Phase I Deep Dive: What the Indoor Survey Revealed
Phase I Deep Dive: What the Indoor Survey Revealed at the Club
WiFi 7 Live Project — Post 2 of the PPCC Series
Before you can fix a wireless network, you have to understand what it’s actually doing. Not what the controller dashboard shows. Not what someone thinks is happening. What the radio frequency environment looks like in real time, with real data, collected on-site.
That’s what Phase I was about.
Why We Started Indoors
The PPCC property is large and spread out — indoor spaces, outdoor event areas, cart paths, parking lots, and a lakeside snack shack. There are point-to-point wireless links already in place, and much bigger infrastructure changes still to come. But the Club is the heart of the operation. It’s where members dine, where events are held, where staff work, and where the golf management systems live. If the wireless network was going to be rebuilt right, this was the right place to start.
A passive wireless survey was conducted on October 31, 2025, using NetAlly AirMagnet Survey Pro. The survey covered all three floors of the Club — second floor (top), first floor (main), and the basement locker rooms — walking a measured path through every accessible area while the software captured signal strength, interference levels, channel utilization, and spectrum data from every radio it could hear.
The goal wasn’t just to check whether Wi-Fi was present. It was to understand the quality of the environment — what problems existed, where they came from, and what could be done about them.
Here’s what we found.
The Existing Network
The Club currently runs four Ubiquiti access points spread across the building, labeled AP-001 through AP-004. The model in place is an older generation running a virtual controller — and for context, these are the APs being replaced as part of Phase I with the Ubiquiti UniFi U7 Pro, a tri-band WiFi 7 AP capable of serving 300+ clients per unit across 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz radios. The gap between what exists today and what’s being installed is significant, and the survey data explains exactly why the upgrade is necessary.
Each existing AP currently broadcasts four SSIDs:
- PPCC-Secure — for authenticated member/staff devices
- PPCC-IoT — for smart devices and building systems
- PPCC-Guest — for visitor access
- Unknown (hidden) — purpose unclear
AP-001 sits on the second floor. AP-002 and AP-003 share the first floor, covering opposite ends of the large main level. AP-004 is in the basement, serving the pro shop and locker rooms.
The network is managed through a Ubiquiti virtual controller. On paper, it looks like a reasonable setup for the size of the building. In practice, the survey revealed several issues — some fixable, some not — that are degrading performance for everyone who connects.
The 2.4 GHz Problem
The most consistent finding across all four APs was that the 2.4 GHz band is overloaded, and that’s not going to change.
Three of the four APs — AP-002, AP-003, and AP-004 — were all assigned to the same 2.4 GHz channel (channel 6) by the Ubiquiti controller’s automatic channel allocation. That means every device connected to those APs is competing for the same airtime. When one AP transmits, the others have to wait. This is called co-channel interference (CCI), and the survey showed it affecting virtually the entire first floor and basement at high levels.
On top of that, the spectrum analysis showed 2.4 GHz channel 6 running at 87.93% duty cycle near the main dining room — meaning the channel was busy almost the entire time the survey was running. (Best practice targets below 20%.) The channel isn’t just congested from the PPCC network; neighboring networks from surrounding properties are adding to the noise, and nothing can be done about those.
There’s also a nearby access point using a non-standard channel 5, which bleeds into channel 6’s occupied bandwidth. That causes what’s called adjacent channel interference (ACI) — essentially, data frames get corrupted mid-transmission and have to be resent. The frame capture analysis confirmed this was happening.
One more 2.4 GHz finding worth noting: all four APs were transmitting beacon frames at 1 Mbps, the lowest rate possible. Beacons go out 10 times per second, for each SSID, on each radio. With 25 APs detectable on channel 6 in the dining room area alone, that’s 250 beacons per second — all eating into channel time, all slowing everything down. Setting the minimum basic rate to 12 Mbps is a standard best practice that PPCC has not yet implemented.
The 2.4 GHz issues are real, but the band itself is the problem as much as the configuration. The recommendation isn’t to keep tweaking 2.4 GHz — it’s to stop relying on it for member traffic.
