Dave Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi 6E capable networks are few and far between from what I've seen in the wireless world. We have seen a huge uplift of devices capable of accessing this previously unused spectrum. However I've found that wireless networks are still playing catch up when it comes to deploying a 6Ghz capable network.  So to educate a few people and to refresh my own knowledge, this blog post will cover off a bit of background information when it comes to the new 6Ghz spectrum. I'll go over the EU, UK and US standpoints and their differences, client connectivity and overall the challenges that you may come across when designing a 6Ghz capable network (most likely) alongside your existing 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz networks.  The certification was ratified by the Wi-Fi Alliance in 2021, not long after the Wi-Fi 6 standard itself was approved by the IEEE back in 2020. 6E (as I will call it going forward), as previously mentioned allows the use of the 6Ghz spectrum previously unused within the Wi-Fi sp...

Security is of the upmost importance when it comes to network and even more so when we are talking about Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi, as part of it's base fundamental is wireless and even with configuration options does go outside of your preferred area. This can cause a bit of an issue whereby someone can sit outside, with an adapter and monitor and potentially attack your wireless network. In this post, we will go over a high level description of the main security protocols out and about in the wireless world.  Thankfully keeping a handle of which ones are out there is quite simple. The Wi-Fi Alliance, setup in 1999 (by numerous companies to promote compatibility) owns the Wi-Fi trademark and subsequently develops the security protocols, which we'll discuss below.  There is four main Wi-Fi security protocols that you might see out and about and those are as follows, WEP, WPA, WPA2 and finally WPA3. Each have their pros and cons which we will also discuss on top of best practice configura...

Modulation is one of the key components relating to how your network traffic is translated into a format that is traversable over  any network infrastructure either wired or (and the topic of this post) wireless connections.  Modulation sits at the lowest level of the OSI model, the Physical Layer (Layer 1).  Think of modulation in a real world example, as a translator. Preparing the data received from the higher layers of the OSI model into a more accessible and easily transmitted format across the network and more specifically relating to Wi-Fi, across the antennas transmitters/receiver hardware.   Wi-Fi modulation has seen many changes across its evolution from it's first initial standard in 1997 and is still changing even now with the currently in development standard Wi-Fi 7 (11be) which we will also cover in terms of it's changes to modulation.   There is three main ways that modulation takes place in Wi-Fi, and they're as follows, Binary Pha...