Wi-Fi Alliance Rebrands Hotspot 2.0 as Wi-Fi Certified Passpoint

In case you didn't seen the press release back on May 8th, the Wi-Fi Alliance announced official branding for the Hotspot 2.0 program as Wi-Fi Certified Passpoint (TM).

The initial focus remains on service provider and carrier integration for easier authentication and better security on Wi-Fi hotspots. However, there are provisions for other identification and authentication methods to the network that could enable other web identities to be used, such as common social media usernames and passwords. These other methods will be critical for consumer adoption on non-cellular devices, such as Wi-Fi only tablets and laptops, which are heavily favored today over cellular models due to lack of bundled pricing by carriers and higher expense of data plans.

You can register on the Wi-Fi Alliance's website to download this free whitepaper on the Passpoint program.

Cheers,
Andrew

Mobile Post: Odd Guest Wi-Fi

What's wrong with this picture? Taken at a local urban restaurant.

5 Retail Trends Driving Wi-Fi

Mobile shopping often requires in-store Wi-Fi

Retail Wi-Fi networks have long been dominated by inventory management applications and services that enabled a more productive workforce and leaner operations. However, brick-and-mortar retail is being disrupted due to the explosive growth from pure e-commerce competitors offering [often] lower prices and a more personalized shopping experience. In addition, the e-commerce sales channel offers deeper product information, community reviews, and greater levels of localization and customization that resonate with consumers.

Brick and mortar retail must adapt to compete in this new environment. A key component of this adaptation is delivering new IT solutions while leveraging the physical assets of the storefront, mixing the benefits of in-store product "touch-and-feel" with the personalization of e-commerce shopping. Merging these two worlds together will create an enhanced shopping experience through the use of mobile Internet devices, often connected through Wi-Fi networks.

Here are 5 retail trends that are driving Wi-Fi growth and new capabilities in retail organizations.

1. Consumer Interaction and Business Analytics
   Physical retailers have the most influence over consumer purchase decisions in the store, when they are standing in front of the product they are weighing whether or not to buy. Historically, this has been through in-aisle marketing and signage. However, customers are increasingly equipped with mobile Internet access and turning to external sources of information in real-time while within a retail store. This has been coined the emergence of the "smart shopper". These external sources of information are much more comprehensive than what the retailer can provide through traditional in-aisle marketing and signage, and this leaves the physical retailer at a big disadvantage.
   
   Physical retailers are turning to multi-channel initiatives to enable in-aisle consumer interaction on mobile devices. Multi-channel is the broad alignment of in-store, online, and mobile retail channels into a cohesive experience and set of services for the consumer. It can also include mail-order, catalog, and telephone channels as well. This is accomplished through cross channel integration of back-end systems for product information, inventory, pricing, promotions, order fulfillment, and unified CRM (customer relationship management) systems for a complete view of the customer across all channels. It provides conveniences and benefits for the consumer such as consistent pricing, ship-to-store, ship-to-home, expanded assortment, unified checkout (in-store and online product), list and gift/wedding registry management, and more.



The emergence of the "smart shopper"

Guest Wi-Fi is a key enabler of in-store multi-channel initiatives to interaction with consumers on mobile devices. It enables the retailer to provide guests with an avenue for Internet access, product research, and broader access to the retailer's website and mobile applications, which can often be richer and more personalized than what can be offered in-store. Cellular connections can also provide this access, but coverage is typically poor inside most retail stores. Wi-Fi is preferred over cellular because it is owned and operated by the retailer, and provides reporting insight into consumer behavior and rich business analytics including mobile platform usage, web destinations, and product research. These analytics allow retailers to better understand consumer desires, tailor in-store product assortments, focus marketing campaigns by location, personalize marketing and promotions to individual shoppers, and quickly identify changing consumer and market trends to allow faster adaptation.




Digital wallets can improve retailer
"wallet share" and brand loyalty


Mobile payment and digital wallets can also be provided to allow consumers flexibility in payment options at point of sale. In lieu of a large hardware investment by retailers in touch-to-pay (contactless payment) solutions at the register, mobile payments can leverage mobile applications and guest Wi-Fi data connections to provide similar services at a fraction of the cost. And digital wallet solutions allow retailers to maintain "wallet share" for brand loyalty cards. How many times have you signed up for a retailers rewards card, only to find your wallet too thick, remove cards to save space, and end up without the card when making a purchase?

