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TechGuide

Next-Gen WLAN:
How 802.11ac Will Change
Your Network Forever
Wireless WLAN capacity is soaring in the wake of the 802.11ac-2013 standard.
This TechGuide examines how this new wireless standard will shake up the
modern mobile enterprise. BY LISA PHIFER

1
2

EDITORS NOTE

COUNTING THE REASONS

TO DEPLOY 802.11AC

WHAT WLAN PLANNERS

NEED TO KNOW ABOUT
THE 802.11AC STANDARD

WITH NEW WIRELESS

NETWORK CAPABILITIES COME
HIGHER USER CAPACITY

EDITORS NOTE

Home
Editors Note
Counting the
Reasons to
Deploy 802.11ac
What WLAN
Planners Need
to Know About
the 802.11ac
Standard
With New
Wireless Network
Capabilities Come
Higher User
Capacity

Hang On to Your Hats:

A Fast New Standard Is Coming
The ratification of the 802.11ac standard means big changes for the wireless LAN
(WLAN). The specification not only means
much higher speedsup to almost 7 Gbps
upon full rollout, but it also affects the role the
WLAN will play in the enterprise.
Fueling the migration: the never-ending
adoption of mobile and desktop devices. Just
over half of workers say they use a PC, smartphone and tablet for work today; that number
will grow to 80% in the near future. And workers are using their mobile devices to access a
greater variety of servicesup to and including bandwidth-intensive multimedia and video
applications.
Its now become possible for some organizations to entertain the notion of junking their
Ethernet infrastructures entirely in favor of
the WLAN, at least for Internet access. But
making the shift to 802.11ac takes careful planning and consideration. For one thing, the new

world of multiple gigabit WLAN requires a

shift to the 5 MHz band, which means existing
wireless infrastructures will no longer fit the
bill.
To that end, adding ac-compatible access
points to your existing 11n infrastructure
will only be the first step. Its going to be the
introduction of 11ac clientsphones, tablets
and other devices capable of supporting higher
speed Wi-Fithat will drive implementation.
Meshing high-speed WLAN into legacy architectures wont be easy, but the benefits are
profound. The days where performance suffers as data flows from the wired world to the
mobile environment are coming to an end. We
hope this Technical Guide will help you find
the most effective way to plan your adoption of
this important technology. n

2 N E X T- G E N W L A N : H O W 8 0 2 . 1 1 AC W I L L C H A N G E YO U R N E T W O R K F O R E V E R

Chuck Moozakis
SearchNetworking

WHY 802.11AC?

Home
Editors Note
Counting the
Reasons to
Deploy 802.11ac
What WLAN
Planners Need
to Know About
the 802.11ac
Standard
With New
Wireless Network
Capabilities Come
Higher User
Capacity

Counting the Reasons to Deploy 802.11ac

IEEE 802.11ac ratification drives the
final nail into Ethernets coffin. According to
Ciscos Visual Networking Index, Wi-Fi originated 49% of global Internet traffic in 2012
and will clearly dominate by 2017. Given 11acs
gigabit speeds and extended range, there are
few reasons left to prefer Ethernet, at least for
network access.
However, the shift to 11ac isnt going to happen overnight; migration will take time and
planning. When should your organization take
the 11ac plunge?

capacity afforded by each wireless access point

(AP).
But if we look more closely at the chart, two
additional trends can be seen.
Wi-Fi

products using the 2.4 GHz band

reached end-of-life with 11n. Although WiFi certified 11ac products must support 11n
for backwards compatibility, the only way to
reach 11acs gigabit data rates is to use the 5
GHz band.

Each

HOW WE GOT HERE

Todays Wi-Fi population is still largely composed of older products that support a mix of
speeds and capabilities. As shown in the chart
on page 4, 802.11 products have come a long
way over the past decade, steadily increasing maximum data rates as well as the total

new 802.11 amendment results in two

waves of Wi-Fi certified products. To that
end, 11b was followed by 11a/g; 11n draft was
followed by 11n final. Similarly, the first wave
of 11ac products launched mid-2013 implemented draft 11ac; a second wave supporting
more of the final standard will begin in 2014
but not be Wi-Fi certified until 2015 at the
earliest.

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WHY 802.11AC?

