Historic Building Case Study
When NetSmith espouses all things wireless, it may help to know that we are walking the talk. In November 2005, we moved our corporate headquarters to the historic downtown Frederick, MD space featured on our contact page.
Anyone not familiar with the Frederick City historic district would likely be charmed by the old brick buildings, some dating back to the 1700’s, of this 2005 Great American Main Street winner. NetSmith is proud to be operating in such a noteworthy location, but as preservationists know, with history comes responsibility. For example, corporate signs and other business elements must be approved by the city to ensure consistency with aesthetic principles.
The interior of our building was another matter. In NetSmith's case, the previous owner had done a lovely restoration that included keeping some of the original flooring and other distinctive features. In addition, as with any older structure, we do not necessarily know every detail of the way the walls were originally constructed or what materials were used. Yet, as a high tech firm specializing in information systems support and related records management, we were not prepared to sacrifice network connectivity.
The solution we chose to implement at our own offices was a wireless network. Going wireless allowed us to preserve the interior design elements we enjoyed in our building, and actually ended up costing us less than a cabled network would have. Installing a more traditional Local Area Network (LAN) or Wide Area Network (WAN) would have been problematic because it would have required that we tear out wall space to lay cable and purchase additional supplies and equipment that wireless does not require. Also, we were able to get our network up and running in only a few days, and did not need to go back to repaint and plaster, quite a relief during a busy and resource intensive transition period.
If your organization is housed in an older or historic office space with practical and design constraints like those NetSmith experienced, we invite you to drop by for a cup of coffee and a look at the wireless solution we implemented. Let us show you how we can help.