Imagine walking into a store, automatically connecting to Wi-Fi to easily research products, pricing, and availability, receiving personalized shopping offers on your phone tailored to your shopping history (if you're a loyalty customer) as well as tailored to your location within the store (leveraging location based services). Or perhaps you've scanned a 2D/3D barcode on a product to retrieve additional information on the website and being presented with a coupon in real-time for that very product. Retailers are betting that consumers will be interested in these types of services, which may sound invasive to privacy today, but may become normal in the not-too-distant future. Retailers will need to strike the appropriate balance between privacy concerns, use of consumer opt-in (not opt-out), appropriate use of data, and appropriate levels of consumer interaction to be successful.

There is often a fear that allowing competitive research that will negatively affect retail sales. However, consumer research and analyst predictions have shown that retailers do not need to have the lowest price as long as they are competitively priced or convenient:


Deloitte predicts that in 2011, 25 percent of North American big box and anchor tenant retailers will begin offering free in-store Wi-Fi access to shoppers... [and] cellular signals can be highly variable: weak signals and low speeds are common, especially deep inside a store. Without Wi-Fi, the in-store online experience is often frustrating and dissatisfying… When shoppers do in-store online comparison shopping, preliminary and anecdotal evidence suggests the likelihood of purchasing appears to go up, not down. A common reason why shoppers do not make a purchase is that they are paralyzed by the lack of knowledge: “is this item available elsewhere for a much better price?” When an online search reveals that competitor’s prices are similar, many shoppers proceed with the purchase at the store they are in, rather than drive around just to save a few dollars.


- Source: Deloitte (also see this video presentation)

Digital interaction with the consumer through mobile platforms enables retailers to remain competitive and continue to influence purchase decisions where they matter most, in-store. Multi-channel initiatives blend the personalization and convenience of shopping online with the touch and feel of physical products in the store; it allows the retailer to leverage their physical assets most effectively. Wi-Fi will be at the epicenter of this change.


2. Empowering Sales Associates
Given the increasingly connected and smart shopper, consumers now have more product information than in-store sales associates in many cases. Yet sales staff are key to providing a great consumer experience in-store. Retailers need to empower sales associates with the depth of product information that consumers have, and to provide additional tools that facilitate existing and new services offered by the retailer.

Historically, only a fraction of retail sales associates have been provided with mobile devices, and those devices have enabled only a limited set of  capabilities such as stocking, inventory management and product availability. One reason for this is the high cost of ruggedized mobile devices for use in retail. A typical high-speed scanner PDA can cost well over $1,200 each. In order to provide every sales associate with more information to help consumers, retailers are adopting lower-cost, feature-rich, smart mobile devices that provide more robust capabilities than specialized scanners. Mobile platforms built by Apple, Android, and third-party manufacturers are enabling this shift, along with a retail IT focus on enabling business processes in a more flexible, consistent, and re-usable fashion.





Smart mobile devices and apps can empower sales associates


Leveraging these smart mobile devices, retailers are rolling out new services such as expanded-aisle and mobile POS (point-of-sale). Expanded-aisle capabilities allow sales associates to easily retrieve additional product and assortment information for consumers from the retailer's back-end systems, show consumers rich media content such as videos and product demonstrations, send the consumer more information to their mobile phone or email in real-time, and seamlessly integrate with the retailer's e-commerce website to facilitate checkout and payment activities. Mobile POS capabilities allow the retailer to provide a better customer checkout experience in many situations. These include faster checkout for small basket sizes, flexible checkout locations throughout the store, easier checkout for large bulky items (e.g. furniture, appliances), electronic receipts, and relief of line congestion during peak hours without dedicating floor space to more register lanes.

Empowering sales associates with smart mobile devices on a larger scale than before will require a robust, well-designed Wi-Fi network that can handle greater capacity and is highly reliable. Like the old political slogan "a chicken in every pot," retail is adopting "a mobile device in every hand!"


3. The In-Store Digital Experience
   The in-store experience is critical to connecting and engaging customers with relevant merchandise and marketing information to capture their attention and turn browsers into buyers. Increasingly this means replacement of printed signage with one-way or interactive digital solutions that provide real-time, dynamically updated content that can be roll out in minutes or hours, instead of days or weeks.
   
