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Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ ac is gaining momentum

Wi-Fi CERTIFIED ac
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The Wi-Fi Alliance® Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ ac program launched last month and over the past several weeks, we’ve been posting member contributed articles on The Beacon that dive a bit deeper into the core of the technology– including topics like the evolving technology adoption cycle, benefits of 802.11ac for networks, and our most recent article about client adoption for 802.11ac wireless technology.

Our Wi-Fi CERTIFIED ac program launched at a time when consumer Wi-Fi® usage has exploded. The below infographic summarizes the global rise in connectivity demands:

As Rolf de Vegt of Qualcomm states:

“Smartphones have already become the driver of innovation in technology worldwide and Wi-Fi is no exception. Wi-Fi is a clear area where the immense impact of mobile on the high-tech industry can be seen, and mobile’s importance will only grow over time.”

The momentum around Wi-Fi CERTIFIED ac smartphones and other products continues, and this can be seen through the growing number of devices that are certified through our program every day. It’s clear that companies understand the potential for Wi-Fi CERTIFIED ac products to bring additional capacity, performance and robustness to support the connected applications of today and tomorrow.

The statements and opinions by each Wi-Fi Alliance member and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions or views of Wi-Fi Alliance or any other member. Wi-Fi Alliance is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information provided by any member in posting to or commenting on this blog. Concerns should be directed to info@wi-fi.org.

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Client adoption for 802.11ac wireless technology

Wi-Fi CERTIFIED ac, Operators
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This is an excerpt from a post on the Cisco Mobility blog site: http://blogs.cisco.com/wireless

With the adoption of new technology such as 802.11ac, the industry sometimes can become a farmer’s almanac of predictions when it comes to when and what devices will support 802.11ac. There are a lot of consumer devices such as home routers with 802.11ac support, as well as a selection of laptops offering support for the new standard. In terms of enterprise-class access points supporting 802.11ac, Cisco, along with a few other vendors, recently announced product support for 802.11ac with the expectation of more product announcements to come later this year. As for the other leg in the chair, there have not been many announcements regarding the support of 802.11ac for smartphones or tablets. We now have a couple of smartphone vendors throwing their hat into the 802.11ac ring which makes things very exciting from an adoption standpoint.

Smartphones with 802.11ac support can certainly be considered one of the next phases in the early adoption story for the technology, following consumer-based APs, laptops and enterprise wireless access points. The further adoption of this standard is also good for vendors of consumer equipment as well as enterprise customers. Whether you are a consumer or someone who supports an enterprise network, 802.11ac technology will provide benefits such as expanded bandwidth and higher client density, all on the less crowded 5 GHz band. 802.11ac technology includes tools to combat the bandwidth hungry applications that continue to grow in our world.

One of the first industries to take full advantage of 802.11ac will be higher education.  Students who are typically early adopters of these smartphones will most likely show up to class next September with their 802.11ac supported smartphone or laptop and expect all the promises of higher performance that 802.11ac brings. Healthcare and service providers will also gain the benefits of 802.11ac technology adoption by providing device connectivity for bandwidth hungry applications such as HD video streaming or faster file transfers with medical imaging. Tying this all together will be the further adoption of 802.11ac technology in access points and client devices. However, there will still be a lot of rumors about different support on a variety of products coming to a Google search near you. As more and more vendors solidify their plans for this emerging technology, the next few months will be an exciting ride for those who not only follow this technology but also will come to rely on it for the future.

The statements and opinions by each Wi-Fi Alliance member and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions or views of Wi-Fi Alliance or any other member. Wi-Fi Alliance is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information provided by any member in posting to or commenting on this blog. Concerns should be directed to info@wi-fi.org.

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Why 802.11ac helps every network

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This post originally ran on the Aerohive blog where Matthew Gast has his own author blog.

Now that the world is starting to talk seriously about 802.11ac, I’m answering many more questions about it. One of the most common questions I get when I speak about 802.11ac (as I did at our Boston user group, and will be at our upcoming New York user group) is why it makes sense to upgrade to 802.11ac when the client population is still largely 802.11n.

The answer lies in the basis of packet-switched networking, and how networks behave in response to congestion. Congestion is unfortunately a fact of life in networking, and it’s something that network technology designers have to deal with. Packet-switched networks cope with congestion well, up to a point, and then they suffer from a sudden collapse.

One of my favorite analogies for talking about the behavior of network technologies and congestion is to compare your computer network to the transportation network. Let’s say that you set out to drive somewhere early in the morning, say around 2 am. The road will be empty, so that as you merge on to the freeway you’ll be able to go at the speed limit. There’s no congestion, so you can fly on to your destination. An unloaded network behaves the same. Packets line up for transmission, and head out to their destination immediately.

Add a few cars to the road, and not much happens. I try to drive to work at Aerohive before traffic starts, so I get on the road and there’s a reasonable load on the road. Provided I hit the road early enough, though, there’s enough space, and the throughput of the road (the number of cars) is high, but traffic is not yet high enough to degrade my latency (otherwise known as the time I spend in traffic).

Eventually, though, too many cars get on the road, and – boom! – traffic suddenly starts to crawl. What happened is that there’s just too much demand for the road, and adding more cars still increases throughput, but the cost of adding a car is slowing everybody else on the road down to a near-stop. What does a congested network look like? Think mid-day traffic in any major world city. If you’ve been in a cab in New York, London, Tokyo, or Paris, you know what I mean.

