A question we're hearing with increasing frequency concerns the upcoming 802.11ac standard, which promises to do to 802.11n what .11n did to .11g. While the IEEE 802.11ac standard likely won't be completely finished before the end of 2013, and, while the Wi-Fi Alliance similarly has issued no interoperability criteria for 802.11ac, consumer-grade products claiming compliance with the aforementioned 802.11ac standard could be on store shelves as soon as the middle of 2012.
The decision to buy a three-stream access point (or likely, a whole lot of these) in an enterprise environment is more complex than throughput alone. You need to begin with overall IT requirements, objectives, planning cycles, and operational strategies.
The value of capturing and analyzing network traffic is well established. After all, the generic "sniffer" has been a fixture of networking since the days of "datascopes" on RS-232 connections. Wireless links introduce a number of complicating elements to this process, however -- Wi-Fi protocols are unique at Layer 2, and traffic over the air isn't serialized, as is the case with wire. Simultaneous, competing traffic is often the norm.
There is no doubt that all media is going digital. And while I think it will remain possible quite far into the future to curl up by the fire with a good book, it will be much more likely that it will be some form of electronic book reader that will be keeping you warm instead. If you've not seen these, think of them as .mp3 players for words and illustrations, and many can also play those .mp3s. A few examples of products available now include the Sony Reader Digital Book, Amazon's Kindle, and Hanlin's eReader.
OK, which is it? Running local applications on the handset/mobile device or relying on Web services? The answer, of course, is likely to be both.
Aruba's announcement today that they are acquiring AirWave is of course interesting to anyone who follows the WLAN industry, but its significance extends far beyond WLANs alone. Management has traditionally been one of the less interesting aspects of networking, perhaps because so few people are actually involved in it on a day-to-day basis, and those folks tend to speak in obscure dialects and sit behind consoles in dimly lit rooms. But if the network is indeed the circulatory system of the enterprise, these guys are the ones who make sure the heart is within normal operating parameters, and all the arteries and veins are free of plaques and clots and otherwise working at peak efficiency. And, of course, these guys are only as good as the tools they build their solutions on. Management is to my way of thinking is in fact going to become the critical differentiator in networking (wireless and wired) as we move ahead. A solid management offering will be the part of a proposed solution that wins deals.
A few weeks ago, I wrote a column about the impact of wireless LAN system architecture on performance and why the debate on this issue won't be settled any time soon. This week I want to look at the impact of system and solution architecture on the success of wireless wide-area networks (WWANs).
Radio is cool and exciting because it allows us to send voice and broadband data through the air. Advances in radio technology have resulted in more throughput, greater reliability and better range. And we've made advances across the board, in basic technologies, radio chip architecture and fabrication, packaging, power consumption, antennas, protocols and software.
I'm a big fan of metro-scale Wi-Fi networks, which are now being deployed around the world. Some of these projects are very exciting. For example, the entire country of Singapore is busy unwiring, using three different operators to cover virtually all citizens and businesses.
There's probably no wireless topic today that's more confusing than WiMax. It doesn't help that there are really two WiMax specifications (one of which doesn't even exist yet), or that the very name WiMax implies a relationship with that other "Wi" that isn't even there. So, let's start at the beginning.