Category: Network

The Office (after Coronavirus)

tinsleyNET Admin
WorkFromHomeC19

When the UK government took the decision to impose working restrictions in March 2020, the nature of office work changed dramatically overnight.

Not all the changes had a negative impact, people who could work from home found that they could be just as productive without the commute to the office.

We look at the lessons learnt and how they can be implemented to make the new normal a better place to work.

Working from home

It’s been a revelation just how convenient working from home is, both for the employer and the employee. No travel time meaning more productive hours and less pollution from driving, and, if your job allows it, more flexible working hours giving you more quality time with your family, fewer distractions (in some cases) and no arguments over who used the your milk.

Going forward, it’s easy to see that employees could use this to their advantage, downsizing their office as it only has to accommodate a fraction of the workforce while the remainder work from home or ‘hot desk’ in shifts.

First, lets look at how working from home could be a long term change, and at what a work from home office might need.

Home Workstation & Hardware

Home Office GDPR
Working From Home

It’s more than likely that your work from home employees will need a computer, chances are they already have a computer of some sort at home, but with the ubiquitousness of tablets and smartphones, it may well be that their home computer is somewhat outdated.

There are a number of options available here depending on the person and their position in the company.

The least expensive method would be to use a remote desktop session (even running it from a ‘live CD or USB rather than from their computers operating system) This requires little processing and memory power from the remote end as all the heavy work is done at the server end (typically cloud based or a server at your office)

You could provide a laptop for work use, giving you control over the spec and budget of the machines your staff are using, or you could give them a budget to buy their own devices for work use.

Unless particular processing power is needed on the remote devices, say for graphics work, then using a laptop is absolutely the best option. There’s a choice of touch screen, stylus input, tablet/laptop or standard laptops again depending on your employees needs.

Additional screens can be setup, especially if your staff are used to using them in the office, wide screens and rotatable screens are ideal for managing large spreadsheets or word processing.

Having a decent camera, microphone and speakers are also very useful especially when you’re running video conferencing calls or your remote workers are contacting clients. If the built in offerings are a bit low quality, it’s easy to buy and use external devices.

If the remote workers home space allows it, have a separate screen that can be dedicated to video calls and conferencing, leaving this logged into an office Microsoft Team meeting (or zoom, Skype or any other conferencing app) all day long so all your remote workers can see and speak to each other without having to start up a specific session. This helps give the office/team feeling to working and means that your staff can keep in contact as they would do normally, such as chitchat over a coffee in the office, or asking for help from colleges while their working.

If the remote workspace is not a dedicated area, such as a home office, then having hardware that can be setup and then packs away quickly and tidily is essential. If your remote workers are working on the dining room table, having two 20 inch monitors in place all the time would really get in the way!

Your remote workers might also need access to a printer or scanner. Depending on what quality they need and how often they need it, there are several options. From providing a multi-function printer/scanner at home for every day print jobs, to setting up the office printer to allow remote print access, and using the camera on the users smartphone as a scanner.

Home Broadband

Broadband
Home Broadband

In most cases, a lightning fast broadband connection at the remote end is not required, the amount of data sent to and from a remote worker can be kept quite light or buffered and cached when the broadband is less busy.

If there are other people sharing the broadband, hogging all the bandwidth when your remote user downloads a set of files is soon going to be picked up on, so using technology you can cache these files on the remote workstation over night, or access them via remote desktop software.

Carrying out a survey of your remote workers homes could help identify better broadband deals, and help your remote workers position their workstations and WiFi access points/routers in the best locations for connectivity and speed.

Compliance

It’s essential that your remote workers remain compliant with various legislation while working from home, Health and Safety and GDPR are the two that immediately spring to mind, but there may be others that you need to take into account.

GDPR General Data Protection Regulation
GDPR (DPA2018)

GDPR, the Data Protection Ace 2018, policies you have in place will need assessing and updating to cover the new situation, but this should not be a barrier to moving to this new working environment.

If home PC’s, tablets, smartphones or other devices are being used to process personal information, they should be assessed and managed according to your GDPR policy.

Business information and household information should be strictly segregated, and management put in place to protect the business data.

Assessing the working conditions for your remote users will quickly identify areas that need to be covered under your GDPR policy, this may include things like; screen privacy, data storage, printing and destroying printed material, transporting data between the office and remote office and data encryption.

Meeting Room & Reception

With your office staff working from home, it means the office doesn’t need to be so big. In lots of situations, a meeting room, reception area and one or two offices would suffice.

