Network management

Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Data Elements™

Wi-Fi Data Elements™ establishes a standardized set of the most important key performance indicators for Wi-Fi network health, such as how many devices are on the network, use of bandwidth, signal strength measurements, and free airtime. This information is gathered and communicated to network administrators who can proactively and more effectively identify and resolve Wi-Fi network issues — often before a customer notices a problem.

Service providers deploying Wi-Fi Data Elements can more efficiently gather metrics to manage the complexity of multi-generation networks and provide the best user experience to customers.

Features of Wi-Fi Data Elements include:

• Standardized set of key performance indicators that determine Wi-Fi network health
• Rapid data collection into a standard data model
• Efficient communication of the data model to service providers for analysis and diagnostics
• Support for single AP and multiple AP networks

Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Optimized Connectivity™

Wi-Fi Optimized Connectivity™ improves mobility and allows users to experience more consistent connections while roaming within and across networks by reducing airtime overhead and enabling faster authentication to the selected AP. AP and client devices can effectively exchange information, enabling:

• Optimized network discovery and selection where mobile devices and APs employ improved channel scanning techniques to quickly identify potential Wi-Fi networks available for connection
• Link quality assessment, providing metrics to assist client devices in quickly making decisions about the AP that will deliver the best possible connection based on bidirectional link quality estimation and network topology information
• Rapid authentication, with devices working together to reduce airtime overhead and enable faster authentication to the selected AP or network
• Significant reduction in transmission of management frames, enabling devices to spend less time responding to management information and more time moving user data

Wi-Fi CERTIFIED QoS Management™

Wi-Fi QoS Management™ delivers consistent, end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS) treatment in Wi-Fi networks by enabling devices, applications, and network managers to prioritize traffic flows for time-sensitive services, such as video and voice. This results in enhanced quality of experience for end users in residential, enterprise, and public networks. Wi-Fi QoS Management extends WMM® by allowing APs and client devices to negotiate and/or request identified IP flows be assigned to particular access categories. It supports a wide range of use cases, including client-centric use cases, where the AP is requested to perform QoS treatment for selected downlink IP flows. Wi-Fi QoS Management also supports network-centric use cases where the client device is requested to perform QoS treatment for certain uplink IP flows, resulting in better experiences with real-time applications, reduced latency, prevention of outages, and reduced lag time. 

Wi-Fi QoS Management features four key technologies:

• Stream Classification Service (SCS), which enables classification and Wi-Fi QoS treatment of specific IP flows, allowing for sensitive traffic such as gaming, voice, and video to be prioritized over bulk data traffic
• Mirrored Stream Classification Service (MSCS), enabling a client device to request the AP to apply specific QoS treatment of downlink IP flows using QoS mirroring
• Differentiated Service Code Point (DSCP) mapping, aligning QoS treatment across Wi-Fi and wired networks, as well as enabling network managers to configure specific QoS policies
• DSCP Policy, which enables dynamic configuration of clients with DSCP policies for specific uplink IP traffic flows, allowing them to be marked with different DSCP values and further improving the experience with applications requiring low latency such as extended reality (XR)

Wi-Fi CERTIFIED WMM™

WMM allows network administrators and residential users to assign higher priority to real-time traffic such as voice and video while assigning other data traffic to either best-effort or background priority levels. Along with the general WMM certification, there are two other certifications under the WMM category:

• WMM-Power Save improves the battery life of mobile devices and increases the efficiency of transmission of voice calls over Wi-Fi networks
• WMM-Admission Control further improves the performance of Wi-Fi networks for real-time data by increasing the reliability of applications in progress by preventing oversubscription of bandwidth. WMM-Admission Control accomplishes this by enhancing the prioritization of traffic using the access categories introduced by WMM (i.e., voice, video, best-effort data, and background data) by using bandwidth management to take into account network load and channel conditions