   Retailers are deploying one-way digital signage and electronic shelf labels in aisles and on end-caps, which can be updated immediately once changes have been decided by corporate staff, replacing long lead times for printing and distribution of paper signage materials. Digital signage is expensive, cannot be placed at every desired location, and locations requirements will change seasonally with product. Therefore, these systems will require portability. Running Ethernet cabling to every possible location is also not financially attractive, so these systems will rely on Wi-Fi networks for management, monitoring, and content retrieval. Interactive digital kiosks are migrating from fixed location solutions to mobile solutions as well.
   
   

   

   Connected electronics require Wi-Fi for
   product demonstrations and consumer interaction

   
   Connected electronics allow retailers to showcase Internet-connected consumer electronics capabilities and increase sales. Consumer devices such as televisions, DVD/Blu-Ray players, gaming systems, music systems, computers, tablets, and smartphones are integrating more digital content and streaming services as core product features which drive differentiation and purchase decisions. Retailers will need to connect these devices to in-store Wi-Fi to demonstrate these capabilities to consumers to enhance the shopping experience. At the same time, provisioning and management of these devices will be challenging due to their lack of enterprise features, high churn rate (as product assortments change), and necessity for well-developed in-store processes and staff training.


4. Expanding Branch Office Services
   In order to remain competitive, retail organizations must deliver better customer service in their physical stores. This is accomplished by migrating away from traditional lean-branch operational models focused on cost reduction to a more sophisticated service-rich operational model within the store. Deploying integrated and context-aware services into the store for both sales associate and customer use will translate into a better shopping experience, return visits, and brand loyalty.
   
   New services such as robust wireless telephony solutions can enable better availability and improve responsiveness of sales associates for customer assistance by tying service desks to every associate in real-time, as well as provide push-to-talk integration for integrated in-store communications. Digital video services over wireless enable increased security by providing real-time video feeds to in-store security personnel, and can enable videoconferencing for merchandise planning and collaboration with headquarters staff. Location based services allow retailers to provide relevant services to customers, such as targeted promotions that appeal to today's cost-conscious consumer or in-store navigation (wayfinding) to improve the customer shopping experience. Location services will also require the Wi-Fi network to be deeply integrated with back-end marketing systems, making it more integral to core retail business operation.
   
   Traditionally, these types of services were only available within campus networks due to the cost of deployment into highly distributed branch offices. However, virtualization and deeper integration between network and application architectures are making these services available for branch offices at more reasonable costs.
   
   Increasingly, retail Wi-Fi networks are providing more intelligent capabilities rather than serving as a basic network access mechanism. As a rich source of real-time and context-aware data, retailers are exposing Wi-Fi network information through APIs for consumption by broader enterprise services and applications. Wi-Fi networks are becoming highly-integrated with core business systems.


5. High Availability
   The modern retail branch Wi-Fi network must be highly available, even more so than the wide-area network (WAN) circuits back to the main office or data centers. This requires site survivability without loss of functionality. Survivability of historically centralized services such as directory, RADIUS, DHCP, and DNS will need to be to in place to prevent failure of local network connections and applications, service outages, loss of business functionality, and impact to core retail business operations.
   
   High availability can be accomplished either through deployment of centralized services down to each branch or by installation of an intelligent wireless network. Deployment of services to each branch can be a very expensive undertaking, requiring physical or virtual server deployment, licensing, maintenance, data replication, higher WAN bandwidth, and extensive growth of management and monitoring tools for these distributed services. Alternatively, an intelligent Wi-Fi network can dynamically adjust for the loss of central services and provide site survivability for a period of time until those services can be restored. It can accomplish this through a robust software feature set that integrates RADIUS, provides credential caching with directory services, and dynamically monitors central services to intelligently transition to local network survivability when required. What's better is that this functionality is built into the network and doesn't require deployment of additional hardware, software, or management tools.

Revolution or Evolution? – Andrew’s Take
Modern retail branch wireless networks must provide a high capacity, performance-rich, distributed, scalable, highly available, and stable architecture that also provides intelligent, context-aware services that integrate directly into back-office merchandising, marketing, and analytics systems. Wi-Fi networks are migrating from a best effort inventory focused service, to a core retail business enabler that demands much higher performance and service levels. Along with this shift, business partners and key stakeholders will take a much more involved and active role in determining network requirements to support core business capabilities. IT organizations must understand and navigate this change effectively to be considered business partners rather than an inflexible organization the business teams will seek to bypass.

