INTERVIEW Alexandra Gates - Aerohive
“Wi-Fi. 802.11ax is changing the conversation to focus more on efficiency and ‘high efficiency
wireless.” Alexandra Gates, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Aerohive
What Comes Next in Wi-Fi
Alexandra Gates, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Wi-Fi firm Aerohive, talks to Comms Business Magazine
about the new 802.11ax standard and why she believes that increasing speed is not enough
As we look ahead to 2019,
we’re seeing the evolution
of Wi-Fi and security
standards, driven by
the ever-increasing need for
improved data transmission
speeds and changing device
usage – especially in professional
environments. Not only has
device use skyrocketed but
their use patterns are changing,
and trends such as BYOD and
IoT adoption are exponentially
increasing.
High bandwidth demand is
becoming the norm. In 2019,
we expect to see a great increase
in unit shipments of 802.11ax
(aka WiFi-6), bringing with it
several key advantages which
address the evolving world of
networking.
In the past, our access to
the internet in the workplace
was fairly structured. IT had
to support one type of device,
mostly computers, which
ran on a limited number of
operating systems. ese devices
connected to the internet via
ethernet and ran a relatively
small number of applications.
More recently, IoT has
started to become a factor in
corporate networks. Examples
including ‘smart’, connected
devices like thermostats,
lighting controls and door
locks present new challenges
to network administrators,
because of their sheer numbers
and because they can be hard
to identify and even harder to
secure.
With this in mind, Wi-Fi
networks need to be able to
handle greater demand and
complexity than ever before.
at’s a real challenge!
at is why we expect to see
a rapid rise in unit shipments
of 802.11ax in 2019. is
new standard has several
advantages over previous Wi-Fi
technologies.
For the past 21 years, Wi-Fi
has been focused on successively
higher peak theoretical speeds.
802.11n brought us speeds of
up to 450 Mbps on paper whilst
802.11ac brought us into the
hypothetical realm of gigabit
Wi-Fi. 802.11ax is changing the
conversation to focus more on
eciency and ‘high eciency
wireless’.
OFDMA
A key component of 802.11ax’s
importance is capacity
management. With orthogonal
frequency division multiple
access (OFDMA), 802.11ax is
able to drive greater eciency
of access. e main benet of
OFDMA is that it allows an
access point (AP) to allocate
the whole channel to a single
user at a time or it may
partition a channel to serve
multiple users simultaneously.
It is capable of doing this by
assigning subsets of subcarriers,
called Resource Units (RUs)
to the individual clients,
meaning that multiple
users with varying
bandwidth needs
can be served
simultaneously.
is will
result in huge
improvements
in eciency in
any relatively
high-density
area. To use an analogy,
if you look at today’s Wi-
Fi as a delivery van delivering
one package on every trip, in
comparison, OFDMA divides
up the spectrum and allocates
it to multiple dierent users
if necessary. is is akin to a
delivery truck carrying packages
from dierent senders on a
single trip – which is clearly far
more ecient.
Target Wake Time
Another key feature of 802.11ax
is Target Wake Time (TWT) -
a power saving mechanism that
allows devices to negotiate when
and how often they will wake
up to send or receive data. is
includes resource scheduling
features and scheduled sleep and
wake times, which is borrowed
from 802.11ah Wi-Fi. TWT
increases device sleep time
and, in turn, reduces energy
consumption and substantially
improves battery life. is
is great news for all of us
looking for ways to remedy
poor battery life in our devices,
and should encourage mobile
device manufacturers to utilise
802.11ax chipsets in their new
products. Because of this, it
seems plausible that 802.11ax
devices will appear at a much
more rapid pace in the market
than any previous wireless
standards.
ese are the key features of
802.11ax, but there are other
benets too, such as improved
throughput and coverage
and support for the 2.4 GHz
spectrum.
With the proliferation of
devices, it is clear that Wi-Fi
speed is not enough anymore.
Wi-Fi standards need to be able
to manage multiple clients in
the most ecient way possible
to ensure that speed is provided
consistently, rather than in
peaks and troughs. at is the
future we are heading towards
with 802.11ax.
34 | Comms Business Magazine | January 2019 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
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