This means the meeting room can be large enough to accommodate clients and observe the social distancing rules, and and office workers in the building could work from one of the offices meaning they are isolated from other people while they’re in.

Your reception could be fitted with a client-facing monitor, and any ‘walk in’ clients could still speak with any member of staff via video conferencing.

A networked scanner and printer could also be made available to share documents.

Hot desking would need a slight revamp, with maybe just a docking station and screen left behind when a users leaves, and a wipe down of all surfaces before they are used again.

Keeping it all together

Making sure your company data is available to your remote workers in a reliable and secure way is essential. There are a number of options for you to look at.

Firstly there are cloud only solutions, services like Microsoft and Google. They are the big boys but that is a benefit; their platforms are reliable and robust and have a range of options and prices that give you access to different amounts of storage space and different tools.

Then there are hybrid solutions, part cloud based and part office-server based. These setups allow you to make use of all the transport facilities of cloud based connectivity, but with the security and peace of mind of an office-based server.

Then there is the pure office-only solution, letting you manage and configure every aspect of the system with an in-house server.

Each option has it’s pros and cons and are suitable to different types of work, in some situations you might combine different elements of all three setups to offer the right connectivity and security for your remote workers.

Having control over your data is essential. Being able to audit it’s use, monitor for breaches in your security, and remotely destroy data from a compromised device are all tools you should have at your disposal.

Making sure your data is backed up is critical. Also, making sure the data on your backup targets is up-to-date and includes any data that might be sitting on a remote device should be built into your backup plans.

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We can carry out a review of your remote workers home office and advise you of any changes we think are needed to make it a long term working arrangement. We can check internet connection, WiFi location, device security, working environment and identify areas needed to be included in your GDPR policy

We can also sort out your office based needs, with terminals, servers, internet connections, security and everything else you need to allow your remote workers to be as efficient as possible.

Contact us today to prepare your workplace for the new normal.

Has broadband slowed down during lockdown?

tinsleyNET Admin
Broadband

With furloughed workers and people working from home, the UK residential broadband networks have been put under continued strain for the past 5 weeks and users are starting to feel like their broadband speeds are slowing down.

Why so slow?

Most residential broadband connections are sharing bandwidth between several homes, it’s difficult to find accurate contention ratio data, but a few years back it was typical that residential connections had a contention of 50:1, what that means is that 50 homes could share a single connection to the internet.

Businesses often had 20:1 contention ratios, meaning that each business on the connection could share the bandwidth with up to 19 other businesses.

During normal use, this is not an issue. Through the day the bulk of internet traffic is on the businesses networks, and from 5pm onward the trend swinging to mostly residential connections.

During the lockdown, this trend has obviously changed. Many many more users are vying for bandwidth over the residential connections during the day.

Getting the most out of your internet.

There’s not much you can do in the short term to address the speed of your broadband. Longer term you could look at changing provider or moving to a less contented connection, or one with guaranteed minimum speeds.

But here are some tips to making the most of the speed you’ve got.

Go Lite

Us lite modes on your device or browser or apps that support it.

Some mobile phones and tablets have a Data Saver mode to reduce the amount of data apps can access in the background, Windows 10 has a similar feature under Data Mode.

Set your browser to a lite mode, Chrome, Opera, Firefox and Edge all have data saving modes, designed to reduce and compress the amount of data needed to load a webpage.

While you’re at it, using plugins like The Great Suspender will put tabs that you’re not using into a sleep mode to prevent them automatically refreshing and downloading data in the background.

More and more smartphone and tablet apps now have features to reduce the amount of data needed to work by reducing the quality of graphics, video or sound, or suspending some features while working in a lite mode, check your apps settings for details.

Some apps, like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, can be removed or disabled, and you can use the web based version of the app instead. Most (if not all) of the features you use are available via the web version, all without the background updates.

IoT

Smart home devices like lights, switches, TV’s Security Cameras and personal assistants are everywhere, and most of them will be connected to your WiFi and may be sending and receiving data in the background.

Disconnect them from the WiFi if there is a setting to do that, or turn the power off to them while you’re working to stop them using up you valuable internet speed. Once you’ve finished work, you can turn them back on or reconnect them.

Same goes for any tablets or smartphones you’re not using, set them to airplane mode to disconnect them from the WiFi while you’re working.

