Virtucor Builds High-Powered Network for Seamless Entertainment and Security -
Johnson County, Kansas
When Rick and Linda decided to upgrade the Wi-Fi systems in their primary and vacation homes, they called on John Beveridge, President of Virtucor for assistance. As a senior consultant, integrator, and designer, John has been in the business for more than 12 years, providing IT and technology-related solutions to his clients, making him the perfect fit for the job.
John and his team visited Rick and Linda’s home and lake house in Johnson County, Kansas as well as their lake house, located near the Marais des Cygnes River. Their goal was to do a site survey, which consisted of assessing the building construction and radio environment, as well as checking the condition of the existing network equipment in both locations to discuss an upgrade.
The Need
The couple’s spacious two-story primary home consisted of 4,700 square feet while their single-story lake house covered nearly 2,500 square feet including a large deck area, dock, and expansive backyard.
Multiple problems plagued the couple at both properties:
The Solution
Rick and Linda were able to provide John with floor plans for their properties, which John uploaded to the EnGenius ezWi-Fi Planner network design tool. After setting the dimensions and wall types, he selected and positioned new EnGenius APs strategically to create a heatmap showing the strength of the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz signals radiating from the APs. After contacting Streakwave and trying different models and quantities, John chose a set of ECW115 and ECW120 APs for each house as well as one ECW160 at the lake house to extend Wi-Fi to the dock and lake. The solutions for both homes were rounded out by two routers and a couple of uninterruptible power supplies (UPS).
After creating the overall Wi-Fi network design, John met with the couple to review the heatmap report, cloud hardware features, and installation proposal. “We got the approval to proceed right then and there,” said John.
Two-Story Home:
Lake House:
The Installation
John and his team were able to take advantage of the existing network cabling, only having to install a few new Cat-6 cables. One of the two 1Gbps Ethernet ports on the ECW115 APs provided Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) while removing two points of failure and allowing for convenient placement of the APs.
Next, John did a walkthrough with a spectrum analyzer to test the roaming and adjust to the signal strength as needed. Once the adjustments were made, John and his team saw immediate results. The Wi-Fi signal was now stronger throughout both properties and the connectivity issues that had plagued them before had been resolved thanks to a stronger and more consistent signal.
Having two 1Gbps Ethernet ports available on the powered APs allowed John’s team to remove the existing 5-port battery powerless switches scattered around the properties. In their place, the team installed a wired battery backup connection which removed multiple points of failure within the network.
The Result
Due to the improvement of their network, Rich and Linda decided to add additional Ring doorbell devices to the properties, which integrated seamlessly into the existing network without any connectivity issues. The two home networks have been running exceptionally well since May 2020.
The couple uses different ISPs at both locations, but the security from the firewall and the wired EnGenius products, as well as the Wi-Fi management from the EnGenius Cloud products, have kept constant watch over both networks. The system sends alerts about any change to a connected device whether it is a security alert or loss of Internet.
John was just as happy as Rick and Linda were with the results.
“Both clients have expressed their gratitude for the solution we have provided and have recommended our solution to their friends and business associates,” said John. “I have been working with EnGenius products since 2015, and the successful installations from back then have only become stronger with the introduction and continued enhancements of their Cloud product line with and Cloud management portal.
John was especially impressed with the EnGenius ECW115 access point.
“One additional important point I would like to make, as I see it, is that we used the ECW115 in several places in both homes and have used them strategically in almost all installations,” he added. “In fact, my only structured network solution is a Cloud product from EnGenius.”