Home
Editors Note
Counting the
Reasons to
Deploy 802.11ac
What WLAN
Planners Need
to Know About
the 802.11ac
Standard

WHATS NEXT

For many businesses, 11n APs are still sufficient

to meet todays bandwidth demands. So long
as WLAN traffic continues to be dominated by
email and Web and file sharing, 3x3 11n APs
that reach 450 Mbps or even the rare 4x4 11n
AP that reaches 600 Mbps are good enough.
That said, the number of devices and demand
per device are growing at a rapid pace. In a recent Q412 Forrester Research survey, 51% of

workers say they already use a PC, smartphone

and tablet for work; that number is expected to
grow to 80% in the future. This suggests that
the three-device-per-employee adoption level
is becoming pervasive. Furthermore, many consumer electronic devices, smart appliances and
industrial machines are becoming Wi-Fi enabled. These trends mean that todays WLANs
are being pushed to higher densities than ever
before, driving the need for gigabit AP capacity.

D 802.11 PRODUCTSMAX DATA RATES (MBPS)

8000
7000

7000

n 2.4GHz
n 5 GHz

6000
5000

With New
Wireless Network
Capabilities Come
Higher User
Capacity

4000
3000
2000

1300

1000
0 Mbps

2 0
802.11
1997

11

54

54

450 450

600 600

11b

11a

11g

11n (wave 1)

11n (wave 2)

1999

1999

2003

2007

2009

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0
0
11ac (wave 1) 11ac (wave 2)
2013

2014

WHY 802.11AC?

Home
Editors Note
Counting the
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Deploy 802.11ac
What WLAN
Planners Need
to Know About
the 802.11ac
Standard
With New
Wireless Network
Capabilities Come
Higher User
Capacity

Additionally, the applications running on

each device are gobbling bandwidth at faster
rates. Forresters research indicates that enterprise Wi-Fi devices are moving from Kbps
of email and Web traffic in 2013 to Mbps of
streaming video, mobile VoIP and HDTV traffic in 2015. At the same time, business use of
desktop virtualization, thin client applications
and cloud services continues to grow, driven
by the bring your own device movement and
a desire for business tools that dont require
trusted or managed devices.
Combine hundred-fold growth in devices
with an order of magnitude greater bandwidth
per device, and youll quickly outstrip the capacity afforded by 11n APs. This is where 11ac
can really help.

WHAT TO EXPECT

At the low end, 11ac allows battery-powered

1x1 clients like smartphones to max out at 433
Mbps. In the first wave, tablets and laptops can
double or triple that max rate (see chart right).
Yet 11ac also supports multi-gigabit rates for
devices supporting new 11ac features, including

D STREAMS, CHANNELS, DATA RATES

1500

1200

n 1x1 Smartphone
n 2x2 Tablet
n 3x3 Laptop

1300

600

900

867

600

289

300

87

173

400
433
200

20 MHz

40 MHz

80 MHz

80 and 160 MHz wide channels, 245-QAM

modulation, and (in theory) 4x4 clients and
8x8 APs. In the second wave, APs supporting
multiple user, multiple input, multiple output
(MU-MIMO) may even converse with four clients simultaneously, further increasing WLAN
density. It is those second-wave 8x8 APs with
MU-MIMO that may someday reach nearly 7
Gbps. Few clients, however, will move beyond

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WHY 802.11AC?

Home
Editors Note
Counting the
Reasons to
Deploy 802.11ac
What WLAN
Planners Need
to Know About
the 802.11ac
Standard
With New
Wireless Network
Capabilities Come
Higher User
Capacity

1 or 2 Gbps. Those that do will be short-range,

single-room devicesfor example, HDTVs and
devices that stream video to them.

WHEN TO TAKE THE PLUNGE

Many Wi-Fi clients will migrate naturally to

11ac (first wave) in the next 12 to 24 months
for example, smartphones that get replaced
when two-year contracts expire, tablets with
a two-year lifespan and laptops that get refreshed every three years. New personal devices
that workers purchase and carry into the office will increasingly use 11ac. Together, these
trends will push enterprises to offer more
WLAN capacity at 5 GHz, and to gradually diminish the resources dedicated to serving 2.4
GHz clients.
On the WLAN infrastructure side, there are
few reasons to purchase 11n APs when 11ac
APs are available at roughly the same cost.
While organizations may be reluctant to initiate company-wide AP upgrades until the second wave of 11ac matures, any 11n APs that get

updated through normal equipment refresh

should probably be replaced with 11ac APs. Furthermore, because 11ac can support higher user
densities, any area where demand is outstripping capacity should be considered a candidate
for spot deployment of 11ac APs.

