BYOD Lays the Pressure on Wireless Infrastructure 

We’re all excited about bring-you-own-device (BYOD), but with all those extra devices, your wireless network is bearing all the weight. Think about your band width as a hallway: right now this hallway suites the number of people in your building. Now what happened when all of the sudden the population triples? It’s crowded, people are bumping into each other, and no one is getting anywhere on time. Right now your wireless network works great for the number of devices you have, but once you implement BYOD and each employee brings in a phone, a laptop and a tablet, all of the sudden things are getting a little too crowded in cyber space.

“Additional demands on the wireless LAN have created more pressure to redesign and upgrade wireless infrastructure to provide more bandwidth at higher rates,” explains Amit Rao, Senior Director of Business Development Asia Pacific, Fluke Networks Enterprise Solutions, NETSCOUT.

These old 802.11n networks just aren’t going to cut it anymore. There are two huge movements right now that will blow bandwidth out of the water: BYOD and Internet of Things (IoT). Both of these things are on the rise and their claim to fame is increasing the number of devices each employee will carry by at least two. Even if your company isn’t there yet with BYOD or IoT. it’s a reality that is better addressed sooner rather than later.

Implementing a 802.11ac wireless infrastructure now will save you the grief in the future. Nothing would be worse than upgrading your employees with BYOD and wearable devices just to have your network be bogged down by devices that were intended to make your workforce more productive. While only newer devices are 802.11ac capable, 802.11ac is backwards compatible so it will work with all devices.

Like most things in the enterprise technology world, upgrades are codependent on each other: If you want to bring on more mobile technology, then your wireless network will be in dire need of an upgrade as well.