Wifi new standard WiFi6 or 802.11ax, revolution in wireless speed and security

Sophia is responsible for the market and technological trends, forecasts and competitive analysis of Ethernet networks, routing, wireless LANs and new related segments such as SDN and SD-WAN. Companies use WiFi networks to connect their employees and provide customers with new business opportunities. The focus is now on the new WiFi standard - 802.11ax, which can solve many problems and help enterprises create the networks they need.

Introduction: why corporate WiFi is under constant pressure

WiFi is an integral part of almost any business. The mobile devices, combined with an ever-growing set of applications and services, creates a huge burden for all organizations deploying secure, scalable WiFi networks. At the same time, business requirements for WiFi will only grow. By 2020, up to 30 billion Internet-connected devices are expected, and by 2025 this figure will reach 80 billion. Many of these devices will rely on WiFi access, which creates a growing need for secure, and reliable services. According to IDC forecasts, over the next 5 years, sales of equipment for building enterprise-class wireless local area networks (WLANs) will grow by 5.5%, and by 2022 will reach $ 7.5 billion, as shown in the first chart.

WiFi access is constantly evolving and over time has become more than just a way of communication. Organizations are now constantly relying on it, using to support both internal and external users. WiFi can be used to attract customers with personalized applications and targeted marketing. WiFi has become a platform to support new business opportunities by creating innovative ways to interact with users and providing best hospitality wifi solution in Middle East. However, simply providing a WiFi network to users, guests, and the organization itself is not enough. The network should become a secure and reliable environment that can scale to support a wide range of new applications, devices and their use cases.

Deploying enterprise WiFi that meets all the business requirements is challenging. Users are mobile, which creates problems for the organization of high-quality coverage. Interference from shielding materials used at the facilities or due to the large number of users in the service area can adversely affect signal reception and propagation. Security is paramount for deploying WiFi access, but it's hard for organizations to implement it at the right level. To solve problems, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) over the past 20 years has done more than 15 iterations of WiFi control protocols. The most recent protocol was 802.11ac Wave 2, which overcame the gigabit per second barrier and provided enhanced functionality for large enterprise environments. But despite the improvements, many companies still see in the 802.11ac Wave 2 standard limitations related to the number of channels and connected devices, as well as bandwidth.

These restrictions are observed in places with a high density of subscribers, for example, in stadiums, in transport hubs, conference rooms and classrooms. At these facilities, an increasing number of users are turning to WiFi, waiting for a reliable, fast connection, even during peak periods. On the other hand, organizations that own these sites are implementing new business ideas based on WiFi, from increasing customer engagement and satisfaction to marketing campaigns and getting detailed analytics.

WiFi is increasingly being used to deploy the Internet of Things (IoT) environment, which is necessary to ensure the efficiency of equipment and devices. Network operators use WiFi to transfer mobile data, and the smart city (Smart City) is increasingly introducing public WiFi. In developing countries, WiFi is sometimes easier to set up and use than mobile networks, which creates a number of new options for its use. In this regard, WiFi products based on previous generation protocols have difficulty meeting the diverse requirements of new wireless network applications.

802.11ax is the future of WiFi

The new WiFi protocol was developed to solve the previously mentioned problems. 802.11ax is sometimes referred to as the high-performance wireless standard; it can support throughput 4 times greater than previous standards. Many of the 802.11ax release enhancements are specifically designed for high-density environments. IDC predicts that the use of 802.11ax in targeted niches will increase significantly in 2018 and 2019. Further, by the end of 2019, it will already become mainstream, and by 2021, 802.11ax will be the dominant WiFi standard for enterprises, as shown in the second graph.

The new protocol has many advantages:

·         Multiple Access with Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA). In the early years of its existence, a WiFi access point could only work with one device at a time. In large networks, this is not enough. OFDMA allows 802.11ax-standard WiFi equipment to split the frequency traffic between access points and devices into resource blocks. This allows you to divide the frequencies into subcarriers so that you can process more packets from more devices, thereby increasing network bandwidth.

·         Multiuser MIMO - MU-MIMO: previous WiFi standards have the ability to work in MU-MIMO mode, but only for downlink traffic. The 802.11ax protocol adds support for MU-MIMO to simultaneously transmit client data in the uplink direction, that is, to access points, which is another improvement for environments with high subscriber density, which is especially useful for interacting with clients.

·         Data transfer rate: the 802.11ax standard supports both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands, and the maximum physical data transfer rate increases from about 1 GE in the 802.11ac standard to 10 GE.

·         Quadrature Amplitude Modulation - QAM 1024: QAM represents an algorithm for transmitting data within WiFi protocols. In 802.11ax, QAM is raised from 256 to 1024, which significantly increases the overall WiFi bandwidth.

·         Efficient power consumption: The latest standard allows you to coordinate the transmission time of the signal to and from devices. This feature reduces the time that devices must be connected to the network, which increases transmission power.

