Network Infrastructure: WiFi, Monitoring & Firewall Management
Designed WiFi coverage, monitored networks and managed firewalls, including redundancy and hardware refresh, for Boston offices and labs.
The Problem
The Network Only Gets Attention When It Breaks
Most office networks grew by accretion: an access point added when a conference room was built, a switch added when the team grew, a firewall installed by someone who no longer works there and never touched since.
The symptoms are familiar. Video calls drop in the far corner of the office, the guest network is on the same VLAN as the finance workstations, the firewall firmware is three years old, and nobody notices the failing uplink until the whole floor is offline.
There is usually no monitoring, so the first alert is an employee walking over to say the internet is down.
WiFi
Coverage Planning and Access Point Deployment
We design wireless coverage rather than guessing at it: floor plan review, predictive coverage modeling, on-site survey where needed, and access point placement based on construction materials, ceiling height, user density and where people actually work.
Deployment covers channel and power planning to eliminate co-channel interference, band steering, roaming tuning for mobile devices and soft phones, PoE switching and cabling requirements, and separate SSIDs with VLAN segmentation for corporate, guest, IoT and lab equipment.
After deployment we validate with real-world testing across the space and tune based on live client data, then re-survey after office changes such as a new build-out or a floor reconfiguration.
Monitoring
Continuous Network Monitoring and Alerting
We monitor circuits, firewalls, switches, access points, servers and key services continuously, with alerting on link failure, packet loss, latency, high utilization, device reboots, failed failover and expiring certificates or licenses.
Alerts route into our help desk so an issue becomes a ticket with an owner. In many cases the problem is identified and being worked before anyone in the office notices.
Capacity and performance trending shows you when a circuit, switch or access point density is genuinely at its limit, so upgrades are justified by data rather than by complaint volume.
Firewalls
Selection, Deployment, Management and Failover
We size and select firewall hardware to your throughput, user count, VPN needs and inspection requirements, and we deploy with a documented, version-controlled configuration rather than an ad hoc rule set.
Ongoing management includes firmware and signature updates, rule review and cleanup, VLAN and inter-VLAN policy, content and application controls, logging to a central collector, and license renewal tracking.
Hardware upgrades and refresh cover end-of-life replacement, migration of existing rules to the new platform, and high availability configurations with an active/passive pair plus dual WAN or LTE and 5G failover, tested rather than assumed.
Ongoing Care
Routine Network Health Reviews
As part of ongoing support we run periodic network health reviews: firmware and end-of-life status, configuration drift, wireless performance, VLAN and segmentation review, backup of device configurations, and circuit and vendor contract status.
Each review produces a short report with prioritized recommendations and a refresh roadmap, so budgeting for network hardware stops being a surprise.
This page covers physical network infrastructure and day-to-day operational management. It is not a security audit. For formal security-focused network testing, vulnerability assessments and penetration tests, see our penetration testing and vulnerability assessments page, which is a separate, independently scoped engagement.
Please note: separate, opt-in engagement
This is a specialized, opt-in service. It is not included as part of your existing managed IT support or cybersecurity plan unless it has been specifically scoped and added to your service agreement. If you're an existing client and want to discuss adding this, contact your account manager or reach out below.