Jan/Feb 19 - ChannelVision Magazine

This unprecedented growth is forcing Wi-Fi to evolve, as businesses are having a difficult time ac- commodating the rising amount of bandwidth-intensive applications and devices on their networks. Perfor- mance and security issues are mounting, and we are still in the very early stages of the IoT. Earlier this year, the Wi-Fi Alliance announced its latest security standard, Wi-Fi Protected Access 3 (WPA3) — a new hardware certification that device manufacturers must obtain in order to label devices as Wi-Fi Certified. WPA3 builds off its predecessor, WPA2, introducing features such as brute force attack pro- tection, individualized data encryption and advanced 192-bit security for defense, government and industrial applications. The WPA3 standard is now being actively rolled out in new routers, and adoption is expected to increase during the next year. At the same time, the IEEE is getting ready to finalize its upcoming 802.11ax standard, also known as Wi-Fi 6. Now in its draft phase, 802.11ax is expected to be ratified in 2019. Over time, this will replace the current 802.11ac standard (Wi-Fi 5). Dubbed “high efficiency” wireless, 802.11ax is expected to offer about 40 percent greater throughput and enable more efficient spectrum utilization in the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands. It is designed for high- density, public environments, IoT deployments and for bandwidth-intensive applications. Seventy-seven percent of new access point deployments will be based on the 802.11ax standard, according to IHS Markit. Mobile & Wir eless Wi-Fi’s Next Step J ust as predicted, the Internet of Things (IoT) is growing at an aggressive pace heading into 2019. An estimated 127 new devices now connect to the internet every second, and at least 20.4 billion connected devices are expected to be in operation by 2020. By Gerald Baldino Enterprise IoT Adoption Source: 451 Research Q: “Which of thes important to your among global ope Source: InterDigital & M Q. Which of the following best describes your organizations’s adoption of Internet of Things (IoT)? In use (not including pilot projects) In discovery/proof of concept Plan to implement in next 12 months Plan to implement in next 24 months Considering, but no current plan to implement 46% 25% 15% 5% 9% 11% 35% 2 5G 22 Channel Vision | January - February, 2019