The usual response to patchy Wi-Fi is to buy another access point and put it near the complaints. Sometimes that works. More often it makes things measurably worse, because the problem was never a shortage of signal.
More access points, more interference
In the 2.4 GHz band there are only three non-overlapping channels. Add a fourth access point at full transmit power and it will overlap with something — usually one of yours. Clients then spend their time deferring to a neighbouring radio instead of sending data, and throughput falls across the whole area even though the signal bars look fine.
Good coverage is about planned channel and power assignment, not maximum output. Turning power down frequently improves a congested site.
The sticky client problem
Laptops and phones decide for themselves when to roam, and they are conservative about it. A device that associated with an access point by the front door will often hang onto it well past the point of usefulness, because the signal is still technically present.
This is the classic “it works at my desk but drops when I walk to the warehouse” complaint. It is fixed with sensible minimum data rates and roaming thresholds, not more hardware.
Backhaul, not radio
An access point is only as good as what is behind it. We regularly find modern Wi-Fi 6 hardware hanging off an unmanaged switch and a single uplink shared with everything else in the building. The radio is fine; the path back to the network is the bottleneck.
- Check the uplink speed and whether the port is actually negotiating at it.
- Check PoE budget — an overloaded switch will quietly drop power to ports.
- Check for a loop. A broadcast storm presents exactly like bad Wi-Fi.
Buildings are hostile to radio
Around Dalton we spend a lot of time in industrial and warehouse space, and it is some of the least radio-friendly environment there is: metal racking, concrete tilt-up walls, high ceilings, and stock levels that change the propagation characteristics week to week. A survey done in an empty warehouse will not describe a full one.
The same applies to older commercial buildings with plaster-and-lath or foil-backed insulation, which attenuate far more than drywall.
What a proper fix looks like
A site survey against the actual floor plan and the actual device count. Channel and power planned rather than left on automatic. Wired backhaul checked end to end. Then a verification pass walking the building with a measurement tool rather than a phone and an opinion.
It is usually less hardware than people expect, placed more deliberately. If the Wi-Fi is the thing everyone complains about, we can take a look.