Juniper Wi-Fi 7/6GHz and learnings, Dual 5 GHz Dual 6 GHz and RRM

Hello, everyone. Uh, I'm Wes Purvis, and we're gonna talk about wireless. Uh, now, can't start without, uh, talking about, uh, wifi six E six gigahertz wifi seven.

I wanted to put up a, a a scorecard of kind of where, you know, what we see from our customers where we are. Um, and so we are two and a half, three years into wifi six E And of all of the, uh, wifi six E capable access points that we have shipped, 50% of those aps have six gigahertz enabled. J Are those users who think they have six gigahertz enabled, but haven't enabled a WPA three SSID?

No, no. This is, those Are radios that are shut off the Yeah, the radios that, yeah, I, I looked at it the other way. How many radios are enabled.

Yeah. But these are six gigahertz radios that are enabled beaconing, which means they have WPA A three configured. Okay.

Awesome. Thank you. So, there's a lot of room for improvement here, although this is even a year ago, that number was 30%.

And so there's, there's been a significant uptick from a client adoption standpoint. We're in the 20 to 50% six gigahertz adoption, depending on the environment. So if it's A-B-Y-O-D environment, like a university, that number is, uh, usually trends lower, uh, if it's a corporate environment and that, uh, with, you know, corporate issued devices, uh, and that, uh, company has, you know, begun refreshing with six gigahertz, which many of 'em have starting several years ago.

Uh, we're seeing upwards of 50% or even higher in some environments of, of six gig clients. From a wifi seven perspective. We're seeing client adoption in the five to 10% range right now, which is, you know, in, in, you know, first year of rollouts, kind of what we would expect.

That's what we saw with six gig. So here's an example customer where, uh, they deployed, they have about 1600 clients, uh, on the network about, uh, 34%. So 530 at this point are connected on six gig.

And then, uh, 1 42 of those clients are wifi seven. So just to, you know, this is where we are in the journey. Um, you know, the six gig option is really, uh, is really picking up.

And then, you know, wifi seven will take, uh, several years to, to reach a, a critical mass That leads into, all right, how about channel width, right? Because channel width has a direct impact on the speeds that a user is able to achieve on the network. Um, so if, if we look at five gigahertz, um, our, our default channel width, you know, if you go deploy miss network, our default channel width on five gig is 40 megahertz.

But the majority of our customers are using 20 megahertz on five gig, which is great. Uh, everybody or many people are changing the defaults, which is always good to see. Uh, on six gigahertz, the story is a little different.

Uh, worldwide, we see, uh, generally 80 megahertz channel width. Uh, that's our default. Uh, in Europe, the majority channel width is 40 megahertz, because there's not as much spectrum.

I think over time, as six gig adoption increases, these channel widths will shift left. Um, so, you know, I think you, once we get appreciable adoption, you'll kind of, at least in the US with 1200 megahertz, if you do 20 megahertz on five gig, you'll, you'll likely be able to do 40 megahertz on six gig in most circumstances. Uh, and then in Europe, you know, probably that means going down to 20 megahertz, uh, in dense environments on six gig, which some of our customers have already started doing.

So then that brings up the question of how do clients actually handle six gigahertz? Like, you know, do they use it? Do they connect?

Uh, and so what we see is actually a very strong affinity from clients to six gigahertz. They, they generally prefer six gigahertz. Um, they're, you know, most of 'em are programmed to prefer wider channels, but even when five gigahertz and six gigahertz have the same channel bandwidth, uh, we actually see very strong affinity.

So here is a, a client that is roaming, this particular client happened to roam 350 times over three 50 times on this day, and every single roam was on six. Was six to six. Now, that's not always the case.

You will see some, some interband. Um, but generally speaking, affinity is, is pretty good. And as an example, here is a network that had somewhere in the ne neighborhood of 26, 27, 26, or 27,000 clients in the past two weeks.

So about, uh, 16,000, a little over five gig only, right? We, we only ever saw them connect on five gigahertz. Uh, another 7,000 connected on five and six gigahertz at some point in that two weeks.

So those are six gig capable clients. But the most interesting stat here, to me at least, is 3000, over 3000 clients connected on six gig only. So in that two week period, we only saw those clients on six gig.

They never, uh, they never connected on five gig. Did you see a, did you see a preference for device type, whether that's Android or, uh, Google, specifically Samsung iPhone? Did, did you see a preference for one that Yeah, that kind of preferred, preferred six only?

Yeah. Yeah. So the, the Apple devices from what I see have the strongest affinity to six gig.

They, you know, you'll very, they'll seldom to you on, on five gig in a, in a, like dual band, SSID, um, then Android is kind of next level down, and then Windows would is usually kind of third. Um, yeah, sort of. That's how I see.

Um, do you have O Um, not that I'm not in here. Yeah, Right. I'm just, you know, as you're talking about, you know, I wonder about lines that are coming on six.

