Network Communications News (NCN) April 2017 | Page 17

HOT TOPIC
How will organisations
implement these emerging
trends?
Enterprises are faced with
another underlying issue that
many have seen before in the
2.4Ghz spectrum, used by
802.11b/g/n access points and
older generation client devices.
Co-channel interference is now
becoming a growing issue in the
5Ghz spectrum. This specific
type of interference exists when
two or more access points or
other devices are operating or
transmitting on the same channel.
When this happens, the
access points fight to talk to the
devices connected, often resulting
is slow performance or loss of
connection. 802.11ac and 802.11ac
wave 2 operate purely in the 5Ghz
spectrum and with the promise of
faster speeds this is achieved by
simply making the channel wider.
Just like a motorway we look to add
more lanes to increase its capacity.
Innovative use cases for
enterprise wireless trends
In wireless, there are only a few
channels left when operating
at full speed. The probability of
coming across co-channel issues
in an enterprise environment
is fairly common. To add to
the growing number of issues
associated with co-channel
interference, the US recently
announced that carriers like
Verizon and T-Mobile will soon
be transmitting data in the same
part of the public airwaves shared
with Wi-Fi. The move will give the
carriers increased spectrum, as
they too are dealing with capacity
and speed issues. However, those
phone signals may inter fere with
Wi-Fi transmissions. While this is
currently in the US, carriers across
the globe are all contending with
the same issues and looking to
see if the role out in the US is
successful before pushing to see
if it can be repeated in Europe.
Enterprise wireless trends
over the next 12-18 months
Firstly, to help Wi-Fi enhance the
user experience, a new standard
or group of 802.11 standards
called ‘mobility enhancements’
are being introduced. The focus
of this initiative is to improve the
connected experience with Wi-Fi
to create a faster, more consistent
connectivity. The enhancements
give managed service providers
and enterprises an array of tools
to deliver Wi-Fi that will feel much
like cellular.
The various new standards
take care of faster call setup
(802.11ai), cellular style handoffs
(802.11r and 802.11ai together), and
load balancing/steering (802.11k/v).
Many mainstream vendors are
already using the 802.11r standard
to allow devices to roam from AP
to AP effortlessly.
In an effort to streamline
the upgrade process and make
it easier to manage wireless,
enterprises look to simplify
their efforts by turning to cloud
based platforms. While initially
there was a lot of scepticism
around managing infrastructure
in the cloud, enterprises are
now embracing this strategy. By
2018, 60 per cent of enterprises
will have at least half of their
infrastructure on cloud based
platforms and IDC expects the
cloud managed wireless LAN
infrastructure market to achieve a
38.8 per cent compounded annual
growth rate (CAGR) between 2013-
2018. In comparison, the CAGR
forecast for the overall WLAN
infrastructure market over that
period is 11 per cent.
Of course, there is also the
new up and coming standard
802.11ax, which is still to be
ratified. Over the next 12-18
months, we should start to see
more about this standard and
we may even see some vendors
gearing up for production of
802.11ax devices. The 802.11ax
specifications host an impressive
array of changes that look more
like an overhaul of how Wi-Fi
operates than an improvement.
The 802.11ax boasts significant
increases in coverage from
the likes of new features like
OFDMA allowing mobile devices
to focus their beam towards an
access point much like LTE and
efficiencies by scheduling clients
at the access point rather than
contending each connection.
This will increase not only the
amount of capacity but also the
throughput. The initial stats show
that 802.11ax should be able to
achieve four times the speed of
‘The 802.11ax
standard look
like the next
real evolution
and is being
designed to
be backward
compatible.’
802.11ac at the cell edge and four
times the capacity.
Whilst the 802.11ax standard
does look like the next real
evolution, it is being designed to be
b a c k wa rd co mp at i b l e an d we wi ll
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wo u l d a l so exp e ct to s ee more
so p h i st i c ate d sw i tc h i n g dep loyed
to su p p o r t t h e i n c re a se i n dev i ce
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i nve st i n h i g h e r Po E req ui rements
to su p p o r t n ewe r a cc es s p oi nts .
Ente r p r i se o rga n i sat i on s wi ll
n e e d to l o o k at b ot h elements to
e n su re t h e y a c h i eve a good en d
u se r exp e r i e n c e . 
While there have been
massive leaps in how Wi-Fi can
cope with the ever increasing
demands on balancing the speed
and ability to handle an increase
in device numbers, many have
pushed forward with 802.11ac
wave 2 to grab the headlines with
performance that will dazzle most
– with the promise that MU-MIMO
will solve all these problems. If
you have devices which support
MU-MIMO you can expect to see a
marked improvement, but even with
this improvement, the underlying
issue of physics still exists.
However, it’s not all doom
and gloom. In a recent study
conducted by the University
of Brescia in Italy, the results
revealed that smart antenna
technology is effectively dealing
with co-channel issues. In some
cases, smart antenna technology
gives an average gain of 70 per
cent on aggregated throughput
over standard access points in the
same environment.
April 2017 | 17