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- Have you heard about Smart Wi-Fi?
It isn’t every day you hear the term "My Wi-Fi is smarter than your Wi-Fi". But anyone who knows about Ruckus Networks Wi-Fi products, will say it more often than you would think!
There is no real industry measurement for “smart Wi-Fi” or even a Wikipedia article at present – so it is a very subjective statement. IEEE has never published a standard for Smart Wi-Fi. The Wi-Fi Alliance doesn't test and certify "smart".
Our definition of Smart Wi-Fi is: Smart Wi-Fi can adapt in real-time against changes in the environment to provide the best possible experience to users by combing a range of technologies together.
The smarter the access point the less management it needs
One of the reasons we endorse Ruckus Networks is their Wi-Fi solutions are very hands-off once installed, in fact the give away in their naming convention for serval products begins with the word "Smart". If Wi-Fi is really smart, it doesn’t need you to hold its hand.
Let's look at an example: wireless mesh networking. All Ruckus access points incorporate mesh technology. But it doesn't require handholding. If you have it enabled (this option will be discussed with you during the design phase of the DigitalAir's Lifecycle), an access point knows when its lost its wired network connection. When it does, the access point looks for the strongest access point in your network to connect to wirelessly, based on the kind of criteria a WLAN engineer would use. The amount of time spent orchestrating this backup activity: zero (0).
Radio frequency is congested
Interference causes radio frequency (RF) signals to change constantly. Interference comes from conflicts with other radios, Electromagnetic Interference (EMI), cable length, bad cables, thick plaster, concrete, metal, and even static electricity.
When we plan a WLAN deployment, a Wi-Fi survey will be conducted containing a heat map to aid our engineers to decide on the best access point placement (a heat map is a site survey for visualising radio signal coverage and strength). Conditions do change, and even the best designed network cannot account for every environmental change, and so adaptive, smart access points lead the way. Ruckus Access Points adjust to the radio frequencies in real time using ChannelFly, a predictive capacity management technology using complex algorithms for automatic RF channel selection.
Applications need quality of service
Customers often need to ensure no matter what, key services are kept online regardless of the user demand on the network. With SmartCast from Ruckus, their sophisticated quality management solution provides application-aware, per-client scheduling and prioritization for WLANs providing precision bandwidth management, traffic shaping and service level agreements for video, voice and data. Sounds complicated? It is, and only a Smart Wi-Fi solution can deliver a reliable QoS service to networks.
Antenna technology
The majority of access points on the market use fixed antenna technology: either transmitting in a single direction or all directions at the same time. Ruckus access points use a patented RF technology called BeamFlex+. What makes BeamFelx+ so smart is its ability to sense user locations and device orientation and more importantly, adapt to the information. It can transmit in all directions or a single direction. It can strengthen the signal and extend the coverage area. Smart antenna technology goes hand-in-hand with the software built into the access points that allows them to monitor the current conditions and make changes on the fly to optimise the Wi-Fi signal. Combining the array of smart technologies from Ruckus Networks adds up to even smarter Wi-Fi. No need for us to dispatch an WLAN engineer to site to do another survey and make major changes to the network every time there is a change in the environment.
Predict the problems before adapting
What if the Wi-Fi could intelligently predict shifts in the environment and plan ahead instead of responding to existing conditional changes? Heck, if Smart Wi-Fi really could do this, I would ask it to select my winning lottery tickets this week! The truth is no matter how Smart your Wi-Fi, it isn't going to provide you with the winning lottery tickets, but it can intelligently predict the future requirements and changes in your network before they happen thanks to a new solution that can be combined with the Ruckus Access points called "SmartCell Insight". Hosted in our cloud, customers now have the option to put their networks at the forefront once again of having "Smarter Wi-Fi". The product provides comprehensive network intelligence by collecting and aggregating data from applications, devices, access points and controllers and integrating with our hosted SmartZone to make all the changes ahead of time.
This all adds up to bringing down your total cost of ownership while delivering a reliable, scalable and adaptive network. If you want to understand more about how Ruckus Networks solutions can best serve your organisation, please do not hesitate to engage with one of our team.