"Where does the signal actually reach?"

You know the WiFi doesn't cover the whole site. People have told you — loudly. But "it doesn't work over there" is not a plan. Before deploying a single piece of equipment, you need actual answers to three questions: where does the signal really reach, how fast is the connection, and what does the site physically look like?

To plan or not to plan

It's tempting to skip all this and just slap a second router in the hallway. BANG! Problem solved. Not so fast, cowboy.

If you don't know where the signal actually dies, you're guessing. Maybe the hallway is already fine and the real problem is two concrete walls further down. Maybe the courtyard is closer to coverage than you think. Guess wrong and you'll buy the wrong gear, mount it in the wrong spot, and end up doing the whole thing over again. Twice, if you're unlucky.

A quick walk around the site with a Wi-Fi analyzer on your phone replaces all that guesswork with something better: reality. You'll see exactly where the signal is strong, where it's struggling, and where it has given up entirely.

The pattern is almost always the same. Strong near the router, decent for a room or two, and then it falls off a cliff. Concrete walls, metal doors, distance — every site has its villains. In most community spaces, you'll find:

• A strong zone right around the router — the easy part
• A degraded zone a few rooms away — usable, but frustrating enough to make people complain
• Dead zones behind thick walls or in other buildings — nothing at all, not even hope

How fast is this thing, really?

While you're at it, find out how fast the internet connection actually is. Not what the ISP promised on the brochure — what you're actually getting on a Tuesday afternoon when everyone is online.

This matters because adding more routers doesn't create more bandwidth. It just spreads the same pie thinner. Five users on 25 Mbps is comfortable; fifty users on 25 Mbps is everyone blaming you when video calls freeze. Knowing your baseline keeps expectations honest — yours and everyone else's.

The site map

Finally, you need a picture of the physical space: distances between buildings, walls and obstacles, where power outlets actually exist (you'd be surprised how often the perfect spot for a router has nothing to plug it into). A satellite view, a hand-drawn sketch on the back of an envelope — it doesn't matter. What matters is that you can see the layout and start making decisions instead of fantasies.

After all this, the vague "the WiFi is broken" complaint turns into something you can actually solve. You'll see that it isn't one problem — it's three:

1. Covering the rest of this building — rooms separated by stubborn concrete walls
2. Reaching the second building — across an open courtyard, far enough to matter
3. Not overloading the internet connection — a fixed amount of bandwidth, suddenly shared among many more people

Each one needs a different answer. The good news? You now know the questions.