Cheers,
Andrew vonNagy

This article originally appeared on the Cisco Mobility blog as a 3-part series (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3).

Wi-Fi Article Round-Up: 2011/03/30

Here are a collection of Wi-Fi related articles that I have found useful, interesting, or enlightening. As always, for a complete list of articles check out my shared article feed from Google Reader.


My Stuff

• I posted recaps for Wireless Tech Field Day (Day 1 and Day 2), and more thorough reviews of HP Networking and MetaGeek presentations.
• I compiled a comprehensive list of articles and videos from Wireless Tech Field Day. Keep checking back, as it will be updated as new articles and videos are posted!
• I detailed Aerohive HiveAP Provisioning Basics.
• I wrote two articles on DHCP related topics and wireless LANs: Explaining DHCP Server 1.1.1.1 and Preventing DHCP Starvation Attacks.
• I gave a rundown on Understanding Wi-Fi Carrier Sense. You may also be interested in my previous 5-part series on Wi-Fi QoS and Medium Contention.

General Wi-Fi Articles

• Ekahau Site Survey 5.5 was released, which includes capacity planning, helping administrators design networks for increasingly dense client environments.
• Enterprise Wi-Fi needs a change in mindset (ZDNet) describes how wireless network have historically been under-provisioned, and that designs must be updated for pervasive coverage and capacity.
• Wi-Fi calling is getting a lot of press lately, especially after the T-Mobile acquisition by AT&T.
• What's Up (or Not) with Convergence? - Network World
• Wi-Fi starts playing a key role in telecom - Buddle Blog
• Mobile broadband the only way forward - ComputerWorld
• T-Mobile Says 5 Million Customers Use Wi-Fi Calling Service - TmoNews
• Three, Two, One, Launch! T-Mobile announced 3 new phones with Wi-Fi Calling. - Kineto
• T-Mobile, AT&T and Me - Kineto
• Wi-Fi Calling for Canada Businesses - Kineto
• The Wi-Fi Alliance announced official support for a hotspot certification program (built on 802.11u). I am disappointed by the initial (sole) focus on cellular carrier operated hotspots. I have a few contacts into the WFA that I am pursuing to get more information.
• Wi-Fi Alliance launches hotspot certification program, aims to ease cell-to-WiFi handoff woes - Engadget
• Wi-Fi Alliance tackles cellular-to-Wi-Fi roaming - FierceWireless
• Unsafe at any SSID: Wireless Hotspot (In)Security - RioSec.
  I highly recommend reading this article. The current carrier focused initiative will leave independent hotspot operators behind, left without a secure solution.
• New Standard Eases Carrier Wi-Fi Access and Roaming - Wi-Fi Net news
• Aruba announced its MOVE unified network architecture which includes wired switches managed by a wireless controller, pushing security to the edge for wired and wireless networks and providing unified management of both platforms.
• Aruba's MOVE Architecture - CWNP
• Aruba strikes down wired, wireless silos - Network World
• Aruba's unified architecture addresses consumerization of IT - SearchNetworking

Comic for the Week!
Zealous Autoconfig - XKCD

Cheers (and happy reading!),
Andrew

Hotspot Advancements Signal Wi-Fi Evolution

Multiple announcements of advanced Wi-Fi hotspot capability have been announced in the past week during the lead up to Mobile World Congress 2011. These announcements signify a significant effort to provide Wi-Fi hotspots that are easier to use, provide advanced capabilities, and can integrate with broader cellular mobile networks.

Cisco announced their MOVE Strategic Framework, which incorporates Service Provider Wi-Fi. Ruckus announced a Wireless Services Gateway for integration of back-end Wi-Fi and Cellular management and billing. Earlier this week, Nokia announced Smart WLAN, a software package aimed at automating roaming between cell and Wi-Fi networks. And finally, the IEEE 802.11u amendment is scheduled for final approval this month to provide standards-based advanced hotspot capabilities and inter-working with external networks.

I've written numerous times about the proliferation of Wi-Fi hotspots (including AT&T managed hotspot service), the growing need for cellular network operators to offload data from overburdened 3G networks, the growing importance of mobile commerce and marketing (especially with the Mobile Retail Initiative), Wi-Fi hotspots as a medium for consumer interaction, and the importance of the IEEE 802.11u amendment in integrating cellular and Wi-Fi networks.

