In June 2015 I joined a large regional healthcare (approximately 2500 APs and 8000 devices connected across 60 sites)
The infrastructure and environment:
Taking care of the Wireless across 60 sites our healthcare territory is 216,000 square kilometers (~83,400sq/m) can be quite challenging as apart from myself and my manager there is no-one else taking care of the WiFi infrastructure.
There is a whole world of difference between Wireless in the books and Wireless in the field when it comes to planning as well as troubleshooting.
In a perfect world, you are using accurate CAD files loaded in Ekahau Site survey which is running on a super powerful laptop with incredible battery life, you have nothing to worry about building access nor restricted areas.
Nobody is ever preventing you to get the things done nor asking you tons of questions about antennas sticking out of your laptop screen. Every single users are using the proper terminology when describing issues. Your network is perfectly converged and centrally managed as per Cisco books your entire network is made of Cisco products.
Whenever you're making a change that would involve a new package roll-out on clients devices everything happen in less than 5 minutes.
The reality is way different and I am certainly not going to run out of examples of how challenging the environment and situation can become. The scariest part being the fact that more and more devices are joining the electromagnetic party everyday.
Overall I would say that my biggest challenge is dealing with the implementation of VoWLAN using Vocera Technology, soft phone are on their way, and more Cisco VoWLAN phones to be added.
Not to mention that the initial design of the network is fare away from being consistent since the organisation slowly grasped health centers and clinics around the region.
I have countless exemple of how challenging a simple thing like setting up a TFTP or accessing a FTP can take months. Even when it's running one day you found out that someone deleted ALL your backups (Yeah I know Cisco Prime backup can take quite a lot of space)
I really have a blast working in this environnement, there are good and bad days but I certainly have learned a lot and expended good skills on real case Site Survey + troubleshooting various type of devices. (There is nothing like hospitals when it comes to WiFi client diversity)