Any 11n APs that are being

updated through normal equipment refresh should probably
be replaced with 11ac APs.
Eventually, there will be enough clients that
support MU-MIMO to justify proactive investment in second-wave 11ac APs, particularly in
high-density service areas. For the immediate
future, however, most businesses should look
at first-wave 11ac as the obvious first choice
when Wi-Fi devices are being purchased for
any reason, gradually weaving 11ac into their
WLAN and moving along with the client population to 5 GHz operation. n

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WHAT TO KNOW

Home
Editors Note
Counting the
Reasons to
Deploy 802.11ac
What WLAN
Planners Need
to Know About
the 802.11ac
Standard
With New
Wireless Network
Capabilities Come
Higher User
Capacity

What WLAN Planners Need to Know

About the 802.11ac Standard
In late December, the IEEE 11ac Task
Group finally completed its six-year trek, putting the seal of approval on the final IEEE
802.11ac-2013 standard. This anticipated, very
high throughput specification pushes wireless LAN (WLAN) data rates well into gigabit
territory, maxing out just shy of 7 Gbps. But
what does 11ac finalization mean to enterprise
WLAN planners?

FIRST AND SECOND WAVES

HAVE DIFFERENT CHALLENGES

In the near-term, expect to see few product

impacts. Why? The first Wi-Fi certified ac
products have been shipping since mid-2013;
new certification tests based on the final standard wont start until 2015 at earliest. In the
meantime, a second wave of consumer-grade
products that implement new, but uncertified, options will emerge, such as the Asus

RT-AC87U router, announced at CES 2014.

As Aerohive Networks Matthew Gast,
author of 802.11ac: A Survival Guide, details
in his blog, the first wave of Wi-Fi certified
ac products are likely to be fully interoperable
with second-wave products. Thats because
the features baked into todays certified ac
products are based on draft 3.0 of the emerging
standard and those features were not substantively revamped in the recently approved final
standard.
Any differences that do emerge in the
second wave of 11ac products that are based
on Decembers final standard will be incremental. The most noteworthy additions: wider
160 MHz channels, access points (APs) with
five to eight spatial streams and multiple user,
multiple input, multiple output (MU-MIMO).
Together, these options will boost maximum
data rates from todays 1.3 Gbps to a blistering
6.9 Gbps.

7 N E X T- G E N W L A N : H O W 8 0 2 . 1 1 AC W I L L C H A N G E YO U R N E T W O R K F O R E V E R

WHAT TO KNOW

Home
Editors Note
Counting the
Reasons to
Deploy 802.11ac
What WLAN
Planners Need
to Know About
the 802.11ac
Standard
With New
Wireless Network
Capabilities Come
Higher User
Capacity

DONT MISS THE FIRST WAVE

In practice, few enterprises really need 7 Gbps

per client throughput today. But simply migrating from 802.11n to first-wave 802.11ac
products can triple throughput. Better yet,
first-wave 11ac can noticeably increase WLAN
capacity, client density and range. Moving 11ac
and dual-band 11n clients onto 5 GHz, for example, reduces competition for airtime and
improves connection quality for both old and
new devices. This is why enterprises should
take advantage of normal device refreshes and
already-planned network expansions to gradually incorporate first-wave 11ac APs into their
WLANs.
When it comes to the migration of WLAN
clients, however, enterprise planners have less
control. The BYOD trend has already brought
first-wave 11ac clients into enterprise WLANs;
analysts expect 11ac client growth to accelerate quickly through 2014 as more and more
new smartphones, tablets and notebooks ship

with 11ac on board. When purchasing corporate devices, enterprises should insist on Wi-Fi
certified ac, preferably with beamforming, thus
laying a foundation to meet growing application demands and higher-density WLANs.

PREPARE FOR THE SECOND WAVE

Adding first-wave 11ac APs to an existing

11n WLAN requires a little bit of planning,
primarily to design 5 GHz spectrum allocationusing wider 40 MHz and 80 MHz channels where higher data rates are needed. In
the near-term, a few 11ac APs here and there,
servicing a mixture of 11ac and legacy clients,
arent likely to overwhelm back-end network
infrastructure. In addition, those APs can probably make do with existing 1 Gbps Ethernet
links and Power over Ethernet.
Yet as 11ac clients, application demands
and user density escalate, the advantages offered by the second wave of 11ac APs will gain

Enterprises should take advantage of normal device refreshes and planned

network expansions to incorporate first-wave 11ac APs into their WLANs.
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WHAT TO KNOW

Home
Editors Note
Counting the
Reasons to
Deploy 802.11ac

importance. In the enterprise, MU-MIMO

will let a single AP simultaneously converse
with up to four clients at once (for example, a
4x4 AP simultaneously servicing four singlestream smartphones). Upgrading will mean
new second-wave 11ac APs with new chipsets
that support MU-MIMObut that kind of
investment will be warranted in high-density
areas that by then are pushing the limits of
first-wave capacity.

