Wi-Fi that reaches the operatories

Wi-Fi in a dental office has to do two jobs that pull in opposite directions: reach every operatory reliably, and keep patients' phones nowhere near the clinical network. We design it from the floor plan rather than from wherever the router happened to be plugged in.

The problem with the usual setup

Most practices have one wireless router near the front desk. It works fine at reception and gets weaker with every wall between it and the back operatories. Lead-lined walls around the imaging room make it worse. So staff work around it, sensors drop, and the tablet you use for consent forms only works in one chair.

The other problem is invisible. If the patient Wi-Fi and the clinical devices share the same network, every phone in the waiting room is on the same network as your server.

What we do

We walk the practice and measure the signal in every room, including the ones with shielding. From that we plan where access points go, how many you need, and how they are wired back. Then we install them, set up the separate networks, and test from every chair before we leave.

What you get

• Reliable coverage in every operatory, the lab and the office, tested and documented
• A clinical network for workstations, sensors and tablets
• A separate guest network for patients, isolated from everything else
• Access points managed centrally, so a change is made once and applies to all of them
• Ongoing monitoring under the retainer, so a failed access point is noticed before you have to report it

About the equipment

We install business-grade access points rather than consumer routers. They cost more than the box from the electronics store, and in return they last longer, cover more of the building and can be managed remotely. We will quote the equipment separately and explain what each piece does before you approve it.

Fitting into an existing practice

Most of this work happens outside patient hours. Access points are usually mounted on ceilings or high on walls and wired back to the network cabinet. If your building makes wiring difficult, we will tell you what the options are and what they cost before starting.

Common questions

Can you fix it without new equipment?

Sometimes. If the existing router is decent and simply in the wrong place, moving it or adding a single access point can be enough. We will tell you that if it is true. More often the equipment is the limit, and adding more consumer routers makes the network worse, not better.

How many access points does a practice need?

It depends on the layout, the walls and how many devices are in use at once. A four-operatory practice on one floor is often two or three access points. We measure rather than guess, and the plan shows you where each one goes and why.

What about the lead-lined imaging room?

Shielding blocks Wi-Fi as well as X-rays. The usual answer is an access point inside or immediately outside the room, or a wired connection for the sensor workstation. We test the signal from the sensor position itself rather than from the doorway.

Will patients be able to see anything on our network?

No. The guest network is isolated. A phone in the waiting room can reach the internet and nothing else. It cannot see the server, the workstations or the sensors, and it cannot see other patients’ devices.

Do you support it afterwards?

Under the retainer, yes: the access points are monitored, and if one drops we know before you do. Without the retainer, we can still come back when something changes, on the usual break-fix basis.

Getting started

If Wi-Fi is the problem, we can look at it on its own. If you are not sure whether it is the Wi-Fi or something else, the free on-site assessment covers the whole network and we will tell you where the fault actually is.