Services

Our services will ensure that you are guided and supported from the design stages of your project through surveying, installation, integration and ongoing support, you will be sure to receive services and solutions which are fit for purpose and ones which immediately add value to your environment.
We pride ourselves at being able to enter discussions with customers at any stage and hit the ground running whether you are bidding for your PFI or BSF tenders, doing a technology refresh, auditing your existing setup or require a new set of services to enable your learning environments.
All of our services are delivered in strict accordance to established methodologies and support by various service level agreements (SLA’s).
Working with NexGen Solutions you can be sure that you will receive services which are second to none and proven within your context over a number of years of service provision.
Please see the adjacent services from NexGen and contact us should you need further information or wish to discuss your requirements.

Wireless Network Design (WND)

Our wireless LAN Design Services can help to highlight the potential teaching benefits of wireless technology in your context, and help you to choose the best wireless LAN solution for your individual needs. The combination of our experience, industry best practices and systems integration services will assist you to quickly and strategically deploy secure end-to-end solutions delivering maximum value to both staff and pupils.

The skills and tasks associated with designing, implementing and securing a wireless network are significantly different to those needed to design and implement a fixed wired network.

Our experience will guide you through choosing between a centralised architecture, where the wireless LAN is made up of essentially “simple” access points linked to a central controller/wireless switch which has all the intelligence/processing power; or a distributed architecture, which consists of standalone access points that contain all the necessary intelligence/ processing power and work independently of each other.

In partnership with you and your in-house technical team we can:

  • Capture your requirements and your user habits to correctly identify what type of wireless network best fits your needs, and future plans
  • Identify the best potential solutions in line with your required performance/budget constraints
  • Procure the complete solution consisting of a fit for purpose wired and wireless network and user devices for your needs
  • Audit and analyse your existing wireless network and recommend optimisation options to increase its performance/ capacity/ security/ stability and reliability
  • Analyse the readiness of your existing applications and infrastructure to support wireless networking

Wireless LAN Security Design

Wireless networking technologies provide convenience and mobility, but they can also introduce security risks on your network if not properly designed. For example, unless authentication and authorization mechanisms are implemented, anyone who has a compatible wireless network adapter can access your network.

The level of security can differ on a SSID and VLAN basis (e.g. networks may have an open authentication, non-encrypted network for guest access to the Internet together with an 802.1x LEAP authenticated, AES encrypted internal network).

We can help you navigate the complex area of the many security standards and configuration options available within modern wireless LANs and how to integrate these into existing network security mechanisms that may already be in use on your wired network. In discussions with you we will clarify and help you to consider the pros and cons of choosing between:

  • WEP
  • WPA/ WPA2
  • TKIP/AES/DES
  • 802.1x/ various EAP authentication methods
  • Virtual Private Networks (VPN’s)
  • Personal/device/session firewalls, e.g. ISA servers
  • MAC Filtering
  • Pre-Shared Keys; Enterprise RADIUS servers
  • WLAN > LAN
  • SSL / digital certificates
  • RADIUS AAA (Authentication/ Authorisation /Audit) Servers, e.g. IAS server.

As with any network, wired or wireless, the more layers of security that are added, the more secure your transmissions can be. But, this has to be balanced with the increased complexity and management overhead required. The key is to get the right balance for your individual wireless LAN based on your applications and specific data needs. Wireless network health check and Optimization Due to poor network design and configuration or changes in your environment over time, your wireless network may suffer from interference, dropouts, poor throughput and connection issues? It may no longer be helping you to deliver your teaching goals.

Our wireless network health check and optimisation service will help in diagnosing such problematic wireless networks. From wireless network dropouts, discovering hidden nodes, frequency interference, rogue access points and many more hazards to wireless networks, we can ensure that your wireless network starts to perform.

Our Health Check and Optimization service will look at and analyse the following:

  • RF Spectrum Analysis – to identify and characterise the use of the RF environment in your location
  • Identification of RF Interference
  • Measurements of signal strengths, noise and SNR
  • 802.11 Channel assignments and detection of co-channel interference
  • Wireless Packet statistical analysis – including packet error and re-transmission rates
  • Examination of access point configuration parameters
  • Examination of end user device configuration parameters

Performing a wireless LAN health check activity on an existing wireless network is a great way to baseline your wireless performance. As the environment in which your wireless network exists is forever changing, optimising your wireless LAN can ensure it is working at peak performance at all times.

Wireless Site Surveys (WSS)

A wireless site survey is a key step in designing and deploying a wireless network and the most important step to ensure correct operation, saving you both time and money later on. We use the latest industry tools and techniques to map out the RF coverage of your intended area and provide you with detailed documentation on all aspects of the survey. It is only after a professional wireless survey will you be equipped to design & quantify a fully scalable, cost effective and secure wireless network for your particular needs. The primary objective of the Site Survey is to ensure that all users of the WLAN will experience good connectivity and excellent performance from the WLAN within the desired coverage area.

