Network Communications News (NCN) August 2016 | Page 10

COLUMN

talking point

Working with wireless
IEEE 802.11ac technology is a game changer in enterprise environments,
explains Valerie Maguire of Siemon, but not for the reasons that you might think.

W

ireless Ethernet or Wi-Fi
is the fastest growing and
most quickly evolving
Ethernet application ever.
The need for increased peak
speed and throughput,
additional capacity, and
decreased latency all drove development
of the current fifth generation IEEE
802.11ac wireless application. The
Wi-Fi Alliance certified the first wave of
802.11ac devices, which are capable of
a theoretical maximum throughput of
1.3Gb/s, in June of 2013; an amazing five
months before the 802.11ac Standard
published! And, second wave 802.11ac
implementations, capable of operating
at 2.6G/s and even 3.5Gb/s speeds,
are commercially available and being
installed in enterprise spaces today.
While the popularity of wireless systems
might lead network infrastructure experts
to believe that wireless systems are on
a trajectory to outpace or even replace
balanced twisted pair (ie., ‘wired’) cabling
networks, the fact is that the most
reliable and flexible network solutions will
continue to be a blend of both systems
for the foreseeable future.
One of the most common errors
made when comparing wireless versus
wired system capability is assuming
that IEEE 802.11ac devices provide
performance on par with structured