Case Studies

Knowledge and Project Execution are more important than the WiFi vendor selected.

Our team was faced with a challenge.  A client in the Federal space contacted us about correcting performance issues on their Wireless Network consisting of 225 Meraki MR45 Access Points.   This solution had been deployed 2 years prior by another integrator that the client had grown frustrated with.  System documentation was limited and none of the client’s existing staff knew much about the work that had been done.  The client was plagues with dropped connections, failed WiFi calling, and general performance issue.

First day on site and our team notices that there was no channel planning to speak of.  Almost all Access Points were screaming at max power and there was a large variety of channel widths used.  The client also has the requirement to not use DFS channels but they were used anyway.  Our team continued to dig.  The WiFi calling was not working due to misconfigured firewall settings and that was obvious almost instantly.  The problem with dropped connections wasn’t quite so obvious and was going to take some digging.

Our team dived right in quickly correcting the channel plan issues.  The team also reduced power on all access points to create signal levels optimized for a network supporting voice and video.  Correcting the channels and power were the easy part and the results were verified with Ekahau Site survey.

Our team was still concerned about the dropped connections.  Upon initial inspection the configuration to connect the client owned devices to a WPA2-Enterprise EAP-TLS network looked correct.  We they decided to capture the packets on the access point to understand what was causing the undesired behavior.  After a few minutes of analysis, the issue became obvious.  The Client’s RADIUS server was issuing CoA(Change of Authorization) packets.  CoA packets allow a end device to be disconnected in the event of a change in rules or policy AFTER an end device is already authorized on the network.  The Meraki product didn’t support CoA the way it was configured.  To correct this issue required Firewall changes in the client’s data center.  Our team created a report with details on how to correct the issue and presented to the client for further action.

Meeting the WiFi needs of Non Profit Organizations

The WiFi needs of Non Profit Organizations can differ from the traditional Enterprise.  Some Non Profit Organizations are known for their hosting of Fundraisers.   When Non Profit Organizations host Fundraisers they often have WiFi needs more similar to public venues than a traditional office.  We are talking density and capacity challenges.

When a Northeast Indiana Non Profit contacted us about improving their WiFi we started with our discovery process.  Our process reveled some network challenges that went beyond just WiFi.  This organization didn’t have any separation of their business and guest networks. This caused security risks and challenges.  They also had Internet service that was often less than reliable.  With limited access to other Internet providers creating reliable internet was a challenge.  Mogility Networks solved the internet challenges by installing a new SD-WAN Firewall and a backup internet connection from our partner ViaSat.  This increased their Internet Reliability to greater than 99.9%.  We also installed 3 New High Density Wireless Access Points.  The WiFi Network was engineered to create multiple security zones to protect their business operations from Guest Network Users.  Overall Network efficiency has improved employee productivity and satisfaction.