Warehouse networking & wireless
Design and installation of the industrial wireless, cabling and switching an audit recommends.
Wireless assessment · Australia-wide
Warehouse Wi-Fi audit
Find out why the scanners drop out — with measurements instead of guesses. We survey your warehouse as it actually operates, then give you the heatmaps, the causes and a prioritised fix list you own.
Why it degrades
Your warehouse changed. Your Wi-Fi did not.
Almost every warehouse wireless network was designed correctly — for the building as it was on the day it was commissioned. Then the operation did what operations do. Racking went from four levels to six. A slow-moving line became a pick face. Stock density doubled over a peak season and never came back down. Someone added a mezzanine, a canopy over the dock, or a coolroom in the corner.
Radio does not care about any of that, which is exactly the problem. Signal that used to travel the length of an aisle now stops at a pallet of bottled product. An access point that had a clear line to the floor is now looking at the back of a steel upright.
The device fleet moves too. Handhelds that once did barcode scans now run images, video and voice picking. Ten devices per aisle became forty. Each one is a client competing for the same airtime, and airtime is the resource that runs out first.
- Racking reconfigured or built higher
- Stock density up, seasonally or permanently
- More devices, doing heavier work
- Automation, AMRs or conveyor added
- New mezzanines, canopies or coldrooms
- Access points replaced piecemeal over time
- Firmware and channel plans left on defaults
Signs you need one
What a failing warehouse network looks like from the floor
Wireless problems rarely announce themselves as wireless problems. They arrive as pick-rate complaints, mis-scans and an argument about whether the handhelds are any good. If you recognise several of these, the network is worth measuring.
- Scanners drop connection in the same aisles every time
- Devices pause or re-authenticate when crossing dock doors
- Voice picking breaks up mid-instruction
- Handhelds slow down at shift change, when everyone logs on at once
- Coverage was fine when the shed was empty and failed once racking filled
- Devices cling to a distant access point instead of switching to the near one
- The freezer or coolroom has never worked properly
- New mezzanine, canopy or automation went in and nobody re-checked the Wi-Fi
Before changing equipment
What to record when scanners drop out
Write down the aisle, time, shift, scanner model and app. Does the problem follow one scanner or happen in the same place with several devices? Note any recent changes to stock, racking, access points or scanner software.
Ask your IT team to keep access point and sign-in logs from the time of the fault. Check those records before changing channels or replacing hardware. A site survey can then measure the affected areas.
What we measure
Coverage is one number out of a dozen that matter
A signal-strength heatmap on its own will tell you a warehouse is fully covered while staff are still losing scans. A useful audit measures the things that actually break operations.
- Signal strength (RSSI) at floor and device height
- Signal-to-noise ratio across every aisle
- Co-channel and adjacent-channel interference
- Non-Wi-Fi interference on the spectrum
- Throughput and latency under real load
- Roaming behaviour between access points
- Client capacity per access point and per zone
- Access-point placement, height and antenna type
- Channel plan, power levels and band steering
- Switching, PoE budget and uplink capacity
- Controller and SSID configuration
- Firmware currency and known defects
How the audit runs
Four stages, agreed before we arrive
Scope and briefing
We confirm the zones that matter, the devices and applications in use, the problems your team is reporting, and site access, inductions and timing. Knowing that the fault is worst at 6am in the freezer aisle changes how we survey.
On-site survey
We walk the floor with survey equipment at device height, not eye height, capturing signal, noise, interference and throughput across every aisle, dock, yard and coldroom in scope. Where the problem is intermittent we also capture spectrum data to catch non-Wi-Fi sources.
Analysis
Survey data is processed into heatmaps and cross-checked against your access-point placement, channel plan, controller configuration, switching and PoE. This is where symptoms get matched to causes, and where we separate coverage problems from capacity and configuration problems.
Report and walkthrough
You receive the written report and we talk it through, so the findings land with the people who have to act on them. Quick wins are identified separately from capital work, with dependencies called out.
What you receive
A report that survives contact with your engineers
The deliverable is written to be useful to a network engineer and legible to an operations manager, because both have to sign off on what happens next. Nothing in it is a sales document.
Recommendations are grouped by priority and effort: what to change this week at no cost, what to tune at the controller, what needs new antennas or mounts, and what genuinely requires capital. Where we recommend hardware, we say what it needs to do and why — not just a part number.
You also receive the raw survey data. If you take it to another provider, they can pick it straight up.
An audit is a snapshot, and sites keep changing. Where a network matters enough to audit, it usually warrants ongoing wireless monitoring — continuous reporting from every access point and switch port, with a dedicated IT manager who spots the drift rather than diagnosing it again in two years.