At that time, second-wave 11ac APs will

most likely need more power, 10 GB Ethernet/
CAT6a backhaul links and beefier back-end
infrastructure so as to avoid upstream bottlenecks that may emerge. Planning ahead for
these upgrades now, and rolling them out over
the next two to three years, will leave enterprises well-situated to deploy the second wave
of enterprise-class 11ac products in 2016 and
beyond. n

What WLAN
Planners Need
to Know About
the 802.11ac
Standard
With New
Wireless Network
Capabilities Come
Higher User
Capacity

9 N E X T- G E N W L A N : H O W 8 0 2 . 1 1 AC W I L L C H A N G E YO U R N E T W O R K F O R E V E R

NEW
CAPABILITIES

Home
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What WLAN
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the 802.11ac
Standard
With New
Wireless Network
Capabilities Come
Higher User
Capacity

With New Wireless Network Capabilities

Come Higher User Capacity
Many enterprises are experiencing challenges with their wireless network capabilities.
With a skyrocketing population of wireless
devices and bandwidth-thirsty applications,
speed and data capacity have become difficult
to keep up with. To meet escalating demand,
WLAN administrators can take a two-prong
approach: more efficiently use existing channels and tap new frequencies to offload bandwidth hogs. Together, these strategies offer
hope to enterprises already approaching the
limits of 802.11n.

INCREASING WLAN CAPACITY

WITH DRAFT 802.11AC

The most immediate step that enterprises can

take to boost WLAN capacity is to migrate
existing AP to 802.11ac. Commonly known as
Gigabit Wi-Fi, the draft 802.11ac standard further refines advances introduced by 802.11n,

combining them to significantly boost total

WLAN capacity.
Wi-Fi certified ac products use faster data
rates, more tightly packed transmissions,
cleaner 5 GHz channels and wider channels
to support very high throughput applications
such as HD video. Specifically, enterprises can
obtain the following improvements by migrating to 802.11ac:
Speed.

802.11n data rates top out at 450

Mbps to 600 Mbps, using three to four spatial streams to deliver traffic. The first wave
of 802.11ac products uses the same spatial
streams to reach speeds up to 1.3 Gbps. By
late 2014, the next wave of 802.11ac products will top out at 6.93 Gbps. But real-world
results still depend on client capability
and distance. For example, a single-stream
smartphone that transmits at 150 Mbps with
802.11n can be expected to hit 433 Mbps with

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NEW
CAPABILITIES

Home
Editors Note
Counting the
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Deploy 802.11ac
What WLAN
Planners Need
to Know About
the 802.11ac
Standard
With New
Wireless Network
Capabilities Come
Higher User
Capacity

802.11ac. Because sending data faster requires

one-third as much airtime, 802.11ac may permit administrators to see a corresponding increase in the maximum number of users per
AP.
Spectral

efficiency. Both 802.11n and

802.11ac use quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) to send data, but 802.11ac can
pack four times as much data into each
transmission. Unfortunately, 256-QAM only
works over short distances and thus will only
quadruple capacity for clients within about
20 feet.

GHz only. Unlike 802.11n, which operates

over channels chosen from both the noisy,
crowded 2.4 GHz band and the less-congested 5 GHz band, 802.11ac serves clients in
the 5 GHz band only. Due to reduced interference at 5 GHz and related radio frequency
engineering advances, 802.11ac devices are

likely to experience a better rate over range

than their 802.11n counterparts, again increasing total WLAN capacity.
Wider

channels. 802.11n doubled throughput by combining two 20 MHz-wide channels into one 40 MHz-wide channel. The
first wave of 802.11ac products repeats this by
adding 80 MHz-wide channels; next years
second wave will add 160 MHz-wide channels. Fatter channels do not increase available spectrumthe 5 GHz band is roughly
1 GHz wide, no matter how its divvied into
channels. But doublewide channels give highthroughput applications their own express
lane in which to move faster, without being impeded by or sapping bandwidth from
slower, latency-sensitive applications.

