the 2.4ghz band so it is much easier to find a channel with no interference.

If you’d like to talk about any wireless issues you may be having please contact your Focus account manager.

Thanks for reading!