CTS 178: 7 Wi-Fi Best Practices & Guidelines

These are our Wi-Fi best practices and guidelines based on our previous experiences. So if you want to find learn how we are able to successfully deploy Wi-Fi networks with every one of our clients, then you’re in the right place. Keep reading… Why do we not have one industry set of Wi-Fi best practices and/or guidelines? * Is it because every environment is different* There are differing configurations* Every vendor is different* Anyone can easily deploy Wi-Fi Can we look to the Wi-Fi Alliance or Wireless Broadband Alliance to help create these best practices? By the way, the WBA has a document on wireless deployment best practices and a Wi-Fi 6 Deployment Guideline. It’s what prompted this episode. It becomes a question of who’s best practices? Who’s deployment or configuration guidelines. There’s still a lot of proprietary configurations as well.  * Cisco RRM* Aruba ARM* High availability and redundancy The IEEE Standards leave a lot of room for interpretation. But is there a middle ground that we can come to? Possibly. 7 Wi-Fi Best Practices & Guidelines 1. Create a Design Based on Requirements2. Have an Optimal Channel Plan3. Have an Optimal Transmit Power Plan4. Understand Device Capabilities5. Validate Your Deployment6. Understand How Wi-Fi 6 Works7. Configuring Wi-Fi 6 Backwards Compatibility We both (Rowell & François) have our set of best practices/guidelines to follow. This is based on our experience. Why do we need best practices or guidelines? We’re continuing to see the amount of growth in traffic. Cisco VNI predicts “Nearly three-fifths of traffic (59%) will be offloaded from cellular networks (on to Wi-Fi) by 2022.” And “Nearly four-fifths (79 percent) of the world’s mobile data traffic will be video by 2022.” Then there’s the future technologies such as VR or AR and the increasing amount of IoT devices. Across the board we’re seeing high density, higher capacity, and applications requiring lower latency. Our goal, as Wi-Fi professionals is to make the user experience better. These best practices, guidelines, and recommendations become an important point as Wi-Fi discussion takes place against 5G. 1. Create a Design Based on Requirements The first thing, prior to doing any deployment, is to gather requirements. This can be business, technical, and constraints. Determining the use case of the Wi-Fi network will help with the design process. Along with understanding what types of devices used and their application usage. Constraints could be something like conforming to aesthetics. 2. Have an Optimal Channel Plan In the design process, a channel plan can be created. While most environments probably use something like RRM, a channel plan can provide optimal channel reuse. Channel reuse is a goal for high density deployments which result in optimized Wi-Fi networks. The design can answer what channel width will be best for the channel reuse.