A Restaurant Network Where
the POS Never Goes Down

If your network goes down and you're on a single ISP connection with no failover, you're taking cash only for however long it takes your ISP to restore service — which can be hours. A backup LTE connection configured for automatic failover means when the primary ISP goes down, operations continue within seconds on the backup. The cost of adding a cellular failover connection is a fraction of what one lost dinner service costs. We strongly recommend it for every restaurant we work with.

Yes, and PCI DSS (the payment card industry standard your POS system operates under) actually requires it. Cardholder data environment systems must be isolated from general-access networks. Beyond compliance, it's a practical security requirement: you have no control over what devices your guests bring in, and a compromised guest device on the same network as your POS is a real attack vector. Separate VLANs with firewall rules between them is the right answer — it's not optional.

Kitchens are a different RF environment than dining rooms: metal equipment, appliances, and often a concrete or tile floor plan that blocks signals differently. For KDS units, wired connections via Cat6 are always more reliable than WiFi if the layout allows. Where wired isn't practical, we place an access point specifically for kitchen coverage — not relying on a dining room AP to reach through the pass. We also spec APs rated for higher-temperature or grease-prone environments when needed.

ISP redundancy means having two separate internet connections — typically your primary cable or fiber connection plus a cellular LTE backup. The router is configured to monitor both connections and automatically fail over to the backup if the primary drops. From your staff's perspective, the network keeps working. The failover typically happens in under 30 seconds. For most restaurants, the backup is a 4G/5G cellular connection that runs on a separate physical infrastructure from your cable, so a cut line or ISP outage doesn't take both connections down simultaneously.

Yes — they can all share the same physical switch and cabling infrastructure. What can't be shared is the logical network segment: cameras, POS, KDS, and guest WiFi each need their own VLAN so they're isolated from each other. One PoE switch can handle all of these with proper VLAN configuration. The cameras get their own VLAN, POS and KDS share an operational VLAN (or get their own), and guest WiFi is on a completely separate segment. This is exactly how we build it.