Communications technology is pushing networking forward rapidly. This year we are witnessing the rise of several important technologies that will greatly impact the way businesses communicate with other business, clients and between themselves. The good news is that all of these new changes are also going to improve various aspects of the way the company works.
Wi-Fi 6
Also known as 802.11ax, Wi-Fi 6 is the faster and stronger than the Wi-Fi protocol widely used nowadays, known as 802.11ac. Wi-Fi 6 promises to bring about dramatic improvements to the current Wi-Fi bands as well as the almost-antiquated 2.4GHz frequencies. We can expect Wi-Fi 6 to be boosted with 60GHz. frequencies at some time in 2020.
The biggest benefit we can expect from Wi-Fi 6 will be the more significant number of devices that occupy a single channel. This is expected to make communication speed much faster, especially on those lines with multiple devices being used.
The performance will also be improved by the support of deterministic packet scheduling, as opposed to random scheduling. In addition to improving the efficiency of band use, this will also improve power economy in mobile devices.
Wi-Fi 6 promises to change communications services for everyone that uses wireless devices frequently. This includes office workers in crowded offices that will find their devices work more efficiently. Those who support extensive constellations of IoT devices will be able to use more low-power devices and manage fewer access points. The deterministic nature of Wi-Fi 6 will make things far more reliable. This, matched with its incredible speed, will allow Wi-Fi 6 to be applied to serious life-threatening situations like remote surgery.
5G
Consumers will be scrambling to get a piece of the 5G action in 2020, but carriers will only be dishing out limited installations which will only be compatible with certain devices. Beyond 2020 the scene changes, 5G will allow mobile devices to operate with greater speed and extensive battery life. The advent of 5G will also increase the growth of fixed devices for homes and create competition for communities with wired broadband.
In the business sector, 5G will have a more subtle effect but will still be experienced to different degrees. For one, 5G will work perfectly for the local WAN connection for getting branch offices online. The improved performance of 5G –– in terms of low latency and high speeds –– will make it a potential alternative for wired connections.
The induction of 5G into functional society will take some time, but as it does, new opportunities for IoT will spring up right and left. Thanks to the time slicing capacity of 5G, remote sensor systems will run on battery power that lasts years.
Improved wireless technology will see plenty of application in the field of corporate local-area networks. CBRS (Citizens Broadband Radio Service) is a lightly-licensed band of the 5G spectrum and will allow businesses to set up private data networks. This can be an especially attractive option for IoT installations.
Together with Wi-Fi 6, 5g will be critical to wireless businesses of all types. One of the first challenges will be to manage networks as users move between them properly. Because these technologies are so complementary, a large number of solutions are just waiting to be invented to integrate the two properly.
SD-WAN
The traditional network model revolves around a centralized plan for routing, controls and security. All traffic on the network leads back to this primary data centre that connects all the systems and network branches. This is also where the firewalls and other security applications provided protection.
This model is not being done away with, but it sees some changes. After all, it doesn’t make much sense to design a network with a branch-to-data center plan when so many of the businesses today run from the cloud. Furthermore, so many end-users rely on open internet use when they are not in their offices.
Because of this, we can expect to see more software-defined wide-area networking applied in the business sector. SD-WAN means that networks will route traffic based on centrally managed rules no matter where the traffic comes from or where it is going and with proper security.
This means that a branch office user who is working on Office365, SD-WAN will direct them to the cloud data services they need for their apps. This will improve the responsiveness of the network and reduce the costs of bandwidth.
A smaller team of networking engineers is needed to properly run SD-WAN networks and properly adjust the rules as the needs of the business change. In the end, SD-WAN will make it easier to apply machine intelligence for network management. In addition to boosting system security, this will further lower costs of bandwidth.
SD-WAN is a long time coming, but it is expected to take an important role in network setup and management in 2020. SD-WAN use is expected to increase in the following year by as much as 500%, and studies indicated that over half of those customers that do not have SD-WAN are making plans to use it soon.
Digitized Spaces
New geolocation technologies using wireless radios integrated in many mobile devices, coupled with the latest data mining software are developing ways to analyze how people and objects move through space. Accessing this information will open opportunities for extensions and improvements for those companies that adopt this technology.
This technology has applications in any business or operation that has clients or visitors at its sites. They will be able to track and study how different spaces are used, at what time and by whom. This will allow a retailer to know when a customer used a coupon or an educator to analyze patterns in their teaching spaces.
There are benefits for network managers as well. By knowing exactly where wireless service is weakest, they will be able to set up new access points with greater precision. For security, digitized spaces provide analytics engines with the information to locate physical breaches by detecting unusual patterns in mobile device movement.
A Great Leap Forward
Enterprise networking is going to see some monumental changes in 2020 as operators will be setting up networks capable of supporting greater numbers of devices and data transfer. Furthermore, they will be equipped with improved analytics on their performance and infrastructure. At the same time, centralized management tools and machine intelligence will improve efficiency and effectiveness in network personnel.
All of these improvements will be making networks an even more important asset to businesses and will change the way we operate in ways we don’t fully understand.