Yeah. And five, six and two four, right? Right.

How do you, how are you gonna manifest? Are you gonna show roaming and Right? Yeah, I'm not, I don't have anything on MLO specific.

Um, but yes, you, you know, you have to show it all right? And we will. Okay.

Um, okay. So then, but kind of related, the precursor to being able to do MLO is security. And so wifi seven, just like wifi six E introduces some mandatory security features.

So wifi six E, you had to do WPA A three, right? For any on six gigahertz, you have to do wpa, A three on a wifi, seven SSID, that can be on any band. There are a couple things that you have to do as well.

So one of those is GCMP 2 56 cipher. So you have to use G CPA 2 56. Generally we're using C CMP 1 28 for most things today.

Uh, you have to turn on beacon protection, and you have on a WPA three personal, you have to turn on this S-A-E-G-D-H, or, you know, extended caps. You'll also see it called. Um, and the way this is manifesting and what, you know, actually, what wifi alliance is recommending is generally speaking, so this is a, you know, beacon RSN element, uh, in the beacon, you know, I think most people are familiar with, uh, you know, with the AKs, the, you know, key management.

This is how the, the ap, the B-S-S-I-D advertises, Hey, this is, this is my security, this is what I can do this. I'm OWE, I'm enterprise, I'm, I'm personal. Um, but in the, in the pairwise cipher list, uh, you know, typically that's always been CCM, and, you know, and at least for WPA three, uh, but For wifi seven, you know, generally the recommendation is to add G CMP 2 56.

So you'll usually see both advertised on wifi seven networks. Um, it looks the same. You know, that, you know, whether it's, you know, WPA three personal enterprise or WE um, you know, you'll see multiple A kms, but now you'll also see multiple, uh, you know, c ciphers as well.

So again, every single wifi seven BSS has to advertise. GSMP 2 56 has to advertise beacon protection. And then if it's SAE has to advertise S-A-E-G-D-H.

So what does that mean for roaming? Uh, so, uh, now if you have a, you know, complete wifi seven network, uh, where you know, you're going from wifi seven AP to wifi seven, AP security is the same on both sides. Akm are the same on both sides.

And GCMP is there, beacon protection is there. Very good roaming. So as you would, you know, as you would expect, you know, roaming, roaming is smooth.

Now, I don't necessarily think that this will be every customer deployment, right? Because many deployments will have mixed aps, right? They're, you know, we don't yet sell a wifi seven outdoor ap.

Um, you know, the, in the real world, we will have mixed, you know, wifi six, six e wifi seven environments. That's just the way it's gonna be. So how does that look like?

Well, in, let's say, let's say you don't make any changes, right? You are, you're, you know, you take your configuration as it is today with your wifi six or six EAPs, and then you just add wifi seven aps with wifi seven enabled. It all works well with older clients.

But the newer clients that are capable of GCM P 2 56, which there are actually quite a few of them out there now, um, you know, because if, if a client supports WPA 3 1 92 bit, they likely already support GCM P 2 56. Um, and so the problem is, let's say I'm connected to a wifi six ap I'm connected at, at CM P 1 28, right? I roam to the wifi seven ap, and as the client, I say, oh, this can do G CM P 2 56.

That's better. That's more secure than CCM P 1 28. I'm gonna change to that.

But the problem is it's not seamless. You'll have a disruption there. And, and so what that means is really for seamless roaming, you have to actually enable G CMP 2 56 on your wifi six C aps for the most seamless experience.

And this doesn't matter, the security type. 'cause you have to turn on GCMP 2 56 for every security type. Now this isn't all that different from, you know, what we went through with wifi six E, right?

You had to turn on WPA three. You know, you're probably not mixing just WPA A two and you know, on your older stuff, WPA three under stuff, you know, it's generally one shot. So I don't think this is gonna really be a big pill to swallow.

Um, but just a, it's, it's a consideration to know about, um, that, uh, you know, you'll, you'll have to turn on at least U CMP 2 56 on your older stuff. Um, beacon protection doesn't really seem to matter on the older stuff. You know, it doesn't affect the roaming, it's, it, it's really just the GG CM P 2 56 for the clients that are capable of supporting.

It feels a lot like something I want Marvis to tell me and go fix. Yeah. Or the cloud will just configure it.

Yeah, it looks automatic. This won't, with mist, this won't really be a concern. I just wanna point out that, you know, under the covers, this is something that will, that will happen.

And we've actually, you know, we've had, you know, since wifi six C with, with WPA three, there's been a lot of discussions around, you know, client interoperability. Um, and we haven't seen interop issues. You know, granted, we don't have massive exposure, um, to G CMP 2 56, but of the clients that were tested, the environments that we've been in, um, turning on GCMP 2 56 seems to be a non-issue.

Do you only turn it on on the six gigahertz band? No, you do it as well if you broadcast. Yeah.

