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Is Your Funeral Home’s Wireless Router Too Slow?
I web conference with many funeral homes and I can tell that many of you need to overhaul your internet connection. Funeral home owners tend to take their computing infrastructure for granted. That is only natural because their focus is needed to serve their families. But your operation depends on the internet more than you might think and now might be to take a look and see if the operation can be more efficient.
A growing number of business applications and appliances require access to the internet. Think about your experience. On your business network right now there are computers, printers, phones, tablets, televisions, watches, cameras and thermostats. Your crematorium’s controller is probably on your local network. It is expected that the average person has 6.5 devices connected to the internet and in 10 years the average person is expected to have 15 connected devices! All these devices are clogging the arteries of your local network.
An increasing number of services are also now internet-based, including banking, website, email, funeral home management software and cremation management software. Halcyon is 100% web-based (aka cloud-based). There are many tremendous benefits to web-based software.
- Because you don’t install anything your IT labor costs are lowered. You don’t have to maintain local servers or worry about how a computer’s update will affect your software working.
- It is always available. It is true that your internet service could go down right in the middle of an arrangement conference but you have a great backup internet provider – your smartphone!
- Data backups happen for you. This lowers your backup costs but still mitigates data loss.
- It is more secure. This may seem counterintuitive. But that local server of yours is most likely way behind on security patches and is extremely vulnerable to all kinds of cyber threats.
Any decent, truly web-based software uses technologies that make your user experience just as fast or even faster than previous software that you installed locally. For example, there should be very little delay when you interact with your management system. If your management system is slow then either you are using a poor system or your network, specifically your router, could be the problem.
You might be thinking, “but we put in a wireless router”. How long ago was that? There is an Economic Law that says that telecommunication networks double bandwidth every 18 months. This law is driven by demand. Fortunately wireless routers have improved dramatically in speed, bandwidth and in coverage.
Basic Networking Components
You pay someone to bring you internet service. This is your internet service provider (ISP). It is probably a cable company or a telephone company. ISPs are not all the same. Their ability to provide you fast, reliable internet connection is largely based on the wiring methods that company has available from their source all the way to your location. I am not going to dig deep into these but here are just a few factors to consider for your ISP:
- Look for speed. Your provider will offer different packages at different price points. The more devices there are that need to access the network the more speed you will need.
- Look for reliability. Your ISP may not be measuring this and you may have to rely on anecdotal evidence or consumer reviews.
- Generally speaking cable is much faster and more reliable than plain old telephone wiring (aka POTS).
- Make sure your modem and router can handle the speed you are paying the ISP to provide.
Modem means modulator/demodulator. It changes data transfers from one form of electrical pulse to another. Think of it as a transformer between the ISP and the router.
The router is the central device of your local network. It is not unusual to have a modem and router built into the same device. If your modem and router are separate, then the router is wired to the modem. Devices can be either wired to the router or it can be a wireless router. The wireless router is what gives your location a Wi-Fi network for your devices to connect. I am going to focus on wireless routers.
The drawback to Wi-Fi is coverage- the signal only goes so far. The solution for that used to be to buy a wireless extender. Unfortunately with an extender you had to re-log into a different Wi-Fi network when you moved from the main Wi-Fi broadcast to the extender. Most devices don’t handle that very seamlessly.
Mesh networks are the standard now. With a mesh network you will place access points throughout your business. The access points interact with each other and your devices then see this as one huge, Wi-Fi network. Need more coverage, buy another access point. You should invest a few hundred dollars in a mesh network if you haven’t already. Which brand? Here are some things to look for
- Make sure that the access points do not degrade the speed from the master. One system I know of has slow speeds on their access points so that the ISP maximum is never met.
- Look for the latest standard (Wi-Fi 6 as of the time this was written).
- Look for speed.
- Look for coverage.
- Look for simplicity to set up.
At this time Cnet likes the latest google offering (Nest Wifi) best. See this link for details: https://www.cnet.com/news/best-mesh-wi-fi-system-2020-eero-google-nest-netgear/
Will I have to do this again? Yes. Remember demand will continue to grow. A good rule of thumb is to reconsider every 3-4 years.
References:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/what-is-mesh-networking-and-why-it-matters-to-you/
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3212444/mesh-network-explained.html
https://www.cnet.com/news/best-mesh-wi-fi-system-2020-eero-google-nest-netgear/