Go 4G (or 5G)

If you’ve got a massive or unlimited mobile data allowance, and a reasonable enough signal, use that instead of your home WiFi.

Look for the Mobile Hotspot or WiFi or the Tethering settings in your phone to turn it into a WiFi point you can connect to.

Drop the bitrate

If you’re streaming video, use the streaming apps settings to reduce the bitrate or resolution, it’s easier to watch a smooth playing though slightly less HD movie than it is to watch a 4K movie that stutters and buffers every few minutes.

If you’re in a video conference call, opt to go audio only, if you’re still having issues, see if there’s an option to dial in on the telephone.

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If you need help making your broadband speeds better, or getting your workforce running securely from home, give us a call toady.

WiFi during Coronavirus Lockdown

tinsleyNET Admin
Broadband

If you’ve got a home broadband service, you probably already have WiFi access around your home, but there may be things slowing your WiFi down, we look at the most common causes for a slow internet connection.

If you’ve not got home broadband, there are a few things you can try to get online at home during the lockdown.

Optimising your WiFi

With so many people working from home during the lockdown, the residential broadband infrastructure is being put under extra stress. This can lead to a slower internet connection when you need it most.

There’s not a lot you can do in the immediate future to change what’s happening to your broadband, even changing provider is going to take a while to get sorted, so we look at the options available to you inside your home.

Staying Connected

WEB Stay Connected Logo Full1

Ofcom have released some good advice for keeping connected running during the coronavirus lockdown

Move your router

Move your router so it’s a free from other devices as possible. Try to keep it on a table, shelf or windowsill, and away from any other electrical devices, especially lamps, TV’s, Stereos, Speakers, Baby monitors, and anything with a lot of metal in it.

Go Wired

If you’re trying to work from home, try using an Ethernet cable from the router to your laptop or PC. While many routers boast Ethernet-busting speeds, the wireless connection is likely to be less reliable and those extra fast speeds are usually only in busts of data, not a continuous stream.

Router to Phone Socket

Try to keep the distance between the main (first) phone socket in the house and the router to a minimum, plugging into an extension in another room could greatly reduce the incoming signal if you get your broadband over the telephone line.

Cable users are less affected as long as the extension comes from the cable junction box outside your house and not an internal one.

Other tips

Turn it off and back on again!

Yes really! us IT bods don’t make this stuff up!

With many home routers, there’s limited diagnostic and management options available to you, so if your router has got itself stuck or is not working optimally, turning it off (unplug it from the mains so the power is completely removed from the device) leave it a few minutes so the internal memory is cleared, then plug it back in and power it up again.

Try moving it (again)

You might think that your router is in an optimal spot in your home, but hidden steel work in the walls and solid brickwork, especially in old houses, can cause the WiFi signal to drop off dramatically.

If you have a tool on your phone or laptop to measure the WiFi signal, using it in each corner of every room will help you identify black spots, test each spot several times throughout the day to get an average reading, and remember leave your measuring device alone while it works so you don’t block or bounce the signals off your body!

If you don’t have an app to measure the WiFi, but you know the signal is particularly poor in one room, or you identify a WiFi black spot that you can’t overcome, use a booster or an extender/repeater device to enhance the signal in that area.

Using different channels and frequencies

Most home routers will be set to auto configure the channel to use, and will likely broadcast over both WiFi frequencies (2.4gHz and 5gHz) but you can configure these settings yourself to try to boost the range and speed you get.

If you do make any changes to your router, always make a note of what the settings were before you change them, that way you can always undo anything that doesn’t work!

Th 5gHz frequency has more channels available to it, meaning there’s less chance of congestion and interference from neighbors WiFi devices, it offers faster speeds but over a shorted distance.

The 2.4gHz frequency has fewer channels, slower top speeds but a longer range.

QoS

If you’re using WiFi calling, video calling or any other ‘live’ streaming service, switching on Quality Of Service could help to make sure that data is prioritised over other data.

Not got home broadband?

If you don’t have broadband available to you while you’re in lockdown, there are a few things you can try.

First of all, ask your neighbours if they would be willing to share their broadband. Most modern routers have the ability to offer a guest WiFi meaning there’s no danger to you or them as devices on the Guest network can’t access devices on the main network (and vice versa)

We wrote a post about this here.

Free access to neighbours WiFi

If you’re using a BT, Vodafone, Sky, Virgin or some other large mobile phone provider, you can already get free broadband access via any of their home WiFi devices over the guest network.