Why are these announcements important? Because they signify that the Wi-Fi industry has turned a corner. No longer is Wi-Fi being regarded as the ugly unlicensed spectrum step-child of much larger licensed spectrum networks. The realization that Wi-Fi is important as a complementary service to cellular mobile networks has sunk in. Wi-Fi can provide localized capacity growth sufficient to meet surging mobile data usage, and this strategy has now permeated carrier roadmaps to the point that the leading Wi-Fi market vendor has responded. In addition, retailers are clamoring to better engage customers where they have the most influence, in-aisle through mobile advertising. The lack of sufficient indoor cellular penetration coupled with the high expense of cell repeater and DAS solutions, and immature femtocell solutions are driving retailers toward Wi-Fi hotspot deployment.

These announcements are more about industry innovation and service integration capabilities (what Cisco calls Hotspot 2.0) than about incremental hardware improvements.

Cisco has done a nice job capturing the requirements needed for Hotspot 2.0 in this whitepaper just released. It's important to note, that while this announcement is geared toward mobile network operators, it is equally applicable to privately operated hotspots by independent establishments such as retailers, municipalities, educational institutions, and others.

Hotspot 2.0 Drivers:

• Growing Mobile Data Demand
• Economic Benefits of Offloading Mobile Data from Cellular to Wi-Fi
• Usability Problems of Today's Wi-Fi Hotspots
• Security Threats of Open Wi-Fi Hotspots

Hotspot 2.0 Solutions:

• Selective IP Traffic Offload (Carrier Core Network vs. Public Internet)
• QoS Preservation
• Improved End-User Experience on Wi-Fi Hotspots
• Automated Network Selection, Authentication and Roaming by Devices (not Users)
• Flexible Authentication Options to Support Multiple Devices and Roaming Agreements
• In-Band Account Provisioning
• Network Type Advertisement (private, free public, paid public)
• Network capability advertisement through the new layer 2 protocols (GAS and ANQP; similar to EAP where the access point acts as an intermediary proxy between client and server)
• Service Advertisement and Monetization through MSAP (Mobility Services Advertisement Protocol)

However, some very big outstanding questions remain:

• Infrastructure Availability of Hotspot 2.0 Functionality
• Mobile Device Availability of Hotspot 2.0 Functionality
• Reduction of Handset and Carrier Implementation Variances
• Independent Network Operator Integration with Carrier Networks (via roaming agreements, etc.)

There is still a long way to go to realize advanced Wi-Fi hotspot services and seamless integration of cellular and Wi-Fi networks, but this is a great step in the right direction!

Wi-Fi is truly growing beyond its roots, from best-effort to mission critical, from private to public networks, from indoor to outdoor, and from isolated networks to large-scale integrated access networks. It's my firm opinion that "Hotspot 2.0" will prove to be a significant evolutionary milestone for Wi-Fi as a technology.

Come, share my excitement!

Cheers,
Andrew

Articles Worth Reading: 12/30/2010

Here are a collection of articles from the past week that I have found useful, interesting, or enlightening. As always, for a complete list of articles check out my shared article feed from Google Reader.


Unplugged – Show 4 – Too Many iPads – My Etherealmind: 

"#Content

* 802.11n adoption in the enterprise may be driven by iPads and iPhones today, and Android in the future. This may drive the greater of adoption of wireless networking generally.

* Will the prevalence of personal hotspot devices end up ruining enterprise guest networks? Guest networks are becoming important systems for external consultants and contractors and the wireless networks need to be more reliable. Discussions of some of the challenges around this.

* Fast roaming and why it’s important in an enterprise environment, especially with 802.1x/EAP authentication; forthcoming Wi-Fi Alliance Voice Enterprise certification.

* Keith R Parsons moving to Ruckus."

2010: The Enterprise Wi-Fi Year in Review - www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com: 

"Thanks to 802.11n, there's a good chance 2010 was the year a wireless LAN became your default network access method. This retrospective from Wi-Fi Planet looks at the major deals, improvements in technology and changes in the market that pushed Wi-Fi ahead in the enterprise."

* I had the honor of contributing to this great article by Lisa Phifer.


