The Case for the Post-Install Check-In

Installing new network gear can feel like crossing the finish line of a marathon. The link comes up, the lights blink happily, and there’s a strong urge to declare victory and never look back. But that’s exactly why post-install check-ins matter. An install isn’t really done when the hardware is mounted and powered on — it’s done when you know it’s behaving itself in the real world, not just during that first five-minute victory lap.

In this case, I followed up on a Ubiquiti Wave Pro link after the install, fully expecting to see a calm, stable connection living its best life. Instead, I found the link hopping frequencies like it had too much caffeine. On paper, everything looked “up,” but under the hood the radio was changing channels far more often than it should. If I hadn’t checked back in, this would have quietly turned into intermittent performance issues and finger-pointing later on.

That’s the sneaky danger of skipping follow-ups. Many problems don’t show up immediately — they creep in once the link starts dealing with real interference, weather changes, or other radios in the area. A post-install review lets you catch these early warning signs while they’re still small and fixable, instead of waiting for a user to report that “the network feels weird sometimes,” which is never a fun troubleshooting starting point.

Following up also gives you a chance to validate your original assumptions. Maybe the spectrum looked clean during the install, but reality had other plans. Maybe auto-settings are being a little too enthusiastic. Checking back confirms whether the configuration you chose is actually the right one, or if it needs tuning. It’s like going back to tighten the bolts after a test drive — boring, but extremely effective.

In the end, checking on equipment after an install isn’t about mistrusting your work — it’s about respecting physics, RF chaos, and the fact that networks love to misbehave when you’re not looking. That quick follow-up on the Wave Pro link turned a potential future outage into a simple adjustment. And honestly, that’s way better than getting a call later that starts with, “So… this has been happening for weeks.”

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Introduction: Moving Beyond Basic Benchmarking

For network engineers, relying solely on basic single-stream iPerf or simple ping output often fails to capture the true performance characteristics of a network path, especially under load. This is where FLENT (The FLExible Network Tester) comes in.

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