·         Differentiation (coloring) of overlapping service areas (OBSS): for work in environments with a high density of subscribers, access points are quite densely located - this increases inter-channel interference and reduces network performance. The 802.11ax standard introduced OBSS with color coding of shared frequencies, which in congested environments increases network bandwidth while transmitting data to multiple devices simultaneously.

Use cases for 802.11ax technology

Improvements to the 802.11ax standard will be useful for a wide range of applications, but they are especially important for dense and heavily loaded environments where a large number of users connect to the network. The following are some of the scenarios that will benefit most from improvements to the 802.11ax standard:

·         Public areas: Stadiums and conference rooms are traditional public areas that are increasingly offering WiFi to improve their interaction with fans, visitors and customers. The network is also used to create additional services, such as showing reruns on fan devices or giving visitors the opportunity to order food from their seats. Stadiums and conference rooms with tens of thousands of users simultaneously connected to the WiFi network pose serious scaling and density problems. Improvements to the 802.11ax standard regarding OFDMA, 1024 QAM, OBSS color coding, and higher physical data rates will help public space owners get new business opportunities by expanding the range of services offered to guests and visitors.

·         Transport hubs: train stations and stations also offer public WiFi. They, like stadiums and transport hubs, have a high density of subscribers who are trying to connect to the network at the same time. However, these transport centers are faced with a unique problem created by devices that appear in the service area of ​​access points for a short period of time, do not connect to the WiFi network, but, nevertheless, direct service and control traffic that overloads it. OFDMA-based 802.11ax enhancements and BSS marking (dyeing) provide tools that help you meet new challenges in busy environments.

·         Internet of Things (IoT) and Smart City Projects: These deployments face a wide range of challenges. In some cases, there may be many devices that try to simultaneously exchange data, for example, at a production facility. In other cases, a small number of devices can be idle for a long time, and they need to be “phoned” only once a day. The energy efficiency of the 802.11ax standard can enable devices to go into deep sleep mode and turn on the transmitters at predetermined intervals in order to extend the operating time without maintenance.

·         Education: University campuses always have a high density of WiFi users, especially in places like libraries, classrooms, lecture halls, and student dormitories. Education in high school, for example, based on video courses, personal lessons, classes connected to IoT, create a bandwidth crisis, which the new standard can solve.

Take advantage of 802.11ax technology properly

The 802.11ax standard lays the foundation that can support the much higher capacity of concurrently connected devices. To use these achievements, of course, hardware and software are required. Manufacturers are expected to release 802.11ax-based equipment in the second half of 2018, and sales of 802.11ax-standard products will experience significant growth in 2019 and 2020.

When evaluating suppliers of WiFi equipment, enterprises should consider not only the latest standards, but also the additional functionality and capabilities that it gives. By itself, 802.11ax does not consider dynamic channel selection or other network optimization methods that have many access points, such as client load balancing. Therefore, simply deploying the 802.11ax standard will not bring any benefits.

Follow EZELINK ' Guidelines for Using 802.11ax

As part of EZELINK Networks provides enterprise-class hardware and software WiFi, focusing on the development of wireless technologies for complex WiFi environments such as public spaces, as well as deployments in the Internet of Things and smart city.

The company has a wide range of indoor, outdoor and specialized access points, led by the top-end AC1750 access point based on the 802.11ax standard, designed specifically for environments with high subscriber density. The AC1750 has a 2.4 GHz 4x4 and 5 GHz 8x8 radio, 5GbE port and supports all 6 key attributes of the 802.11ax standard: OFDMA, MU-MIMO, high data rates, a new level of QAM, energy efficiency and color marking. The EZELINK AC1750 access point is also compatible with secure WiFi access technology (WPA3) and is ready for use in the Internet of Things and CBRS / LTE.

EZELINK smart network controllers can be used to manage large-scale projects using AC1750 access points and include the Ultra-High-Density Technology Suite for technology deployments. The latter is designed to improve network performance in busy environments using both proprietary technologies and those that go beyond the 802.11ax standard.

Challenges and Challenges

Despite the fact that EZELINK offers a solid set of enterprise-level wireless developments, some problems are inevitably associated with the introduction of new technologies. The company has conducted extensive field trials of its latest equipment, but, nevertheless, these are fresh products that should improve their performance over time. EZELINK is able to adapt its latest networking equipment for use outside the public domain, namely in more traditional corporate environments. And to the extent that EZELINK will increase the attractiveness of its network equipment, you will be able to take advantage of these advantages.

Conclusion
WiFi has always been important for business, but corporate network requirements are growing exponentially. There are countless improvements to WiFi standards needed to implement new equipment usage scenarios, but to take advantage of these benefits and advanced technologies, hardware and software that is optimized for the new standards are required. EZELINK is a developer offering 802.11ax products that can uncover these technologies.