As employees return to the office, outdated Wi-Fi networks create connectivity challenges.
Connectivity is king in a work-from-anywhere world, but outdated and unreliable Wi-Fi networks threaten to undermine hybrid and remote work models. Legacy wireless infrastructure based on older standards do not adequately support changing Wi-Fi usage patterns.
As employees return to the office, most expect to continue using the virtual meeting, videoconferencing and team collaboration applications that made remote work possible for the past two years. However, nearly a third of employees say that current office Wi-Fi networks can’t handle the bandwidth demands of such real-time video apps, according to a new global survey from analyst firm CCS Insight.
Wireless Traffic Surges
Before huge swaths of the workforce began working remotely in 2020, most corporate Wi-Fi networks were based on older standards such as Wi-Fi 5 that adequately met basic connectivity needs. Covid changed everything, however. Home users drove an almost immediate 80 percent surge in Wi-Fi activity, with video representing more than half of that traffic.
Video will remain a disruptive trend. According to the CSS Insight survey, almost a quarter of employees say they expect to increase their use of video calls while reducing their use of mobile and desk phones. Increased use of small, video-enabled huddle rooms for meetings and collaboration will place additional demands on the office Wi-Fi network.
Video traffic is only part of the issue. Organizations must support more wireless users, devices and applications than ever before, and analysts say total Wi-Fi traffic is doubling every three years. The increased congestion causes delays, packet loss and other issues that create performance bottlenecks — particularly for older Wi-Fi standards with spectrum limitations in the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands.
Moving to Wi-Fi 6
Upgrading to the latest standard, Wi-Fi 6, will resolve most of these issues. The standard, also known as 802.11ax or High-Efficiency Wi-Fi, offers more dependable connectivity with theoretical data transfer speeds of 10Gbps.
About half of networking executives across nine countries reported they are already using or testing Wi-Fi 6, according to a 2021 Deloitte survey. Nearly all of them (98 percent) said they expect to be using it within two years. Meanwhile, IDC projects that 79 percent of all Wi-Fi product shipments over the next two years will be Wi-Fi 6.
Several new techniques and innovations — some borrowed from the cellular world — enable Wi-Fi 6 networks to handle increased video traffic, dense usage and a diverse mix of applications and services with differing needs.
One change is the use of a wider spectrum channel at 160MHz. The standard originally operated in both 2.4GHz and 5GHz spectrums, but the FCC has allocated additional channels in the 6GHz band. Wi-Fi 6 also uses spatial multiplexing technology known as MIMO (multiple in, multiple out) and MU-MIMO (multiple-user MIMO) to allow multiple data streams to travel across different physical paths.
One of the more significant performance enhancements borrows from the cellular standard for mobile Internet connectivity. Like cellular networks, Wi-Fi 6 uses orthogonal frequency division multiple access (ODMFA), which can break a Wi-Fi channel down into hundreds or even thousands of subchannels. This allows up to 18 client devices to send data simultaneously without creating signal contention or congestion.
Planning Considerations
Gaining the full benefits of the new standard will require some network design modifications. For example, organizations need to upgrade to Wi-Fi 6 access points (APs) that can support the multi-gigabit speeds enabled by the new standard.
Capacity planning might be the most important design consideration. It involves calculating the number of devices that can be concurrently supported based on bandwidth requirements and other utilization characteristics.
For years, wireless LAN design focused on coverage — where to place APs to ensure there are no dead spots in the area. With this philosophy, supporting more users and more devices usually meant adding more APs and wireless controllers. That won’t work in device-dense Wi-Fi 6 environments. Too many APs will actually degrade performance by creating oversaturation. Wireless clients can become confused trying to access multiple APs with similar signal strength.
Capacity planning requires an understanding of several variables, including the number and types of devices that will connect to the WLAN, the types of applications they will be using, and the bandwidth they will require. For high-density environments, planning must also account for variables such as variations in traffic patterns, optimal use of the wireless spectrum and other factors.
Reliable wireless connectivity is a business necessity, but WLANs built on older standards are proving to be inadequate for the hybrid workforce. With more employees using a variety of devices to access data-heavy video and collaboration apps, organizations should consider upgrading to the Wi-Fi 6 standard that was designed specifically to handle surging bandwidth requirements.