What that means is, if you have a BT mobile phone contract, and your neighbour has BT home broadband, using the BT app on your phone, you can freely connect to your neighbours broadband guest WiFi without them having to do anything.

Using your mobile

If you’ve got a fairly hefty data allowance on your mobile, you can set it up as a WiFi hotspot for your other devices to connect to.

Make sure you monitor your data usage so you don’t go over your limit.

Contact your provider

If you can’t get any other service, try contacting your provider and explaining the situation. They may have special offers available to help users during the Covid-19 lockdown.

tinsleyNET IT Servces Consultants #WeCanHelp

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If you need any help configuring your broadband router and WiFi to optimize it, or would like help getting your guest network up and running for your vulnerable neighbours, give us a call.

Share your WiFi during the Coronavirus lockdown

tinsleyNET Admin
SharedWiFi

As libraries and community hubs have been closed as part of the government’s attempts to manage the Covid-19 virus pandemic, some users who relied on their free internet access may have found themselves cut off from the internet.

If you have elderly neighbours or neighbours who don’t have access to internet services, you could help them during the period of self isolation or social distancing, by sharing your guest access internet connection with them.

Using the guest network segregates their devices from your own WiFi meaning there’s not chance of computer viruses crossing over from one side to the other.

Guest WiFi

Most internet routers have the ability to run a guest WiFi, this broadcasts a different WiFi name (SSID) with a different password, and allows guest users to connect to your internet but without being able to get onto your home WiFi or any of your home devices.

This protects your home computers from getting accidentally infected from a guest device, and means you don’t have to worry about adding additional security measures on your network.

Each brand and model of router is different and will have a different way of enabling a guest network, but typically it will be listed in the router settings as Guest WiFi (sometimes as SSID2 or WiFI2) and should allow you to set the SSID name, which is the network name that gets broadcast.

Make the name easy to spot, so perhaps call it something like “Bob’s Free Internet” and set a password, then let your neighbours know that they can use your WiFi for free, saving them the cost of mobile internet prices.

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If you need help getting your Guest WiFi setup, head over to our Free IT Support page on Facebook or leave a message below, tell us your router make and model and we’ll try to get the instructions you need.

Wi-Fi 6 is coming (did you even notice Wi-Fi 1-5?)

tinsleyNET Admin
WiFi 6 Icon

The Wi-Fi Alliance have released details of Wi-Fi 6 certification program, meaning manufacturers of Wi-Fi devices can start to implement the new standards.

Wi-Fi 6 is the first Wi-Fi standard to use the simpler naming scheme (although this is only on the consumer side, it’s still technically IEE802.11ax)

Previous versions of the Wi-Fi standards are going to be retro-renamed Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) and Wi-Fi 4 (802.11n) to help consumers identify which standard devices are manufactured to.

WiFi 6 Lozenger

What will Wi-Fi 6 give me?

For the average home user, the main benefit will be speed. Wi-Fi 6 will boast speeds upto 9.6Gbps (the existing Wi-Fi 5 801.1ac is rated at a maximum of 3.5Gbps) Obviously it’s extremely unlikely that you’ll ever connect at those speeds, but we expect average connection speeds to be about 30% – 40% better than on a Wi-Fi 5 router. Remember that the average internet speed to homes in the UK is about 54.2Mbps

For busier locations such as businesses, public hotspots and so on, the benefits of Wi-Fi 6 will be much more dramatic. The main aim of Wi-Fi 6 is to increase connectivity and reliability between router and device, amd be more efficient about how it keeps you connected.

Technology designed for multiple device access such as MU-MIMO and OFDMA is included in the specification, meaning more devices can be connected and receive high bandwidth data simultaneously, and more data can be sent in a single burst. As the number of IoT (Internet Of Things) devices in our homes increase, these technologies will help keep your home Wi-Fi ‘clutter free’

Also, the new Wi-Fi 6 standard is designed to be battery efficient, meaning your mobile devices won’t heat up and drain the battery while you stream from a Wi-Fi 6 access point.

Techspot have a great article here listing the technological developments of Wi-Fi 6, including what is meant by MU-MIMO, OFDMA, QAM, OFDM and many more geeky terms!

What if my device is not Wi-Fi 6 compliant, do I need to upgrade?

