This past April, the FCC adopted new rules for the 6GHz band (5.925GHz – 7.125GHz), freeing up 1,200MHz of spectrum for unlicensed use. This new amount of spectrum was dubbed Wi-Fi 6E by the Wi-Fi Alliance in January to establish a common industry name to identify devices that will be able to use the 6GHz allocation.

While the Wi-Fi industry has continued to expand and innovate since the inception of 802.11b, this spectrum addition, which more than doubles the amount of previously existing channels, is set to become the biggest innovation driver in wireless today.

With more people working remotely, end users must have faster access to critical information. Edge environments move that critical information closer to the end user, thus making them more efficient. This is the same concept streaming services use to distribute content to their users.

Imagine watching a movie in New York, but its content sits in California. That movie would freeze and pause so many times during the viewing that you would probably turn it off. By moving that content to New York, your movie would play seamlessly and you would be more inclined to watch additional content from that streaming service.

These edge environments are important to your business today because they keep your coworkers productive and your customers coming back. I’m going to provide some guidance on the questions that need to be asked (and answered) when setting up your edge environments.

Across industries, IT networks are becoming more complex. The number of users, the number of devices and the amount of bandwidth being consumed are all growing at exponential rates. But resources dedicated to the network largely remain flat. At some point, something has to give.

The only way to battle complexity is with the simplicity offered by features such as automation and orchestration. This is where software-defined approaches to networking come in. Particularly, the software-defined access approach pioneered by Cisco Systems (SD-Access, or SDA) can simplify network deployment and management, freeing up more time for IT departments to focus on strategic projects.

Usually, trouble with wireless devices and networks comes down to the efficiency of radio transmissions, not speed. Fortunately, products that implement Wi-Fi 6, the IEEE’s 802.11ax wireless networking standard, are well positioned to alleviate the performance problems that plague manufacturers. Most of the benefits of Wi-Fi 6 can be explained through three simple abbreviations. At first glance, these may seem like alphabet soup, but the features they represent offer significant improvements to organizations that deploy Wi-Fi 6.

In our previous discussion on virtual networking, we explained how virtual networks are replacing the need for virtual local area network (VLAN) configuration in data centers, and simplifying the grouping and isolation of servers. But we never really explained how the virtual networks are actually accessed, since they “ride” underneath physical networks. So, let’s take…

For a long time data center architects have struggled with the requirement to provide connectivity across racks of servers, across multiple locations, while maintaining isolation for groups of those servers.  For example, the Accounting department might not want their servers accessible to someone working on another department’s server.  The Accounting servers need to be isolated,…