Why You Need a Smart Home Integrator When Upgrading Your Home Network

Categorized:  The Access Blog  |  February 25, 2021

Hiring a professional will ensure that your network keeps up with your lifestyle and needs while you and your family work, learn and play from home.

The Zoom video communications platform grew from 10 million daily meeting participants to more than 200 million in a day in April 2020. As of December 2020, 41.8% of the American workforce continues to work remotely and an estimated 26.7 percent will still be working from home through 2021. At the height of school closures, more than 90 percent of the world’s schools were closed, affecting 2 billion children.

Today, about 213 million students are still fully remote, with many more in hybrid learning. Multiple users running multiple Internet-based applications simultaneously has put a serious strain on the home network.

With school and work-from-home during the pandemic at an all-time high, your home network may need an upgrade. Families across the country are putting a great deal of stress on their networks by using bandwidth at the same time.

Parents don’t want to experience frozen screens or Wi-Fi drops while outside. Students need uninterrupted connections for learning and studying online. Everyone wants to binge-watch Netflix. To ensure a fast, seamless and secure remote work, learning, and entertainment experience, you’ll need an enterprise-grade home network. And to deploy an enterprise-grade network properly, you’re going to need a professional integration service.

Why do you need an expert to set up your home network?

DIY dominates the home networking landscape. You can buy everything you need—routers, extenders, etc. from big-box retailers. The components are affordable and fairly simple to set up. So why on earth would you hire a professional to outfit your place with a wireless network?

Simple answer: Your network will perform better. Not just a little better, but a lot better. Multiple devices can be on the network at the same time without a hitch, connections are fast and consistent, and Wi-Fi reception is reliable wherever you are in your home.

So, what exactly does a professional bring to the table?

Professionals have the experience and the products you need.

Wi-Fi is a hard thing to pin down. You can’t physically see it or touch it, so it’s difficult to know exactly where it is – and where it’s not.

Thankfully, in the tool bag of most smart home integrators are devices that can accurately measure the strength and coverage area of Wi-Fi signals in the kitchen, family room, den, patio, garage – anywhere at all.

A thorough, expert inspection of household Wi-Fi conditions is a critical step towards fast, reliable, consistent connectivity, as it provides a clear roadmap of your home’s Wi-Fi traffic—areas where there are speed bumps and roadblocks, as well as clear stretches of highway. Using this information as a guide, an AV professional can customize the best networking solution for your specific Wi-Fi situation. A combination of the right equipment placed in the right locations, per a thorough Wi-Fi analysis, provides the best networking experience possible.

Professionals tailor a system to your needs.

As with any home improvement, it’s important to gauge your specific needs and expectations before diving into a project. The same philosophy applies to a home network.

Before a smart home professional specifies a single networking product, he or she first determines through an in-person, video or audio consultation, your household bandwidth consumption. They’ll determine types and how often devices connect to the Internet, for what purposes, and your plans to introduce new computers, tablets, streaming device, etc. going forward. From here he or she can build a networking system that supports your current and future connectivity needs.

Professionals detect and overcome elusive obstacles.

The materials used to construct your home, your neighbor’s networking activity, the layout of your furniture, even certain kitchen appliances can impede the performance of a home network. A smart home professional goes into a project eyes wide open for these and other potential bottlenecks and can devise the appropriate workarounds to avoid Wi-Fi complications.

Professionals carry professional products.

The networking equipment offered by a professional is of a much higher caliber than the components available from your ISP or retailer. Engineered with technology and features found in networking systems utilized by businesses, they’re performance powerhouses.

No matter how much bandwidth your household consumes now or in the future, these systems are up for the task. Plus, they’re faster, more reliable, and more secure – resulting in a far better networking experience than off-the-shelf equipment can support. To make your smart home experience even better, a professional can implement protocols for safer utilization of passwords and deploy settings and software to minimize cybersecurity risks.

Professionals provide post-installation service and support.

A smart home professional’s job is far from over after the installation is complete. Through ongoing support and service, any problems you may encounter or networking upgrades you may require are quickly addressed and resolved.

Many professionals offer remote monitoring software to maintain your home’s network health and performance. If a glitch in the network or a security breach is identified, your smart home professional can notify you of the issue and they can often fix the issue remotely before you even notice there is a problem, or your personal data has been compromised.

Hiring a smart home integrator to set up your home network will prevent hassles upfront, ensuring seamless remote work, learning and entertainment experiences for the whole family.

While the disruptions of the pandemic seem never-ending, and collaborating from home isn’t ideal for many, having a reliable, fast and secure network at least eases daily operations. 

For those just starting out, it can be difficult to know where to start, how to select the right technology, and where to turn to for ongoing support. Consider reaching out to us and we’ll set you up with a professional to get started with a home wireless network that will fit your needs.

Ready to step up your smart home experience? Let us help you with your networking needs by putting you in touch with one of our integrator partners in your area.