How to boost Wi-Fi in an office or hotel

First, find out what is slow

Run a speed test on your phone right next to the router, then in the room where Wi-Fi is bad. If it is slow next to the router too, the problem is the internet line or the router itself, and no amount of extra Wi-Fi will help: call your provider or replace the router.

If it is fast next to the router and slow far away, the line is fine and the problem is coverage: the signal does not reach. That is what the rest of this guide is about.

Why the signal does not reach

Concrete walls and floors. Most buildings in Batumi and across Georgia are reinforced concrete, and every wall the signal passes through takes a large share of it. Two walls and a floor can leave almost nothing.

The router sits in the wrong place: in a corner, in a cabinet, behind the TV, or next to the entrance where the provider installed the cable.

Neighbours. In apartment towers dozens of networks share the same channels on 2.4 GHz, and they talk over each other.

Too many devices on one router. A small hotel in August can have more than a hundred phones connected to a box built for a family.

What helps for free

Move the router to the middle of the space, high up and in the open, not inside a cabinet or on the floor.

Restart it, and update its software from the settings page. Old firmware is slow and unsafe.

Use the 5 GHz network for devices in the same or the next room: it is faster and less crowded. Keep 2.4 GHz for far rooms, because it passes walls better.

Change the channel in the router settings to one your neighbours use less. A free Wi-Fi analyser app on an Android phone shows which channels are crowded.

Why extenders usually disappoint

A repeater (extender) catches a weak signal and sends it on. It can only pass on what it receives, and it uses the same airtime to listen and to talk, so the speed behind it is often half of what was already weak.

It also creates a second network with its own name, and phones cling to the wrong one as people walk around. For one far bedroom at home it is fine; for an office or a hotel corridor it is not.

What solves it for good: wired access points

Every serious Wi-Fi network works the same way: a cable runs to each zone or floor, and a ceiling access point there turns it into Wi-Fi. Because each access point gets its full speed over the cable, there is no halving, and the walls between zones stop mattering.

All access points share one network name and are managed together, so a phone moves from one to the next without dropping a call. The number and the places of the access points are decided by measuring the building, not by guessing.

In a hotel: guests, staff and card terminals apart

Guests get their own network, kept apart from the staff computers, the booking system and the card terminals. A guest's infected laptop then cannot reach your reception, and card payments keep working when the guest network is busy.

Plan for the full house, not for May: a hotel in August has two or three devices per guest online at once. And have the network watched, so a dead access point is found in minutes, not in a review.

What it costs

At SureIT a network for a small office starts at 1,400 ₾, including the engineer's plan, cabling and setup. Each further access point is 180 ₾, and the equipment is priced openly with the plan.

For a hotel we measure first and send a plan that shows where each access point goes, so you see what you pay for before any cable is pulled.