Leveraging Wave 2 Wi-Fi to Meet GenMobile Demands

People today can’t live without their favorite smartphone or other mobile device – whether they’re at home, on the road or in the office. In fact, 40% of employees say they would never work for a company that does not allow them to use their own mobile devices for work. Most believe that using a mobile device makes them more creative and productive – especially when they’re allowed to work from home.

With so much work being done on mobile devices,wireless networks are quickly becoming the primary means by which employees access key corporate services, applications and data. For many, legacy networks can’t keep pace, and they now are looking to create a mobile-first design able to handle the increased demand. Luckily, the latest Wi-Fi standard, 802.11ac Wave 2, provides key advances that will ensure workforce productivity over the long run.

Faster Speeds

Employee productivity plummets significantly with sluggish application performance. With theoretical speeds of 6.9 Gbps, Wave 2 access points offer an 11x faster connection speed – a benefit that keeps employees on track as they use the bandwidth-hungry, data-intensive applications powering business today.

Added Capacity

In the past, network engineers concentrated on coverage – making sure service was accessible by users in designated areas. But device proliferation has changed all that. Now engineers need to ensure that all devices can get their fair share of the available Wi-Fi service without experiencing disruption. Instead of 1x1 communications, Wave 2 supports multi-user multiple input/multiple output (MU-MIMO), which allows these access points to simultaneously transmit data to and from multiple devices.  

More Spectrum

RF interference is the biggest roadblock to providing consistent QoS levels across all connections. With Wave 2 Wi-Fi, network engineers gain access to more than 30 additional channels over traditional 2.4 GHz networks, in the 5 GHz frequency. This additional spectrum ensures that engineers can easily resolve the conflicts created by the deployment of building attenuation factors, failing machinery, physical structures, microwaves, new Wi-Fi installations and more.

Build a Strong Foundation – Optimize Results

Strategically injecting Wave 2 innovations into network designs is the first step toward creating a mobile-first infrastructure. Building a strong, reliable communications network means integrating wired and wireless assets to create an organization-wide solution. With a solution like Aruba ClearPass, IT can consolidate heterogeneous, multi-vendor environments under a single management solution.  

With an end-to-end networking solution in place, IT can easily:

• Write policies to optimize Wi-Fi service by user, location, application and more
• Implement global security policies that authenticate users in real time
• Automate portal creation and guest access
• Gain complete insight into end-user experiences
• Ensure QoS for real-time voice and video collaboration solutions

GenMobile’s need to work anytime, anywhere, with any device shows no sign of abating. To maintain a productive and loyal workforce, it is clear that organizations in every industry need a plan for quickly migrating to a mobile-first infrastructure. With Wave 2 Wi-Fi advances, organizations accelerate mobility programs without sacrificing performance, security or manageability in the process.

Want to shift infrastructures to boost workforce productivity? Get started now with a FREE wireless assessment today.