WI-FI

Wi-Fi is an important part of hospitality systems and crucial for guest satisfaction but challenging.

ADVANCE IT is specialized in Wi-Fi and Network planning, implementation and support projects. Our expertise is design, implementation, project supervising and consultancy of the latest Wi-Fi solutions for hospitality, sports facilities, shopping malls and office buildings.

For every project we combine our experience together with site survey and planning tools to optimize design and provide the best solution tailored for each client. We are vendor independent to provide the best solution for you. 

Feel free to contact us also for consultancy and improvement of your existing Wi-Fi systems.

Tourism today is one of the most evolving production branches of the economy. Your guests today require much more services than they did ever before. Most of those services relay on good and reliable IT infrastructure. Under IT infrastructure we mean wireless network, ethernet, fast Internet link, servers, storages and so on. Hotels today also use lots of POS machines, IP TVs, refrigerators, IOT sensors and so on. All those devices must work properly and directly depend on your IT infrastructure.

Advance IT is a firm from Zagreb Croatia that has done projects covering entire hotels, camps and office buildings with wireless and wired networks, all the way from planning and consultancy to cabling, site survey and measurement with delivery of project documentation.

 We are very focused and flexible towards our customers, and have a large amount of accumulated knowledge gathered through many years, projects and constant education.

 As a firm we are not locked on any vendor and we have done projects with lots of different vendors like: HPE, Cisco, Juniper, Cambium, Fortigate, Ruckus, WatchGuard, Cyberoam, Mikrotik, D-Link, Ubiquiti etc.. This has given us the opportunity to choose the equipment that best matches customers’ needs and budget.

PLANNING OF THE PROJECT

The first and most important part of any project is planning. Planning a wireless network for a hotel or camp today takes a lot of time. First of all one must be familiar with business process and guest needs. What do you have to keep in mind when optimizing the network and cost:

All the virtual networks that one will need (for employees, for guests, IOT, printers, TVs, etc)

Choose the right equipment considering:

Client’s budget

Environment (walls, size of the rooms, are the windows metalized, places where lots of guests will be in one place like restaurants, dance halls, lobbies and so on)

Management of the equipment (most of it today can be managed from cloud consoles)

Cabling infrastructure (length of network cables, state of the cables, throughput, etc.)

PoE budget of network switches

Please try to consider each part as a service. We can provide for you any of those services. This is how we do it.

We talk to the client and find out their requests, requirements, and budget. We get familiar with premises that are the subject of the project. We always ask our clients for blueprints of the buildings so we can make signal coverage planning. With all this information we can get to wireless network planning and choose the right networking equipment. We have to make a good plan, get a rough number of needed access points, choose a vendor and models of the equipment. We import all the gathered blueprints into Ekahau planning and site survey software, regarding clients needs we choose types of access points. We position AP-s in the Ekahau software to get estimated spread of wireless signal through the building.Regarding our experience, we must tell you that our planning results have minimal differences from the site survey after the job is done. In this part of the project, one has to also keep in mind lots of other information like cabling infrastructure considering that there is one, PoE budget of active equipment compared to PoE budget needs of access points. ADVANCE IT is also in possession of a Fluke Networks measurement tools so we can do layer 1 cable testing for you as well. This gives you information about quality, any problems as well as the length of the cables. After a lot of math, thinking, brainstorming and excel tables, the client is presented with a project plan. Usually, the client is presented with a few options regarding AP models as well as positioning.ADVANCE IT is also in possession of a Fluke Networks measurement tools so we can do layer 1 cable testing for you as well. This gives you information about quality, any problems as well as the length of the cables. After a lot of math, thinking, brainstorming and excel tables, the client is presented with a project plan. Usually, the client is presented with a few options regarding AP models as well as positioning. ADVANCE IT is also in possession of a Fluke Networks measurement tools so we can do layer 1 cable testing for you as well. This gives you information about quality, any problems as well as the length of the cables. After a lot of math, thinking, brainstorming and excel tables, the client is presented with a project plan.Usually, the client is presented with a few options regarding AP models as well as positioning.

• Consultation
• Choose the right equipment for you
• Advise you with positioning or repositioning of access points (Ekahau planning and site survey)
• Positioning of switches (regarding PoE budget, cabling infrastructure, communication and server racks)
• Cable testing with professional equipment if needed (Fluke Networks)
• Networking (number of VLANs, size of subnets, DHCP lease time, firewall and switch configurations)

This is part of project that takes most time. It considers getting the equipment, configuration of all the devices, delivery, mounting of access points, deploying switches and the rest of active or passive equipment. In this part we would like to point out most important, documentation. Every configuration of any part of equipment must be documented and after the project is done, given to customer.

• Sell ​​​​and provide you with all the equipment you will need for your project
• Installation, configuration, deployment
• Document each configuration and setup so your employees will know exactly how it is configured

Under finalization we consider testing of the network, site survey and project documentation. Most important parts in this segment are site survey and documentation. Site survey measures wireless signal strength on 2.4Ghz radio as well as 5Ghz radio. Site survey gets the exact signal strength in any part of the building that is included by the project. We will now show you a real signal spread of the same building we showed you in prediction, please keep in mind that there are 29 access points just on this floor of the building.

• Site survey with exact signal strength in any part of the building that is included in the project
• Documentation of entire project with networks schematics, list of all networks, IP address of the network devices, blueprint with positions of all the networking equipment, all the configuration files and so on
• Project management –​​​​​​​​​​​​​​It is important to understand all the segments of the project and coordinate all the sides involved in the realization of one

CONVERGED WI-FI, IOT & ZIGBEE PLATFORM SOLUTION FOR HOSPITALITY

As lodging brands move along the path of digitalization, IT networks have an important role to play as the data highway for IoT devices and services. New technologies like Zigbee and Bluetooth 5 are directly targeted towards the improvement of hospitality segment services. Guests can have more convenience. At the same time, you gain better control and management of your hotel systems.

 You won’t have separate networks for specific devices, one system will handle all. The Zigbee and Bluetooth radios serve as data collectors for a broad range of in-room IoT devices like door locks and safes, occupancy sensors, air quality monitors, leak and humidity detectors, duress alarms, staff and asset location systems, energy and comfort controls , some can add on gunshot and vaping detection sensor.

Some vendors like ASSA ABLOY let hotel guests use their smartphones as digital keys. Guests can now check in with their smart device. The system generates an encrypted digital key that is delivered to their device. That allows guests to bypass the reception desk on arrival and gain secure access to the room. This eliminates a separate Zigbee gateway, allowing a single converged Zigbee / Wi-Fi network.

In large hotels, you can help guests get to their destination quickly and efficiently by providing directions to their destinations such as restaurants, shops, swimming pools, gyms, and more. Software can also tell you what are the paths where your guests like to move around, where do they like to stay and rest, their habits and all that in compliance with GDPR. All that can be used to find out more about your guests, provide them with some new services and make them feel better.

Send relevant content and offers to hotel guests for a great on-site experience that can also help increase revenue. Personalized communications using IoT beacons and proximity marketing can increase the number of point-of-interest visits and purchases while improving hotel guests’ engagement and loyalty. The potential IoT services are virtually unlimited. All of the above apps are possible with the single converged Wi-Fi / Zigbee / BLE network. This helps hospitality service providers and hotels overcome the complexity and high costs associated with other IoT implementations.

We have implemented all those technologies and we can help you with consultations and implementation or just as a project management team. If you need to build an entire network or just expand your existing one. Maybe you need to replace some equipment, or you just need advice, please feel free to contact us and let us help with our specialized personnel, equipment but most of all knowledge & experience.