What’s Required for Wi-Fi 6

In my last blog post, I covered some of the benefits of Wi-Fi 6. Now, you might be saying to yourself, "How can I get these great benefits for my wireless network?" As always, when we talk about new wireless technologies, we are talking about an upgrade of at least the radio hardware. This is due to the changes in how the radio signal is modulated and other requirements. At this point, we have a way to provide for these changes in software.

As businesses re-open their offices and employees are not restricted to work-from-home limitations, many are looking for ways to increase employee safety and actively respond to incidents of COVID-19 infections. Managing occupancy and density, monitoring adherence to social distancing guidelines, and performing contact tracing within the workplace are some of the challenges these businesses are facing. This blog post introduces solutions from ConvergeOne and its technology partners that address these challenges.

Every four to six years, a new type of wireless LAN technology comes out with much fanfare. Case in point: when Wi-Fi 6 came out, it was hailed as the greatest thing ever. Since every generation of wireless makes a similar claim, it can be difficult to know what truly is a significant upgrade and what is "just a little bit faster."

A northeastern city had developed an initiative to provide free, public WiFi in a downtown, outdoor area. The city had invested a great deal of money into revitalizing the area, and improving the wireless infrastructure was part of the mayor’s vision for creating a 21st century, connected city that would attract tech-savvy young professionals and leading conferences to the area. Municipal wireless would also add value for residents of the city, particularly lower-income residents who lacked access to internet in their homes.

When working with various customers on their wireless networks, I am often asked about the broadcasting of Service Set Identifiers (SSIDs) – or the name of the Wi-Fi network – as a security risk. At one time, broadcasting of SSIDs was seen as a security issue, and therefore almost everyone disabled broadcasting. Since that time, we have grown as an industry in our understanding of this practice to the point where it is generally considered best practice to broadcast SSIDs. As an example, PCI DSS v1.2 removed the requirement for SSIDs to be non-broadcast in order to be PCI compliant.