Warehouse Wi-Fi with issues

January 24, 2026 by Alex Wilson

In the summer of 2025 we started a conversation with a brand holding company. One of their brands had just implemented a new inventory management system in one of their warehouses and was having issues with scanners and printers dropping off or freezing up. This was impacting productivity and they were headed into their busy season. They engaged us to conduct a full site survey to sort out their issues.

Client environment was a warehouse, 350ft deep by 650ft wide. Ceiling heights varied from 32-36ft. One end had tall racking with 250ft aisles that were 7ft wide. In the middle was a large area of high-stacked products. Lower racking at the other end. Loading docks across the front with lots of pallets stacked but changing every minute. Content of the warehouse was all metal objects (wood and pellet stoves and accessories). Scanners needed to work at all heights in the racks as they picked orders while in the air.

The warehouse had 32x Cisco 9166D1 access points. Per the client, those in the aisles should be at 45-deg angles. During a review of the controller, all APs were found to be broadcasting at full power, using 40MHz channels on 5GHz and 20MHz on 2.4GHz. Many APs were found to have over-lapping channels or shared the same channel side-by-side. Our survey walk with Ekahau and a Sidekick confirmed our concerns of high noise, high interference, and over-powering leading to poor roaming decisions. The client was using Apple-based scanners which follow Apple’s tight rules for roaming and this environment was not tuned properly for them.

We also found several of the APs were likely well over 328ft (wire line length) from their nearest IDF cabinet. This likely was leading to dropped packets and latency issues as well. Some of the cabling was also suspect with bad knots found and severe turns around sharp metal framing. The coverage of the Cisco APs was overly broad due to their wide beam of 70-80 degrees in a cone. Because the racks were often partially filled, APs designed to cover the racked aisles were actually being picked up at the other end of the warehouse. This causes “sticky” client situations where a device holds on to a distant AP too long. This is exacerbated by the devices being Apple and not choosing to roam because the conditions were not right. Additionally there was significant interference from a neighbor using consumer grade access points on the other side of a 6in drywall partition.

We proposed a two-phase solution. Phase 1 was a channel and power plan for the existing network that might help a little bit until they could implement our phase 2 recommendation. Phase 2 called for a redesign using properly selected directional antennas and a Cisco AP capable of supporting them. Our new design called for only 23 APs in the warehouse, which was 9 less than currently installed.

Client implemented Phase 1 immediately and saw some improvements, but since there were too many of the wrong style APs, they still had some issues. The client implemented Phase 2 and had us return to do the work. Over the course of a week, we installed a new IDF and ran fiber over 700ft to link it to the MDF, ran new lines to a number of APs that had bad lines or ones that were too long. We then worked on swapping out the old APs with new ones, one section at a time. Due to client needs, all work had to be done during production hours so we coordinated closely with their staff to avoid totally shutting down any single area. All lines were certified and yes, several had been run between 325ft and 400ft previously. We replaced several of the bad network lines we found as well. We started getting unsolicited feedback from the users on the first day of swap outs. They said devices were working better now. When we finished we conducted a post-install validation survey to dial in the settings on the APs.

Client has since asked us to do the same survey work for another warehouse they have that is bigger with even higher ceilings (55-60ft). That will be scheduled for 2026 sometime.

Category: Accolades Tag: WiFi Design, WiFi Site Survey, WiFi Troubleshooting, Wiring