Breaking GSM Security With a $15 Phone: 

"Whatever assurances have been given about the security of GSM cellphone calls, forget about them now."

802.11: Safety equipment for outdoor WLAN deployments: 

"Deploying outdoor network is hard. It is hard technology wise. One is bound by the limitations of the technology (the 802.11 standard), regulatory restrictions (FCC and the likes) and the environment itself (buildings, trees, hills, weather changes, etc). And once you have designed the network, you have to deploy the network."

dailywireless.org » AT&T Expands Public WiFi: 

"AT&T will expand Wi-Fi hot spots in New York’s Times Square just ahead of New Year’s celebrations and is also deploying its first hot spots in a public, outdoor area of San Francisco, the Embarcadero waterfront district."

How to Get Your Idea Approved - Amy Gallo - Best Practices - Harvard Business Review: 

"When you have an idea, proposal, or recommendation that you believe in, it's easy to presume that getting it approved will be a breeze. If you see how great the idea is, won't everyone else? However, whether an audience accepts an idea is often less about the idea itself than about how you present it. When you need approval, don't assume that just because it's brilliant, others will see it that way — convince them."

Layer 2 vs Layer 3 in Wireless Mesh: Do You Have to Choose? « Mesh Without Wires: 

"Layer 2 vs Layer 3 benefits and trade-offs have been a topic of discussion for a couple of decades as both approaches have their benefits and drawbacks."

Cheers (and happy reading),
Andrew

Packet Pushers Unplugged #4 - Too Many iPads

Enterprise support for consumer devices is definitely one of the hot topics these days for Wi-Fi engineers and IT departments. Check out the latest Wireless Unplugged episode of Packet Pushers Podcast, hosted by Greg Ferro (@etherealmind), and featuring the expert opinions of Jennifer Huber (@jenniferlucille), Chris Lyttle (@wifikiwi), and myself (@revolutionwifi).

In this episode we discuss the iPad as well as other relevant wireless topics, including:

- 802.11n adoption in the enterprise may be driven by iPads and iPhones today, and Android in the future. This may drive the greater of adoption of wireless networking generally.

- Will the prevalence of personal hotspot devices end up ruining enterprise guest networks? Guest networks are becoming important systems for external consultants and contractors and the wireless networks need to be more reliable. Discussions of some of the challenges around this.

- Fast roaming and why it’s important in an enterprise environment, especially with 802.1x/EAP authentication; forthcoming Wi-Fi Alliance Voice Enterprise certification.

- Keith R Parsons moving to Ruckus.

Packet Pushers Podcast: Wireless Unplugged Show #4 - Too Many iPads

Thanks to all participants for the great discussion! It's always an honor.

Cheers,
Andrew

A Few Wi-Fi Wish-List Items for 2011

Finally, as a wrap-up to my 2010 recap and 2011 projections for the Wi-Fi industry, here a few wish-list items that are desperately needed.

1. Voice-Enterprise Certification – the convergence of voice over IP with user mobility and smartphone adoption is leading the requirement for organizations to support large-scale VoFi deployments. However, performance of voice over Wi-Fi must be balanced with strong security based on WPA2 (802.11i) and 802.1x/EAP authentication. Predicting this need, the IEEE passed the 802.11r amendment in June 2008 to provide a method for fast, secure roaming by clients among a coordinated group of access points. This allows clients to re-use existing master key material obtained during the initial authentication during subsequent roams to other APs within the system, bypassing lengthy authentication exchanges. However, industry adoption for this feature has been almost completely absent, and the Wi-Fi Alliance has been slow to finalize the Voice-Enterprise interoperability program. This feature is such an important milestone for network performance and SLA compliance it is hard to fathom why both infrastructure and client vendors have been reluctant to implement fast roaming capability. Perhaps 2011 will be the year customers get this needed tool to increase network performance.
   
