I manage an 8-story office building, and for the past couple of months, our WiFi has become really slow and inconsistent. We're on Spectrum Fiber with a 500 Mbps plan connected through a Fortigate firewall to a UNIFI 48 port core network switch. Each floor has a UNIFI switch and two access points. While the Ethernet connection at workstations gives us solid speeds (490-500 Mbps), the WiFi is all over the place, with speeds dropping as low as 0.25 Mbps, sometimes struggling to even load a speed test. Other times, it might hit between 120-250 Mbps, but it quickly becomes slow again. The equipment was installed in 2018, and our consultants suggest we need new switches and access points, but I'm curious about what's causing this sudden drop in WiFi performance. Any insights or advice would be greatly appreciated.
1 Answer
Have you considered how many devices are connected to the WiFi? Any recent spikes in usage? Sometimes, just having too many devices connected at once can slow things down significantly, especially if they weren't an issue before.
No significant increase in devices lately. Before, we had around 80-90 staff in the office regularly; now it's about 30-40 due to hybrid arrangements. We did upgrade our internet speed two years ago from 200 Mbps to 500 Mbps, and that coincides with our WiFi issues.