Aruba Wi-Fi 6E AP Will Create Spectrum ‘Superhighway’ For Enterprise Connectivity
‘We’re now going to be in a position where we can actually provide high density, high quality and high bandwidth in [higher density] areas, which we really haven’t been able to do before,’ one Aruba partner says about Wi-Fi 6E technology.
Aruba Networks, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, is launching a Wi-Fi 6E access point, making it the first enterprise networking vendor with a solution that takes advantage of the newly-opened 6GHz spectrum, according to the vendor.
The Wi-Fi 6E (extended) 630 Series campus access point, revealed on Tuesday, will be the first in a product family of wireless solutions that operate in the 6GHz band, which was opened up in April 2020 by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for unlicensed use in the United States. The expansion more than doubles the amount of RF spectrum available for Wi-Fi use, Gayle Levin, senior product marketing manager for Aruba, told CRN.
“It really is taking all the goodness from Wi-Fi with the 2.4GHz and 5GHz band, and then extending it to the 6GHz band, which is giving just a ton more capacity [because] the 6GHz channel much wider,” Levin said. “I think of it like we had a four-lane highway, and now we have an eight-lane superhighway.”
LAKETEC, a North Olmsted, Ohio-based solution provider and Aruba Platinum partner, has many higher education clients grappling with very dense environments, such as auditoriums and dorm rooms. These institutions are prioritizing student experience, which can often mean an access point in every dorm. The trouble is, bandwidth has to be reduced to accommodate a high number of access points in an area.
“What that basically means is when we’re operating in these high density environments, we have to choose between high quality or high bandwidth. We can’t necessarily have both,” said Ben Sterley, director of data services for LAKETEC.
Many businesses are bouncing back from the COVID-19 pandemic with brand-new, bandwidth-hungry applications, such as voice, video and IoT devices, that are connecting to their networks. As the demand for Wi-Fi increases, wireless networks are becoming oversubscribed, and in some cases, IT teams are resorting to throttling application performance.
Wi-Fi 6E makes the wider 6GHz spectrum channel available — in addition to the narrower 5GHz and 2.4GHz channels that are already in use today — which will greatly alleviate congestion and give users and devices access to broader, high-speed connections, Sterley said. “We’re now going to be in a position where we can actually provide high density, high quality and high bandwidth in [higher density] areas, which we really haven’t been able to do before,” he added.
Wi-Fi 6E will also open the door for partners to offer more strategic wireless services across all three spectrum bands for customers, which will be especially helpful for IoT use cases. At the same time, the new backwards-compatible technology won’t require partners to change up their wireless design principles because the 6GHz spectrum is similar to 5GHz specification, Sterley said.
The Aruba Wi-Fi 6E access point can be used in conjunction with The Aruba Edge Services Platform (ESP), an intelligent, centralized platform that can analyze data across edge, wired and wireless networks, said Madani Adjali, vice president of product management for Aruba.
For channel partners, a Wi-Fi 6E refresh will also open up opportunities for new services, such as IoT integrations, VR, and 8K video, Adjali said.
The Aruba 630 Series APs will be available in Q321, according to Santa Clara, Calif.-based Aruba.
Alongside the U.S., more than 38 countries have opened the 6GHz unlicensed band for Wi-Fi 6E use, with more than 70 countries today in the approval process, which represents coverage of 3.4 billion people globally, Aruba said.