What does 802.11ac mean for enterprise WLAN planning?

What does 802.11ac mean for enterprise WLAN planning?

The IEEE 11ac Working Group finally completed six years of hard work. By the end of December 2013, the final version of the IEEE 802.11ac-2013 standard was approved. This high-throughput specification is expected to promote the data transmission rate of domestic Wireless LAN (WLAN) to reach a gigabit level, and the maximum speed is close to 7 Gbps. So what does the 11ac standard mean for enterprise wireless LAN planners?

The first and second wave will bring different challenges

In the short term, it is hard to see that the IEEE 802.11ac standard has a significant impact on the product. Why? In fact, in the middle of 2013, the first wave of 802.11ac-certified Wi-Fi products began to be shipped, but the new certification tests for the final standard will not start until 2015. During this period we will see the launch of the new but uncertified second wave of consumer-level products, such as the Asus RT-AC87U router launched at CES in 2014.

Matthew Gast of Aerohive Networks is the author of 802.11ac: Survival Guide. He mentioned in his blog that, the first wave of ac-certified Wi-Fi products are likely to be fully compatible with the second wave of products. This is because the current features of ac-certified products are designed based on draft 3.0 of the standard and there is no substantial innovation in the final criteria recently approved.

The real differences in the second wave of 11ac products based on the final standard passed in December will gradually emerge. The most noteworthy addition is the wider 160 MHz channel, an access point (AP) with 5 to 8 spatial streams and multi-user multi-input multi-output (MU-MIMO ). In short, these improvements can increase the maximum data rate from the current 1.3 Gbps to 6.9 Gbps.

Do not miss the first wave of Products

In practice, few enterprises actually need to reach a throughput of 7 Gbps for each client. However, simply migrating from the 802.11n standard to the first wave of 802.11ac standard products can double the throughput. More importantly, the first wave of 11ac products can significantly increase the capacity, client density, and range of the wireless LAN. For example, upgrading the 11ac and dual-band 11n clients to 5 GHz can reduce the competition in call time and improve the connection quality of new and old devices. This is why enterprises should use normal device updates and planned network resizing to gradually connect the first wave of 11ac to their wireless LAN.

However, when the migration involves a wireless LAN client, the enterprise's wireless LAN planners have less control. The trend of self-built devices (BYOD) has already brought the first wave of 11ac clients into the enterprise's wireless LAN. Analysts expect that with more and more smartphones, tablets and laptops will begin to use the 11ac standard, the 11ac client will grow rapidly in 2014. When purchasing equipment, enterprises should always buy ac-certified Wi-Fi products, preferably beam products. In this way, the foundation can be laid to meet the increasing application requirements and higher-density Wireless LAN.

Prepare for the second wave of 802.11ac-2013 standard equipment

Planning to connect the first wave of 11ac to the existing 11n standard Wireless LAN is required, mainly to design a 5 GHz spectrum allocation-using a wider 40 MHz and 80 MHz channel, they require a higher data transmission rate. In the short term, a small number of 11ac access points serving 11ac and traditional clients are scattered, and it is unlikely to occupy the backend network infrastructure. In addition, these access points can be integrated for existing 1 Gbps Ethernet connections and Ethernet power supply (PoE ).

However, with the upgrade of the 11ac standard client, application requirements, and user density, the advantages of the second wave of 11ac standard access points will become more important. In enterprises, multi-user multi-input and multi-output performance allows a single AP access point to process up to 4 clients at the same time (for example, a 4X4 AP can serve four single-stream smartphones at the same time .) The upgrade will mean that the new second wave of 11ac standard AP access points will have a new chipset that supports multiple users, multiple inputs, and multiple outputs, but this investment is more suitable for high-density areas, this high-density area will reach the limit of the first wave of capacity.

By that time, the second wave of 11ac standard access points will require more power, 10 GB Ethernet/CAT6a return links and powerful backend infrastructure to avoid possible upstream bottlenecks. Now, we plan to launch these upgrades in the next two to three years. This will allow enterprises to better prepare and deploy the second wave of Enterprise 11ac standard products in 2016 and later.