- Coverage, SNR and interference heatmaps
- Capacity analysis by zone
- Access-point placement and antenna review
- Channel, power and roaming recommendations
- Switching, PoE and uplink findings
- Prioritised remediation roadmap
- Indicative costs for the work identified
- The raw survey files
Common findings
What we usually find, and it is rarely the handhelds
Access points mounted above the racking
A very common one. APs fixed to the roof steel look tidy and cover the top of the racking beautifully, while the aisle floor — where every scanner actually lives — sits in a signal shadow. Coverage measured at 8 metres is not coverage at 1.4 metres.
Omnidirectional antennas in narrow aisles
An omni radiates in every direction, including into steel and stock. Racked aisles usually want directional or patch antennas aimed down the aisle so the signal travels where the forklifts do.
2.4 GHz co-channel interference
Too many access points shouting on overlapping 2.4 GHz channels, so devices spend their time waiting for airtime. Often fixed by turning radios down or off rather than adding more hardware.
Sticky clients and bad roaming
Devices hold a weak connection to a far access point well past the point of usefulness. Usually a mix of power levels set too high, minimum data rates left at defaults, and roaming assistance not configured for the device fleet.
DFS channels dropping under radar
Sites near airports, ports and weather radar can lose an access point off a DFS channel without warning. It looks like a random dropout and is invisible unless someone is logging for it.
Capacity, not coverage
The heatmap looks green everywhere and the network still crawls at 6am. Coverage and capacity are different problems, and adding access points to a capacity problem can make it worse.
PoE budget quietly exhausted
Newer access points draw more power. Switches that ran the old fleet fine will silently under-power or drop ports when the fleet is upgraded, producing faults that look like a wireless problem.
Environments
Where we audit
Distribution centres & 3PL
High racking, multiple pick zones, heavy device counts and no tolerance for downtime during peak.
Cold storage & food
Freezers, coolrooms and blast cells, where condensation, door cycling and rated enclosures all change the answer.
Manufacturing & plant
Running machinery, variable-speed drives and metal everywhere — the richest source of non-Wi-Fi interference we see.
Retail & e-commerce fulfilment
Dense picking, seasonal volume swings and networks that were sized for a much smaller operation.
Yards, docks & outdoor
Container yards, loading docks and hardstand, where coverage has to survive weather and moving steel.
Multi-site operations
Several warehouses on inconsistent builds, audited to one standard so results can be compared.
FAQs
Questions we get asked
What is a warehouse Wi-Fi audit?
It is a measured assessment of how your wireless network actually performs in the building as it operates today — with full racking, running plant and staff on the floor. We survey signal, interference, throughput, roaming and capacity, review access-point placement and network configuration, then report what is wrong, why, and what to do about it in priority order.
How long does a warehouse Wi-Fi audit take?
On-site survey time depends on floor area, racking density and how many zones need covering. A single distribution centre is commonly a day on site, with analysis and reporting after. Multi-site or cold-storage environments take longer. We confirm the time, access requirements and deliverables in writing before starting.
Do you have to stop our operation to run the audit?
No, and we would rather you did not. An audit is far more useful with the site running normally, because that is the environment the network has to survive. We work around traffic, and where we need aisle access we schedule it with your team.
What tools do you use?
Surveys are walked and validated in Ekahau, with certification current to Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be). That covers passive and active survey, spectrum analysis and post-installation validation, and it means the heatmaps and measurement data behind our recommendations are the same ones handed to you.
Will you just tell us to buy more access points?
Only if that is genuinely the answer. A significant share of warehouse wireless problems are configuration, placement or antenna selection issues, and some are fixed by removing or turning down access points rather than adding them. The report separates what can be tuned from what needs new hardware.
Do we have to use SonarNext for the remediation work?
No. The audit stands alone and the report is yours. Use it internally, hand it to your current provider, or ask us to quote the items you want handled. We are happy to be measured against our own findings.
Do you audit networks you did not install?
Most of the audits we run are on someone else's installation. We work across HPE Aruba, Ubiquiti, Cisco and other enterprise platforms, so the review follows the requirement rather than a single vendor.
Do you cover regional sites?
Yes. SonarNext is based in Macquarie Park in Sydney and audits warehouses, distribution centres and production sites across metro and regional Australia.
Related
Where this fits in the wider job
Implementation & rollouts
Survey, staging, installation, commissioning and validation when the fix is a full deployment.
IT health check & network audit
The broader review, covering servers, cloud, devices, backups and lifecycle as well as the network.
Ready to talk through your project?
Tell us what you are planning — a new site, a network that keeps dropping out, or IT that needs a safer pair of hands. We will come back with straight answers and a clear quote.