The Foundation to your Smart Home | The Network
Many facets of life require a foundation to build upon. In the professional world, education is the foundation to developing success. In construction of homes and buildings, a sturdy foundation is necessary to support the infrastructure. Our roadways are developed with a foundation to support traffic. The foundation is the first step in achieving results and the mission at hand.
Similarly, as technology advances and as more and more devices in our homes and our personal lives require internet access, a robust home network is necessary in order to support bandwidth, speed, and proper coverage. In the home a network is the foundation to protecting data, supporting multiple electronics and multiple streaming devices being used concurrently, and provide the necessary coverage to avoid dropouts or slower connections. Additionally, as devices continue to be introduced in the marketplace as smart home enabled, a thoughtfully engineered home network will scale to support the increase in connected home devices.
Related: InnerSpace Electronics Improves Home Networks
Data Protection and Security
Gone are the days when it was safe for homeowners to leave their doors unlocked when they were on or off premise. Today would you leave your door unlocked for anyone to have access to enter? Think of your home network as a similar entry point for intruders. An unsecured network easily allows hackers as well as curious neighborhood children/neighbors to enter your home and get access to all your personal data and private information. It’s exactly like leaving all your doors unlocked.
Separating your guest network from your primary network is good practice to improve security. This means that your guests can share your high-speed network but have no access into your primary network. Basically, like giving them a key to the guest house instead of the entire house.
Improved Performance
Imagine this scenario. You’re watching a movie on your favorite video streaming service, music is streaming in the kitchen and dining room as dinner is being prepared, the kids are upstairs one is playing video games, the other relentlessly searching the internet working on a research paper. You’re running an unmanaged network with one Wifi extender upstairs and often the music skips out, the video pauses while it downloads more of the content, the video game cuts offline right when they were about to get to the next level, and the internet is just slow and taking forever to load. Don’t allow this to happen to your family.
The demand for bandwidth continues to grow quickly, as new devices continue to enter the home. This combined with concurrent usage by all occupants means that upgrading your networking equipment will significantly improve speed and overall performance.
Networking gear that fails to take advantage of 5GHz or more recent standards such as IEEE 802.11ac or 802.11ax is outdated and can be the root of poor performance and slower upload/download speeds. If your network is an unmanaged network, a simple addition of a controller will greatly improve performance. Keeping your equipment updated through firmware will also ensure you’re running the most current versions.
Separating traffic on your network into multiple ‘virtual’ networks can synchronously improve performance while improving security. A solid network will segment multiple networks within your main network to allow each system to essentially operate off their own network, therefore causing less disruption across all your devices when they are being used simultaneously.
Reliable Coverage
Have you ever noticed that as you walk around your house, your Wifi signal becomes weaker or drops off completely in certain locations? It’s due to a lack of access points that allow you to carry the signal throughout the home. In a home with multiple levels or walls that can lessen signal strength, proper location of wireless access points will help to carry the signal throughout the home. Intelligent access points communicate with your portable devices and switch your device’s Wi-Fi connection to the closest access point based on your location. It eliminates the guesswork and frustration of reconnecting to the home network.
Equipment also plays a role in providing adequate coverage. Old, dated equipment is often operating on older technologies, and signal strength is not as disbursed in range as newer gear. A simple and less costly solution can be to add more access points, and update firmware.
Future-Proofing and Maintenance
Investing in your home network is a logical step in future proofing your home setting it up to support new technologies that are designed to make our lives easier. You want a home network that can easily be upgraded, provides security and data protection, and presents seamless coverage to ensure peace of mind and greater usability.
Counting on a professional to not only install your home network but to also maintain it will make your investment go even further. As network professionals we are trained to provide system updates, maintain and remotely manage your security settings, troubleshoot to resolve any issues prior to you becoming aware, and keep you educated.
Network Evaluation
At InnerSpace Electronics our commitment is to engineer secure and reliable networks. Our team of network specialists are highly trained and have earned multiple certifications on networking best practices.
If you’re unsure of where your network stands or if it’s time to upgrade, take this quick questionnaire.
If you know you are due for an upgrade or maintenance, contact us today for your complimentary consultation.