Several things that enterprises need to do when entering Gigabit WiFi (1)

Over the past few months, discussions have become increasingly enthusiastic about the evolution and deployment of 802.11ac. However, in consumer and enterprise-level markets, users' enthusiasm is not the same. 802.11ac has been widely supported in the consumer electronics industry. Apple, Samsung, HTC, Xiaomi, and many other mobile phone manufacturers have joined the ranks of 5G WiFi. However, for enterprise-level products, the promotion of 802.11ac seems to be slow.

However, with the user's demand for high-speed wireless transmission, it is imperative to upgrade from 11n to 11ac. What WLAN challenges can 802.11ac address for enterprises? Is 11n useful? What preparations should enterprises make in advance to transition to the Gigabit era? With these questions, BKJIA interviewed Zhao yanli, general manager of Aerohive China, to explain all aspects of 802.11ac Gigabit WiFi, help enterprise users sort out the preparations needed to enter the Gigabit wireless network, and make plans in advance.

802.11ac delivers throughput, energy consumption, spectrum utilization, coverage, and other advantages

Zhao said in an interview that for enterprises, 802.11ac has advantages in throughput, energy consumption, and coverage.

Improves the throughput of a single AP. For example, in the school deployment environment, an AP is deployed in a single classroom for applications such as electronic textbooks. Based on the 802.11ac standard, the throughput of a single AP can support 30-50 students to be online at the same time, assign reasonable bandwidth to everyone. In a hospital deployment environment, the 802.11ac standard AP allows doctors to access patient data or image data at any time.

The 802.11ac chip greatly improves energy consumption and power-saving, saving power consumption for terminal devices such as smartphones and tablets. Because the data transmission rate is faster, 802.11ac can greatly reduce the time consumed to download large files, such as videos, images, or PDF attachments, and increase the battery life proportionally. For enterprises with many such devices, such as schools, medical care, or retail enterprises, it saves more time and energy by reducing the charging of the devices.

In addition, spectrum efficiency is improved by using MU-MIMO (multi-user MIMO) technology. There is a big challenge for WiFi: How can I allocate limited bandwidth to all WiFi users? The spectrum efficiency is greatly improved by enabling 802.11ac AP to be associated with multiple clients at the same time. In addition,

11ac improves coverage or throughput by using Beamforming-Beam Shaping Technology with the same technology as 11n. Beam Shaping is not a new technology, but it is hardly implemented in 11n. In 11ac, it not only implements this technology, but also makes it simpler, making it possible for AP and terminal device interoperability.

11ac does not bring new challenges different from 11n

Everything has its two sides. Is there any other problem when 802.11ac improves the speed? In this regard, Zhao said, 11ac brings technically, 802.11ac does not bring any new challenges different from 11n. 11ac not only has more technical advantages than 11n, but also maintains backward compatibility. If you are concerned that the 802.11ac achieves a GBps speed and uses a wider channel, resulting in fewer available channels, you can choose not to use 80 m or even a wider channel. 11ac also has 256QAM, technologies such as MU-MIMO and beam can help customers increase throughput and improve spectrum utilization and coverage.

Of course, 11ac also brings a possible challenge in network deployment: to make full use of 11ac's advantages, enterprises may need to upgrade their access switches from 10/100 M to 1G. At present, Aerohive has released three switches to meet the needs of enterprise customers. all APs and switches can be managed through a unified management and control platform.

In the next 3-5 years, 11n and 11ac will coexist, but enterprises must make preparations in advance.

Currently, 11ac standards and products are in a fast-rising channel. In the next 3-5 years, more than half of the AP shipments will use 11ac, but in the next 3-5 years, 11n and 11ac will coexist. This is because, on the one hand, not all applications require 11ac throughput, on the other hand, there is a cost difference. With the popularization of 11ac AP, the cost gap between the two will be reduced.

As more and more terminals enter the office space and run various office services and applications on the office network, enterprises need 11ac to provide higher capacity. As more and more terminal devices use 11ac, enterprises must prepare their network infrastructure in advance, instead of waiting for 1-2 years to begin to replace their demands in an emergency.