The 5 GHz Picture — Better, But With Gaps
The 5 GHz band is where the real capacity lives, and the survey found a mixed picture there.
AP-001 on the second floor had no 5 GHz signal at all. The radio either failed or was intentionally disabled. Either way, the entire second floor is running on 2.4 GHz only. AP-001 should be rebooted and re-surveyed; if the 5 GHz radio remains dark, the AP needs to be replaced.
On the first floor, AP-002 and AP-003 do have working 5 GHz radios, but their coverage maps revealed significant dead zones. AP-002 covered the main Dining Room and Sentinel Room reasonably well. AP-003 covered the Colorado Room. But the kitchen, east offices, outdoor deck, and the area between the two APs were largely uncovered at 5 GHz. The gap analysis confirmed that two additional APs are needed on the first floor to fill those holes — one in the Sentinel Room area (AP-005, suggested channel 108P) and one in the east offices (AP-006, suggested channel 140P).
The survey also found that AP-002 and AP-003 were both operating on heavily used UNII-1 5 GHz channel pairs (channels 36–40 and 44–48). These are the default channels that most consumer and prosumer equipment auto-selects, which means future neighboring access points will crowd in. The UNII-2C sub-band (channels 100–144) was found to be largely vacant. Moving both APs there would significantly reduce interference exposure.
AP-004 in the basement had working 5 GHz coverage in the pro shop and women’s locker room, but the men’s locker room was a dead zone at both 2.4 and 5 GHz. That’s a coverage gap that will need an additional AP to solve.
The SSID Configuration Issue
One theme that ran through all four APs: too many SSIDs broadcast on too many radios, including hidden SSIDs that consume airtime without adding any visible benefit.
The current configuration broadcasts all four SSIDs — PPCC-Secure, PPCC-IoT, PPCC-Guest, and the hidden unknown — on both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz radios of every AP. This doubles the overhead. Every SSID generates beacon traffic. Every hidden SSID generates just as much overhead as a visible one, with no benefit to users.
The recommended approach is straightforward: reserve 5 GHz for PPCC-Secure and PPCC-Guest (the SSIDs that member devices and guest phones will connect to), and leave PPCC-IoT on 2.4 GHz as a catch-all for smart devices, cameras, and low-bandwidth equipment that doesn’t need 5 GHz performance. Eliminate the hidden SSID unless there’s a documented reason for it.
This change alone would reduce beacon congestion on the overloaded 2.4 GHz band and push member traffic to the cleaner 5 GHz spectrum.
What Comes Next
The survey produced a full set of recommendations — numbered by AP and issue — that will be handed off to the IT contractor PM Mike A. has scheduled for March 16th. That visit is focused on the UniFi Cloud controller migration and firewall upgrade, and the wireless configuration changes will be part of that scope.
The key action items from the indoor survey are:
- Replace or repair AP-001 (no 5 GHz signal)
- Correct channel assignments on AP-002 and AP-003 (move to UNII-2C sub-band)
- Fix bonded channel ordering on AP-002 (currently configured backwards relative to neighbors)
- Set minimum basic rate to 12 Mbps on all APs
- Reconfigure SSID distribution: 5 GHz for member/guest traffic, 2.4 GHz for IoT only
- Disable hidden SSIDs unless justified
- Add AP-005 (Sentinel Room) and AP-006 (East Offices) for first floor coverage gaps
- Add an AP in the men’s locker room for basement coverage
Once those changes are implemented, a validation survey will be conducted to confirm that the recommended changes were applied correctly and that coverage and interference levels now meet the target thresholds.
That validation will be Post 3 in this series — along with the first look at Phase II outdoor infrastructure, where things get considerably more interesting.
The passive survey and this report were produced by Rick Murphy. Survey hardware: NetAlly AirMagnet Survey Pro. Network requirements: minimum RSSI -67 dBm, minimum SNR 25 dB, minimum PHY data rate 12 Mbps.