Reflexion will be End-of-life on March 31,2023. See Sophos Reflexion EoL FAQs to learn more.
Disclaimer: This information is posted as-is and the content should be referenced at your own risk
Special thanks to KingChris, Heland, and emmosophos
Overview
When deploying a new wireless network or making changes to an existing network, there’s a lot of factors to consider. You need to consider interference, channel selection, speeds, and many other complicated pieces to the puzzle. This can be a complicated process, so we’ve put together some info to get you started on the right foot to try to avoid problems like slow or inconsistent connections.
We’ll be going over the following:
This article is accompanied by our video: Sophos Wireless: Wi-Fi Fundamentals
This Community guide will cover all of the same topics, for those who prefer reading.
Wireless Frequency Fundamentals
2.4
5GHz
Channels
Network Requirements
Application Requirements
Number of Simultaneous clients
Types of clients
Tech
Bands
Speed
Channel Width
Spatial Streams
A
5
54
20
1
B
11
G
N
2.4/5
600
20/40
4
AC
1300
20/40/80/160
MIMO
Streams
20 MHz Channel Width
40 MHz Channel Width
80 MHz Channel Width
1 Stream
87 Mbps
200 Mbps
433 Mbps
2 Streams
173 Mbps
400 Mbps
866 Mbps
3 Streams
289 Mbps
600 Mbps
1300 Mbps pSo no matter how fast your Access point is, your network is really only as fast as the clients that use it.
Areas to be covered
Power Availability
Site Surveys and Heatmaps
Note: Sophos has a wireless pre-sales desk that can help conduct site surveys. Please contact your sales person or sales engineer for more information.
Site Surveys
Passive Site surveys
Active Site Surveys
Predictive Site Surveys
Additional Considerations AP Hopping
Layer 3 Switches
Web Filtering/HTTPs inspection
Passwords
SSIDs
Encryption
More information - Naked Security: 8 Tips to Tighten Your Work-From-Home Network
Paul Ducklin’s recent article on 8 tips to tighten your work-from-home network included some great advice for securing IoT devices such as webcams and smart speakers. His key points are:
Read the full article for more information.
Additional links
Excellent, the first detailed explanation I have seen. I have seen other explanations, but not as good as this one.
Automatic channel selection doesn't always work, you might need to add a comment about using different time slots for checking channel overlap.
Ian
XG115W - v19.5.1 mr-1 - Home
If a post solves your question please use the 'Verify Answer' button.
Thanks! We'll put a few points together for that. Appreciate the feedback :)
Nice write-up. Suggest to add a section in this about using a combination of AP and APX devices, best practices as for those who are already using AP15 / AP55, introducing APX series is a bit of tuning and combining both types of APs to get maximum.
A nice article.It would be great if you discuss about roaming or hoping more in depth.
Since those models have been announced end of life next year and are currently un-supported, we are encouraging existing customers to migrate to APX 120/320 respectively. support.sophos.com/.../KB-000035279
Thanks, we'll try to get some more info on roaming and hopping added in!
revolutionwifi.blogspot.com/.../ssid-overhead-how-many-wi-fi-ssids-are.html
Regarding the requirement for no HTTPs inspection or web filtering for the AP, we have a client that utilises Sophos Central wireless with a ridge to LAN and Guest - NAT configuration. We want to filter their guest web access, but this breaks the AP registration among other things.
Is there a list of URLS we can add as web exceptions do that Central wireless works?
Hey! Thank you so much for a detailed explanation. This is the first time I have seen someone explaining this thing with such details. Thank you once again.
Thankyou so much for this much of detail explanation, Really looking forward to work this way.