Our wireless network survey covers 802.11a/b/g networks and involves the following steps:

  • Identifying and agreeing priorities with regard to the areas of coverage required.
  • Wireless Network Engineers on site taking RSSI, RF noise, SNR, RF interference, etc readings
  • Range and coverage analysis
  • Capacity / throughput analysis
  • Interference analysis
  • Existing wireless network identification and analysis
  • Identification of access point locations
  • 802.11 channel planning
  • Identification of wiring/switching requirements

We can conduct a proxy site survey involving a physical tour of your building accompanied by sample readings to extrapolate from. This enables us to give you an early approximation of your wireless network needs and can help in providing a provisional quote that will guide in assigning a budget for the future.

However, the full site survey will involve the collation of a comprehensive set of measurement data and will enable us to provide accurate pricing, a complete network design including the wireless network implementation/integration requirements.

A site survey report will be produced that details the settings used in the survey and shows graphical images of the signal strength and expected data rates in the wireless network. The report also details the recommended locations and numbers of access points along with the types of antennae to use.

Wireless Network Installations (WNI)

Having installed numerous wireless networks we have developed an extremely strong skill set and fine tuned the best processes in end to end wireless network deployment.

NexGen Solutions will undertake the project management of your wireless network installation, integration, commissioning/testing and make sure it is delivered on time, to performance and to budget.

We will work with your in house technicians to ensure the smooth installation and minimum disruption to your working environment and zero downtime on your existing network.

  • Agree installation time and days
  • Ensure you are aware of any pre-installation steps required to be carried out on your existing Network or IT infrastructure
  • Procure all required network infrastructure equipment
  • Arrange and carry out all installation cabling work as required
  • Install the wireless equipment and accompanying network equipment, and integrate into existing IT architecture
  • Commission the wireless network and conduct comprehensive post installation testing, including throughput and coverage tests
  • Configure and enable user devices to connect to the new wireless LAN
  • Carry out a post installation check after you have had a chance to use your network to ensure you are fully satisfied.

After you have had some time to make use of your wireless network we will carry out two post implementation checks with you to ensure that your requirements have been met and that you are fully satisfied with your wireless network.

Trial & Pilots

If you are not ready for a full wireless network installation or are not quite sure exactly what you will need and how beneficial a wireless network would be for you then why not conduct a small trial. We can provide some qualified customers wireless trials or pilots. These offer a low cost and low risk way to trial a wireless network and can often be deployed relatively quickly.

Wireless Solution Integration (WSI)

To ensure that any new wireless LAN will work seamlessly within your existing network infrastructure integration requirements must be identified and designed in.

The degree of integration required will depend heavily on the complexity and configuration of your existing network and IT infrastructure. It may be as simple as reserving a few fixed IP addresses or as complex as interfacing with and re-configuring existing AAA servers (Authentication, Authorization, Auditing), firewalls, routers, switches, VLANS, DHCP servers, etc.

Our approach takes into account:

  • The types of user applications
  • The Operating systems
  • Network server configurations (e.g. DHCP options, IP network settings)
  • Existing switching architecture – Logical VLANs, subnets routers and Power over Ethernet (PoE) capabilities
  • Existing security servers/policies/ settings (e.g. RADIUS servers, Firewalls, user accounts and Active Directory)
  • Presence of Legacy/ neighbouring wireless networks
  • Ethernet cabling infrastructure

where possible integrating with existing facilities such as AAA servers, user account management systems, DHCP servers, Web Proxy servers, etc will be used to enable maximum return on your existing investment.

Wireless Network Support (WNS)

Our customers within education can be greatly affected through poor system performance or complete system failure hence NexGen view its solutions and services as critical to the day to day teaching for school.

Through the implementation of regular wireless network health checks, appropriate support and maintenance plan an our education customers place themselves in a much better position to avoid many such failures.

To ensure that your wireless solutions are up for close to 100% up-time and reliability, with excellent performance NexGen Solutions offer various pro-active and reactive maintenance and support packages consisting of:

Maintenance & Support Contracts that include:

  • Telephone support
  • Automated remote Monitoring
  • Pro-active maintenance
  • Guaranteed response times
  • Same-day onsite support

Each option has a clear, fixed cost to help with budgeting and planning.

NexGen can offer support on a managed, pro-active and re-active basis based upon your specific needs and solution. We do not commit our customers into ongoing support contracts unless they are fully bought into the need of such contracts, we are happy to quickly transition ownership over to your technicians as and when required, hence empowering you to manage your infrastructure as soon as you are ready to do so.