Networks & Wi-Fi guides
Wi-Fi, cabling, firewalls and internet that keeps working. 25 plain-English guides for small and medium businesses.
- Why your office Wi-Fi keeps dropping out, and how to fix itOffice Wi-Fi usually drops out because of weak coverage at the edges of the building, neighbouring networks shouting on the same channels, or a home-grade router struggling with thirty devices at once. Each cause leaves a different pattern, so working out where and when the drops happen tells you which fix you need.
- How many Wi-Fi access points does an office need?As a rough starting point, plan one business access point for every 150 to 250 square metres of open-plan office, or every 20 to 30 people, whichever gives you more. Walls, floors and how many devices each person carries then move that number up or down, which is why a short survey beats a rule of thumb.
- Mesh Wi-Fi vs business Wi-Fi: which one suits an office?Consumer mesh kits suit homes and very small offices of a few people, but most offices are better served by business access points cabled back to a switch and managed centrally. The difference shows up in capacity, security options, roaming and how much control you have when something goes wrong.
- How to set up guest Wi-Fi without exposing your business networkSafe guest Wi-Fi gives visitors internet access and nothing else: no view of your computers, printers or files, and no knowledge of the staff password. That takes a separate network that is isolated from staff devices, a password you change regularly and a few limits on speed and content.
- Getting reliable Wi-Fi in warehouses and large buildingsWarehouses need Wi-Fi designed around the racking, not around the floor plan, because steel shelving full of stock blocks and reflects signal. Reliable coverage usually means access points mounted lower down the aisles, directional antennas for long runs and a design that suits scanners and forklift terminals rather than laptops.
- Cat6, Cat6A or fibre: which cable does your office need?For most desks and Wi-Fi access points, Cat6 is enough today and Cat6A is the better choice if you want room for faster access points and a longer life. Fibre belongs between comms cabinets, between floors and between buildings, where distance or interference rules copper out.
- What is structured cabling, and why does it matter?Structured cabling is a planned, standardised system of data cables that runs from every outlet and ceiling point back to patch panels in a central cabinet. Instead of a tangle of cables run directly to devices, every connection is fixed, labelled and tested, so moving a desk or adding a device becomes a patch change rather than a building job.
- What a good comms cupboard looks likeA good comms cupboard is a locked, ventilated space with a proper rack, tidy labelled cables, the network gear on a UPS and enough spare room to add equipment later. You should be able to open it, see what everything is and replace a faulty item without unplugging anything else.
- How to label and document your office networkNetwork documentation should let someone who has never visited your office find any cable, log in to any device and understand how the internet reaches each desk. At a minimum that means labelled outlets and patch ports, a simple diagram, a device list with logins in a password manager, and the details of your internet and support contracts.
- Managed vs unmanaged switches: what's the difference?An unmanaged switch simply connects devices together with no settings to change, while a managed switch lets you separate traffic, prioritise phones, see what is plugged into each port and diagnose faults remotely. Very small offices can live with unmanaged switches, but once you have VoIP phones, cameras, a guest network or more than a dozen wired devices, a managed switch is worth the extra cost.
- Power over Ethernet explained for office networksPower over Ethernet, or PoE, sends low-voltage power along the same data cable that connects a device to the network, so access points, desk phones and security cameras need no separate power point. It is supplied by a PoE switch or a small injector, and the main things to get right are the PoE standard each device needs and the total power the switch can deliver.
- Business firewall vs the router your internet provider sentThe router supplied with an internet plan is designed to get a household online with minimal fuss, and it has only basic security. A business firewall inspects traffic for threats, separates staff, guests and devices, provides secure remote access and keeps logs, which is why most offices with more than a few staff are better off with one.
- VPN vs zero trust remote access, explained in plain termsA traditional VPN gives a remote laptop a secure tunnel into the office network, after which it can usually reach much of what is there. Zero trust access checks the person and the device every time and grants access only to specific applications, which limits the damage if a laptop or password is compromised.
- VLANs in plain English for small officesA VLAN, or virtual local area network, lets you divide one set of cables and switches into several separate networks, so staff computers, guests, phones and cameras cannot freely talk to each other. It is the simplest way to stop a problem in one area, such as an infected visitor laptop or a vulnerable camera, from reaching everything else.
- Why is the office internet slow, and is it the provider?Slow internet in an office is more often caused by something inside the building, such as weak Wi-Fi, an overloaded router or one device hogging bandwidth, than by the provider's connection. A few simple tests, done in the right order, tell you which it is before you spend an hour on hold.
- Backup internet and failover options for NZ businessesThe three practical backup options for a New Zealand office are a second fixed connection, a 4G or 5G mobile service, or a Starlink satellite service, connected to a business firewall that switches over automatically when the main line fails. The right choice depends on how long you can afford to be offline, what is available at your address and how much traffic you need to keep flowing.
- How to choose a business fibre planChoose a business fibre plan on upload capacity, support terms and extras like a static IP address, not just the headline download speed. Most small offices are well served by a mid-range plan with decent upload and business-grade fault response, while offices that host services, run many video calls or back up large files to the cloud may need more.
- Network monitoring for small businesses: what it is and why it helpsNetwork monitoring means software constantly checks your internet connection, firewall, switches, access points and other key devices, and alerts someone when something fails or starts to struggle. It turns an outage that staff discover at 8:30am into one a technician already knows about, and it gives you the history needed to fix intermittent problems.
- Choosing and looking after a UPS for network equipmentA UPS, or uninterruptible power supply, keeps your firewall, switches, access points and phones running through short power cuts and smooths out the surges and dips that damage equipment. For most small offices, a line-interactive UPS sized for the comms rack, with enough runtime to ride out brief outages and shut down a server cleanly, is the right choice.
- Signs your network equipment needs replacingNetwork equipment usually needs replacing when it stops receiving security updates, can no longer keep up with your internet speed or staff numbers, or starts failing in ways that cost more time than a replacement would. For most firewalls, switches and access points that point arrives somewhere between five and eight years, but the warning signs matter more than the age.
- How to prepare your office network for VoIP phonesVoIP calls need a small amount of bandwidth but a steady, uninterrupted connection, so the network must give voice traffic priority, keep latency and jitter low and stay up when the power flickers. Checking those things before the new phone system goes live avoids the choppy calls and dropped audio that give VoIP an undeserved bad name.
- Smart devices and IoT on the office network: keeping them safeSmart devices such as TVs, cameras, door access systems, sensors and even coffee machines are often the least secure things on an office network, because they rarely get updates and many ship with weak default settings. The fix is to know what you have, change default passwords, keep firmware current where you can and isolate these devices on their own network.
- Setting up printers on the office network so they keep workingMost office printer problems, such as printers disappearing, jobs stuck in the queue or scan-to-email failing, come from how the printer is connected to the network rather than the printer itself. A fixed address, a wired connection, current drivers, secure settings and a working scanning method solve the large majority of them.
- Network security basics every small office should haveGood network security for a small office comes down to a short list done consistently: a supported firewall, no default passwords, current firmware, strong Wi-Fi encryption, separate networks for guests and devices, no unnecessary openings to the internet and logs that someone actually reads. None of it is exotic, but gaps in any one of them are how many small businesses are breached.
- Planning the network for a new officeStart planning the network for a new office as soon as you sign the lease, because fibre installs, cabling and equipment orders all take weeks. The essentials are ordering internet early, deciding where the comms cupboard goes, planning cabling with the fit-out, designing Wi-Fi for the space and testing everything before staff arrive.