With the recent one-year anniversary of the 802.11n wireless standard ratification and the upcoming availability of Cisco Cius, now is a great time to focus on tips for preparing your wireless network for the growing number of tablet devices that are crowding the market.
802.11n devices, like the Cius, will add steam to an already momentous demand for additional high-speed wireless coverage. ABI Research estimates that some 7.5 billion devices will be attached to 802.11n wireless networks by 2015.
Here are the top 5 tips for priming your wireless network to support wireless tablet devices.
Improve coverage and reliability. Traditionally, organizations have deployed wireless “hotspots” by installing access points in high-traffic areas such as conference rooms, lobbies, offices and cafeterias. But with employees increasingly relying on tablets for all their applications, including mission-critical apps, you need to ensure that Wi-Fi coverage is pervasive throughout the facility. That means no dead spots. In addition, Cisco recommends pervasive 802.11n coverage.
Use Cisco ClientLink to manage bandwidth consumption fairly. In many cases, wireless environments have to share bandwidth among newer 802.11n devices like the Cius and older 802.11a/g clients. Often, the network is not set up to support this mix of devices and standards, resulting in older clients delaying communications for newer ones and reductions in overall system performance. We recommend using Cisco ClientLink to ensure that legacy 802.11a/g clients operate at the best possible rates. ClientLink uses radiofrequency (RF) beam forming techniques to improve the overall capacity and utilization of network resources so that both older and newer devices have an equitable share of the amount of available bandwidth.
Use Cisco BandSelect to leverage 5 GHz. Organizations can deploy their wireless networks in either or both of two unlicensed frequencies – the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands. We recommend that companies leverage the 5 GHz frequency, which has about eight times more spectrum than the 2.4 GHz frequency and is usually less congested. This is important for tablet devices, which will require ample bandwidth to efficiently run rich media, video and collaboration applications. To this end, Cisco’s BandSelect feature helps ensure that wireless clients that can use the 5 GHz frequency do so automatically, without users having to configure their devices. Easily enabled through a single command on the wireless local area network (WLAN) controller, the feature allows dual-band devices to connect with preference to the 5 GHz frequency, freeing up the 2.4 GHz frequency for those devices that are not dual-band.Use Cisco CleanAir to detect and reduce wireless RF interference. As organizations begin deploying tablet devices, they need to ensure that the network can effectively handle mission-critical applications such as real-time video collaboration and other business apps. A challenge organizations face is the broad range of emerging RF sources which create interference in the same spectrum that Cius tablets will connect into. These include Bluetooth, cordless phones, microwave ovens, jamming devices, video cameras and consumer electronics devices like wireless speakers, among others. We recommend organizations invest in 802.11n access points that can scan the RF environment and immediately address RF interference, which can dramatically affect network performance and end user satisfaction. Technologies like Cisco CleanAir enable the network to automatically detect, classify, locate and mitigate sources of wireless RF interference so that both the network and tablet devices can operate at peak performance.
Ensure that user identities and devices are secure. Whether your users are connecting to the Wi-Fi network or a 3G network outside the office, we recommend enabling mobile virtual private network (VPN) capabilities such as the Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client on mobile tablets in order to support security, VPN functionality for users as they connect into the network and protection of the content that comes to those mobile devices. Cisco’s AnyConnect solution is already supported on devices like the iPhone and iPad but is not yet supported on the Android-based Cius, but that will change soon.
By following these five steps, IT teams can help keep their WLAN operating at peak performance while helping to ensure a wireless environment that meets and exceeds the needs of their mobile users – especially early adopters who bring newly released Wi-Fi devices onto the enterprise wireless network and expect it to just work.
By Chris Kozup