For these reasons, enterprises replacing older

802.11a/g or 802.11n APs with Wi-Fi certified
ac APs are likely to see an immediate increase

802.11ac devices are likely to experience a better rate over range

than their 802.11n counterparts, increasing total WLAN capacity.
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NEW
CAPABILITIES

Home
Editors Note
Counting the
Reasons to
Deploy 802.11ac
What WLAN
Planners Need
to Know About
the 802.11ac
Standard
With New
Wireless Network
Capabilities Come
Higher User
Capacity

in WLAN capacity, especially when used by

newer smartphones, tablets and notebooks now
shipping with 802.11ac. Legacy clients wont
reap all of the standards benefits but may still
see some improvement, enabling administrators to increase the total number of devices
each WLAN can support. When the second
wave of 802.11ac products emerge in late 2014,
multiple user, multiple input, multiple output
will let each AP converse simultaneously with
up to four clients, further boosting wireless
network capabilities.

ADDING MORE WLAN CAPACITY WITH 802.11AD

Migrating existing WLANs to 802.11ac benefits

all Wi-Fi devices and applications. However,
certain devices and applicationsmost notably
tablets and videoare very demanding, guzzling limited shared bandwidth. While Quality
of Service methods, such as Wi-Fi Multimedia,

help to prioritize traffic and avoid starvation,

all 802.11ac devices ultimately compete for the
same finite patch of 5 GHz channels.
Fortunately, enterprises will soon be able
to slake escalating bandwidth thirst by using 802.11ad to relocate bandwidth hogs onto
unused 60 GHz channels. The emerging
802.11ad standard, commonly called WiGig,
leverages many of the same technologies used
by 802.11ac to reach data rates up to 7 Gbps.
However, 802.11ad works its magic over a completely different set of channels, thereby increasing the total spectrum available for WLAN
use by nearly an order of magnitude.
That said, the 60 GHz channels that 802.11ad
uses are far more limited in range and penetrating power. But its properties make 802.11ad
suited for very high throughput communication between nearby devices, preferably in the
same room. Enterprise WLAN administrators
may therefore use 802.11ad to expand capacity

Combining 11ac and 11ad is like repaving a highway while adding

lanesboth strategies make it possible for more vehicles to move faster,
increasing total capacity.
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NEW
CAPABILITIES

Home
Editors Note
Counting the
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Deploy 802.11ac
What WLAN
Planners Need
to Know About
the 802.11ac
Standard

by offloading devices and applications that

thrive under such conditions. Examples include
HD video transmission to wall-mounted wireless displays and sustained communication
between desktop-replacement tablets and external monitors.

PLANNING FOR CAPACITY

Wi-Fi certified ad products are expected to

become available in early 2014. At that point,
a growing number of devices will support both
802.11ac and 802.11ad, enabling both shortdistance and long-distance high-throughput

communication. Enterprise administrators

should therefore start thinking about how and
where to best use 802.11ad in the workplace
for example, to offload edge-video traffic from
increasingly consumed 802.11ac APs.
Ultimately, combining 802.11ac and 802.11ad
is like repaving a highway while adding lanes
both strategies make it possible for more vehicles to move faster, increasing total capacity.
Together, these two standards can help enterprise WLAN administrators design and deploy
new and upgraded networks that deliver significantly higher data rates and amplified user
density. n

With New
Wireless Network
Capabilities Come
Higher User
Capacity

1 3 N E X T- G E N W L A N : H O W 8 0 2 . 1 1 AC W I L L C H A N G E YO U R N E T W O R K F O R E V E R

ABOUT
THE
AUTHOR

Home
Editors Note
Counting the
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What WLAN
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the 802.11ac
Standard
With New
Wireless Network
Capabilities Come
Higher User
Capacity

LISA PHIFER owns and is president of Core Competence

Inc., a consulting firm specializing in leading-edge

network technology. She has been involved in the design,
implementation and evaluation of networking and
security products for more than 25 years. She has advised
companies large and small regarding needs, product
assessment and the use of emerging technologies and
best practices. Phifer teaches about wireless LANs,
mobile security, NAC and VPNs at many industry conferences and webinars and has written extensively about
network infrastructure and security.

Next-Gen WLAN: How 802.11ac Will Change Your Network

Forever is a SearchNetworking.com e-publication.
Kate Gerwig | Editorial Director
Kara Gattine | Senior Managing Editor
Chuck Moozakis | Site Editor
Brenda L. Horrigan | Associate Managing Editor
Linda Koury | Director of Online Design
Neva Maniscalco | Graphic Designer
Doug Olender | Vice President/Group Publisher
dolender@techtarget.com
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