So, if the network is so congested that latency is high, what can be done? Remove the congestion. (Put more formally, the average latency of a packet on the network is inversely related to available airtime, so free airtime is a general good for the network.) One of the reasons that major cities have focused on increasing trips taken by bicycle is that bicycles take up much less road capacity. For the “price” of a car’s worth of roadway, you can have a half dozen bicycles.

So, what’s the “bicycle fix” for Wi-Fi? We have a fixed and costly resource – the radio medium – and need to wring more out of it. By reducing the transmission time for frames, 802.11ac enables network administrators to push back against congestion collapse. The lesson in here is that if you have a network running close to the traffic volume at which congestion takes hold, you should move to 802.11ac. As you add 802.11ac clients, they will reduce the amount of airtime required to transmit data, and increasing free airtime will improve the quality of user experience.

The statements and opinions by each Wi-Fi Alliance member and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions or views of Wi-Fi Alliance or any other member. Wi-Fi Alliance is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information provided by any member in posting to or commenting on this blog. Concerns should be directed to info@wi-fi.org.

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The mobile revolution changing the Wi-Fi® technology adoption cycle

Wi-Fi CERTIFIED ac, Operators
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The way we interact with technology is changing. The mobile market is experiencing incredible growth as it begins to overtake other segments, and mobile data usage is skyrocketing to levels that could exceed the capability of wireless operators—fortunately something Wi-Fi® can help ease. As this surge in mobile continues, the way new Wi-Fi technology is being adopted is changing with it. Network operators and smartphone OEMs are starting to incorporate new technology far earlier than they ever had before. Smartphones are poised to benefit greatly from the latest in Wi-Fi, and they are also set to become one of the main drivers of 802.11ac.

Every three or four years, Wi-Fi experiences a major generational upgrade of its core underlying networking technology. We have seen this during the move from 802.11b to .11g and then on toward .11n, and that process is happening once again with 802.11ac. Thanks to Wi-Fi Alliance®, these generational upgrades have been mostly smooth experiences, even when Wi-Fi certification programs have been rolled out prior to the finalization of the .11 standard, and in part due to maintaining backward compatibility with previous generations.

We have also all seen how the typical adoption cycle has played out for Wi-Fi-enabled devices. Usually retail networking solutions, such as APs, broadband gateways and adapters, are the first to upgrade to the new generation. PCs follow, with enterprise and fixed CE coming next. Mobile handheld devices have historically been among the last to receive the new technology. This is due to the relatively conservative nature of network operators, who play a role in specifying technologies in smartphones, and the more stringent qualification cycles of smartphone OEMs.

However, as the market shifts, so too does the adoption cycle. With some very compelling uses for mobile devices, such as Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Miracast™, and with fierce competition for technology leadership in the smartphone market, this dynamic is changing. We are already seeing smartphones, such as the ZTE Grand Memo, shipping with 802.11ac at the same time, or even ahead of, many other product segments.

With the new Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ ac certification program, Wi-Fi Alliance will play a key role in ensuring the interoperability of mobile devices with APs and other 802.11ac devices. With the mobile segment adopting the latest Wi-Fi technology so much earlier than ever before, they will not be the ones adapting to the ecosystem. Rather, smartphones will be among the forefront of the new generation.

Smartphones have already become the driver of innovation in technology worldwide and Wi-Fi is no exception. Wi-Fi is a clear area where the immense impact of mobile on the high-tech industry can be seen, and mobile’s importance will only grow over time.

The statements and opinions by each Wi-Fi Alliance member and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions or views of Wi-Fi Alliance or any other member. Wi-Fi Alliance is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information provided by any member in posting to or commenting on this blog. Concerns should be directed to info@wi-fi.org.

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Welcome to The Beacon!

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Wi-Fi® is continually evolving, and Wi-Fi Alliance® is fortunate to be at the center of this dynamic, exciting industry. Our more than 550 member companies across the globe represent a diverse industry mix, ranging from carriers to device manufacturers and everything in between. These members are shaping the future of Wi-Fi technology, bringing the innovation and thought leadership that continues to drive new Wi-Fi applications and products.

With that in mind, we are excited to introduce The Beacon, a blog built to provide a platform for these visionary leaders to provide their insights on industry trends, hot technology topics, emerging markets, and real-world technology applications. We have some excellent contributions in the pipeline, and we hope you’ll agree that the blog is appropriately named as a prominent location to celebrate innovation in our industry.

Over the next few months, we’ll have a variety of contributed articles, postings, infographics, and videos focusing on a flagship program for 2013 – Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ ac. Looking further ahead, we will provide The Beacon readers with a look at other exciting developments in our industry, and we plan to generate discussion on current and emerging Wi-Fi Alliance programs, as well as broader industry trends.

Please share The Beacon with colleagues and let us know what you think by participating in the comments. We look forward to hearing from you!

The statements and opinions by each Wi-Fi Alliance member and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions or views of Wi-Fi Alliance or any other member. Wi-Fi Alliance is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information provided by any member in posting to or commenting on this blog. Concerns should be directed to info@wi-fi.org.