A New Standard is Coming and Cisco May Be Ahead of the Pack

With more and more end devices flooding enterprises, organizations and schools through BYOD programs the need for better connectivity has never been greater. Enterprises are becoming more mobile in order to increase productivity. Hospitals and Educational facilities are utilizing mobile end devices in order to offer greater access to information. These new technologies offer great advantages across the board, but if the infrastructure and network supporting can’t handle all this new activity then it is all a moot point.

Cisco is taking steps in order to accommodate such activity, and is saying that, “it will be the first networking vendor to deliver 1-gigabit-per-second speeds on enterprise wireless networks when it introduces an 802.11ac-based access point next year.” While traditional wired systems can offer 10G, 40G and even 100G speeds, Cisco is now allowing for wireless access at greater speeds. The 802.11 ac standard is still being developed and approved by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), but Cisco is positioning its self to be ready to support their customers when the time is right.

Cisco is not alone here though as eWeek quotes Kevin Secino, a marketing manager within HP Networking, as saying “[HP] is working on our 802.11ac portfolio of access points, our business objective is to be standards-compliant.” Cisco’s edge here might be the fact that their new 802.11 ac access points can simply be plugged into existing Aironet 3600 access point allowing for future proofing. Read the entire eWeek article here.