Deepak Nair

WiFi Basics Part 2: Standards and Amendments  Today, WiFi is everywhere: coffee shops, restaurants, retail, hotels, sports venues, etc. We can access it from our laptops, tablets, and smartphones. At home there may be game consoles, smart home devices, and set top boxes. I have several ChromeCast devices. They turn your TV into a wireless network device that you can stream movies from your computer or phone directly to the TV. It is so pervasive in our lifestyle that we don’t give it a second thought. Interesting tidbit: I’ve worked extensively with national hotel chains, and I can tell you that in 2012 the average business traveler had 2 WiFi devices connection to the hotel network. Today, that number is between 3 and 3.5 devices per guest room. I’ve seen many hotels scrambling to increase capacity due to customer demand. But it wasn’t that long ago when WiFi was only used by geeks and large corporations. This is the second article in a series covering WiFi basics. If y...

WiFi Basics Part 3: 802.11ac Like 802.11n, the IEEE released a draft of the amendment before its final release. These early devices are known as “Wave 1”. Unless you 11ac router is less than a year old, it falls into this category. The final release was in January 2014 and the subsequent equipment known as “Wave 2”. The majority of this article will compare 11ac to 11n because it really is an enhancement of 11n. Let’s start with what 11ac doesn’t do: Does not work in the 2.4GHz band; 5GHz band only Does not provide more range/coverage The overall goal for 802.11ac is to provide significantly more bandwidth. It does this using several methods. More Channel Bonding . Remember 11n allows up to 4 channels to be bonded. 11ac allows up to 8 channels. If used to the fullest extent, throughput is doubled by this method alone. The one downside to this is channel planning. In the current allowable 5GHz band, only 2 channel groups can be used. This makes planning for multiple A...