   
2. 802.11u Amendment Ratification – it’s painfully obvious that open unsecured Wi-Fi hotspots are inadequate for broad consumer use, resulting in poor data security. The problem with providing an alternative has been the complicated nature of secure Wi-Fi hotspots. In addition, there is no current mechanism for service advertisement at public locations other than creative network SSID naming. The IEEE 802.11u amendment aims to change this and remove the barriers to secure public Wi-Fi. It will do this by allowing additional information to be sent between network operators and customers for service advertisement, coordination of service delivery between Wi-Fi and external network operations (such as cellular), and provide on-demand account enrollment and customer authorization for network access. It aims to simplify the entire process for users, easing proper network identification and selection as well as gaining access through both paid and free hotspot networks. It is also unclear at this point if 802.11u will include provisions for anonymous EAP authentication and automated provider authentication (certificate validation) for free hotspots, but this function is also a clear necessity. Watch for ratification of this amendment in 2011, but manufacturer adoption and inter-network roaming agreements are likely longer-term developments.

What’s on your Wi-Fi feature wish-list?

Cheers,

Andrew

Important Wi-Fi Industry Trends from 2010

With the end of the year upon us, let’s take a look back at some of the more important Wi-Fi industry developments that occurred in 2010. These trends set the tone for the year and kept many industry professionals busy and employed through the economic hardships.

Wi-Fi industry trends are direct byproducts of cultural shifts in how we as a society prefer to work, play, and live as a whole, and provide a view into the fabric of our daily lives. As an IT professional I am excited about the technology and services we enable, but on a macro level as member of a broader community I am intrigued about how different our daily lives are than our parents, grandparents, and ancestors. Change truly is a remarkable thing!

Important Wi-Fi trends from 2010:

1.  Large Scale Enterprise 802.11n Adoption - early adopters began deploying 802.11n in 2009, but 2010 will undoubtedly be the year of 11n. Large enterprises wrapped up interoperability and performance testing, formalized best practices and network design, and began deploying very large 802.11n access point roll-outs in 2010. In 2011, look for 3 spatial stream 802.11n to begin shipping in enterprise-class equipment, bring data rates of 450 Mbps (raw). Also, enterprises that have been evaluating Wi-Fi as wired Ethernet replacements will begin taking strides to implement this model for a large amount of their staff.
   
   
2. Challenges to the Controller Architecture - customers began challenging the viability of the Wi-Fi controller architecture due to behavioral shifts in network use. 802.11n brought higher bandwidth and discussion of Wi-Fi becoming the predominant access technology for end-users in the enterprise. Due to concerns over controller scalability, throughput, single points of failure, and the desire to optimize traffic flows, controller vendors have been challenged to re-think their Wi-Fi architectures to shift more control into distributed access points. Initial migration has begun with virtually all controller vendors now providing distributed data plane traffic forwarding. In 2011, look for advancements to distribute control of Quality of Service, security, radio management, and distributed key caching capabilities into access points. Additionally, watch for controllers to move into more of centralized management role and smart access points being operationally independent from controllers. Some vendors will begin removing controllers from their architectures completely, but will experience growing pains attempting to support both architectures simultaneously for a period of time.
   
   
3. Enterprise Consumerization & Wi-Fi Only Devices - everyone wants an iPad, including executives. Their ease-of-use, mobile form-factor, and consumer mind-share have executive level management in most organizations pushing IT departments to support iPad access on the corporate network. Since the iPad, and many new and emerging consumer devices, only have Wi-Fi connections, wireless engineering teams have been challenged to collaborate with internal IT security and deliver a secure access method for consumer devices in general, not just limited to the iPad. Careful consideration of security policy changes, network and application security design, and mobile device management platforms have kept IT departments busy scrambling to meet this need. In 2011, look for more enterprises to officially adopt support for consumer devices, owned both by the organization or by individuals, as well as implementation and market growth for mobile device management platforms to give administrators the ability to control access and storage of sensitive corporate data on these devices.
   
   
4. 3G Problems Drive Wi-Fi Hotspot Demand - as cellular carriers, and AT&T specifically, struggled to keep up with 3G data network demands, they increasingly changed their mindset on Wi-Fi hotspots from competitive technology to a complementary service. The rollout and use of Wi-Fi hotspots in 2010 grew at amazingly sharp rate, lead by AT&T and their quarterly reports on Wi-Fi hotspot usage. Wi-Fi hotspots are seeing unprecedented usage and availability for consumers, with renewed interest in making Wi-Fi a ubiquitous access technology across locales. In 2011, look for additional Wi-Fi hotspot rollout by cellular carriers as well as retail establishments that are attempting to attract and influence consumer purchasing habits.

What are your thoughts on the most important trends in Wi-Fi from the past year?

Cheers,

Andrew