Nope. As with all Wi-Fi certified devices, backwards compatibility is built in, so if you’re using a phone that’s Wi-Fi 5 compatible (nearly every recent phone will be) and you connect to a Wi-Fi 6 wireless point, the router will recognise your device’s level of compatibility and use Wi-Fi 5 instead. Likewise if your phone is one of the few Wi-Fi 6 compatible phones, it will identify the compatibility of the Wi-Fi access point and use the appropriate settings.

There are already Wi-Fi 6 compatible phones?

Yes, the Samsung Galaxy S10 was the first Wi-Fi 6 phone to hit the market, Apple’s iPhone 11 will also support the standard. To compliment those, routers from cisco, Netgear, Asus and TP-Link have also been released with Wi-Fi 6 compatibility.

Network

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Notwork

Don’t let your network turn into a notwork. With more and more devices using the network to communicate with each other and the outside world, your network is being put under more and more strain. On an unmanaged network, you’ll soon start to see bottlenecks and network slowdown.

Do I use a network?

Yes. Well if you’re reading this on our website then you are.

Long gone are the days when networks were restricted to large companies and universities. In one form or another, and of vastly different sizes, we all use a combination of private and personal networks today. Making those networks efficient is essential to being able to get things done.

tinsleyNET Home Network Services

In your home, the heart of your network is your internet router, from there you might have WiFi or cable connected devices such as smartphones, tablets, laptops, TV’s, heating systems, Games consoles, PC’s, lighting and so on.

In your business it could be a more complicated network setup involving routers, multiple access points and wider connected elements in different buildings or even different countries.

Network of Networks

Getting your network connected safely to the internet is essential for any business, but many people don’t want the hassle of managing the connection and just want the connection to work. We can manage your gateway device and configure it making sure your private network is protected from the public internet.

Your gateway device should be checking all incoming and outgoing data and destinations to make sure nothing untoward is being sent or received by devices on your network.

Servers

Some people want to micro-manage their servers, others just want them to work. We can configure your servers to work for you, how you want. From online hosted servers, to in-house servers, both hardware and virtual. We can design, install and manage the servers you need to get your job done.

IoT

In an ideal world, internet connected devices should just work. You don’t want a new coffee machine to take 4 hours to setup just so you can make a coffee from your smartphone! But this ‘Internet Of Things’ does still need managing. It might be configuring them to connect to your network or securing them if they have remote access facilities.

Sometimes, if a vulnerability is identified after the product has been sold, the manufacturer will release a software patch, but often these are not applied, we can make sure your IoT is kept up-to-date with security patches as required.

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Whatever size or type of network you have, from your home WiFi and internet connection, to a multi-site MPLS connected company, we can help you manage and protect your data, and streamline your network to make it work better for you.

Firewalls

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Protecting your private network

You might be a home user with a handful of devices connected via wifi or you might be a multi-office organisation running an in-house hosted commerce website, either way you need to protect your network at the point it connects to the internet to prevent unauthorised access, block access to untrustworthy sites, and watch for suspicious activity.

What it does

The firewall is often the outer-most line of defence around your precious data. At the perimeter it needs to be flexible enough to let you work uninterrupted, but robust enough to protect against the barrage of probes and attacks it’s likely to face. It should be configurable and dynamic to be able to adjust to your needs and to be able to identify the latest threats.

Hardware or Software

Both have their advantages and in a corporate situation, both can be used to offer multiple lines of defence against attack.

A hardware firewall will usually by faster at processing data and so reduce any potential bottleneck. They can be configured to use real-time virus checking on incoming data, monitor outgoing data for suspicious activity and provide advanced tools like reputation management, unified threat protection and bandwidth shaping.

Software firewalls have the advantage of being cheaper and easier to mange. They are installed on the device you are protecting so are portable with that device . They can offer more refined controls per device or per app, and can be configured to alert you to unexpected behaviour.

But I don’t need one at home

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With more and more home devices becoming ‘smart’ the number of internet connected devices you have might be more than you think. You should be managing your internet connection because ultimately, you’re responsible for the content downloaded.

In a number of recent ‘botnet’ attacks on major sites, home internet connected devices that had been compromised were used in the attacks.

A number of home security devices, specifically those with cameras or microphones in them, have been compromised and their content streamed live to the internet.

tinsleyNET IT Servces Consultants #WeCanHelp

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We can help you with with selecting, supplying, installing and managing a firewall that’s suitable for your needs. You might just need to protect your home WiFi connected devices, or you might need a corporate firewall that allows remote users to access the company network from anywhere in the world, but you do need a firewall.