ACME retail has 38 locations spread out across five US states and two provinces in Canada. They are looking to grow 20% over the next two years. They have an HQ with a staff of 200 employees. The organization has eight Regional Managers and two VPs who work from home and the road. Stores typically have 17 employees on average per location.
The two warehouses have a remote loading system and 20 employees each to load the trucks and fulfill the online orders. The warehouse has 40-foot ceilings and large metal racks to store inventory. The main location is 240K sq ft (22300 sq m) and the Canadian warehouse is 130K sq ft (12100 sq m). The forklifts on the loading docks are equipped with a wireless tablet on board.
A typical store is reportedly about 60,000 sq ft (5575 sq m) and smaller stores are planned at 25,000 sq ft (2320 sq m). The locations need to expand the abilities to vendors that need to add setup displays or interactive kiosks in the stores. The current infrastructure was installed in 2015 and used wireless N technology in a coverage model. The wiring is Cat5, and they are unsure of the fiber connections. The inventory is all placed on the floor when it is delivered to the local store.
Inventory control is handled through Zebra barcode scanners, and they have had a lot of issues in getting signals throughout the stores and this makes monthly inventory difficult. The organization has a small help desk to troubleshoot issues that happen at the retail locations and PC support for the office. The company is looking to upgrade away from the current PBX system later this year. With the need to grow and cut costs, they are interested in moving the data to the cloud but need to get almost real-time inventory control for the online service to function.
The network has all been wired over the last ten years, but with the new systems being all wireless, they have seen the trend to offer wireless to all the vendors for their needs but also would be to allow employees, guests, and contractors all to use it. With the new IT director starting next week, the project has been set by the CTO of the company. The marketing group has asked how they can interact with the customers and get more info, while the IT support desk needs to cut staff in half.
The office has an MDF and two IDFs located on floors one and two. The MDF is in the basement, and you have multiple WAN circuits for the HQ links. Each store has a local handoff from the cable company (ethernet) in the middle of the store in the office, so distance for the wiring is not an issue.
The customer has budget concerns but does want something that could last 7+ years.
Based on the best practices and customer requirements, what is the correct WLAN approach?
Thomas66
4 days, 1 hour ago