You have to do it because wifi seven, you can turn on wifi seven on any band. Yeah, you're right. Yeah.

So any any SSID that broadcast wifi seven that supports wifi seven has to have G CMP 2 56. It doesn't matter the band. Okay.

But, but you are saying that the clients that you've tested do support the GCMP 2 56. Yeah. The kind of the, the newer clients, um, yeah, absolutely.

Newer Clients, uh, has how new, Basically any clients that supports WPA 3 1 92 bit, um, which has been out, you know, for four years, three, four years in mainstream, Are these Gonna be the default values? If I set up a new, new SSID? Yes.

It's best interoperability. Correct. And when will these be the new values?

Even if I don't have wifi seven aps on my network? Um, if you, there will be a, we will tie it to a, um, value like the, there will be a wifi seven configuration option on the SSID. Okay.

If wifi seven is enabled, we will, uh, enabled all this other stuff. Okay. Now, is there a standard name naming convention you're gonna use?

Or is, has that been defined by a group? Like, Like how it's gonna look like in RUI? Yeah.

Yeah, wifi seven enabled, it's just like, it's already there, actually. Okay. Um, it, you know, just like we have the wifi six enabled disabled box, it'll, there's a wifi seven enabled disabled per wlan.

All right. That's roaming. Um, so how, how do you actually migrate to wifi 60?

Wifi seven? So as, as I mentioned, only 50% of our aps six gig aps have six gigahertz turned on. So there's a, there's still a tremendous opportunity.

And, you know, when I talk to customers, like there's still apprehension out there. I think mostly about WPA three. Um, you know, there's some power, um, you know, apprehension as well, but mostly it's a WPA three.

So like, this is my, you know, high level blueprint of, you know, how can you actually get to six gigahertz? And now, you know, how can you also actually get to wifi seven? Well, first and foremost, Try WPA a three, but you don't have to have six gig capable aps.

You don't have to have wifi seven aps even to get your feet wet with WPA three. And it, you know, it's, it's something that you should be doing today because you will have go to WPA three at some point. Now, you don't have to do it on every SS ID and you can be strategic with it.

A lot of times what folks will do is on their one SS I one SID, they will, they will turn on WPA A three for, you know, 'cause that's been the lowest risk now, several years into, into this. Right? And there's been a lot of discussion on interop, especially with wpa A three personal, largely not a concern anymore.

9% of clients are, you know, supporting WPA A three, uh, personal. Um, you know, they're still in the back of your mind, Hey, am I gonna have an interop issue? But, you know, people that I've turned on, just move on.

Right. If you, you might, you know, if you have a couple clients, okay, go deal with those. Uh, and same for OWE.

Uh, we've had many customers now who have turned on OWE or OWE transition for, uh, for guest networks, um, in particular. And, uh, it's been pretty smooth, uh, you know, to the point where it's still on. Right.

What's your take on the IOT impact for WPA three adoption? Um, I think, so for iot devices, I think in many cases, you're not turning on w you're not turning on wifi seven on that SSID. Um, and the ones that, you know, the ones that you are, it's still like, Hey, do they support WPA three?

If they're not supporting WPA three, it doesn't matter if it's wifi seven or not. You know, they're gonna have, they're gonna struggle. So you're thinking for the foreseeable future, then it's still advocating separate SID for iot, largely because of WPA three Yeah.

Or lack thereof Support. Yeah. And, and it really comes down to device by device.

Like, you know, there are many older devices that certainly don't support WPA three, but I think we've even seen some, you know, recent devices, IOT devices that are supporting WPA three. Uh, and so it comes down to what's in your environment, test it out, see if it works. Largely, you know, from our side, we think it's not really, you know, a from working with, you know, a lot of our customers not really a concern, but, you know, give it a try.

See what happens. Uh, next is design. Uh, and so what we have seen, uh, you know, with the transmit power limitations of, uh, six gigahertz, especially the asymmetry between AP and client, uh, it is most advantageous to have a capacity based design, uh, where, you know, clients can, you know, have, you know, strong signal, uh, wherever they, you know, wherever they are, they don't have to be on the fringe of the cell.

Um, and where the, the client TX power limitation would be, you know, the seen the most. Um, and then lastly is, you know, think about your network. What do you have from a switching perspective for POE for, for mg?

Um, you know, most of the wifi seven and 60 aps, many of them need BT power for full functionality. Most of them have a at operating mode for reduced functionality. Um, we have many customers who use the AT operating mode, no concerns there.

Um, you know, but think about the future if, if BT is, is appropriate as well as mage. Um, also not a requirement, but a nice to have. Now with three data radios wider channels, um, there are, you know, you can conceivably, uh, and MLOI should say, you can conceivably, uh, achieve more than a gigabit per second, uh, in real world conditions on aps.

So this is the, you know, step one, step two, step three of, you know, how do you, how do you actually get to wifi seven? How do you actually get to six gigahertz? And so let's say you've completed this, what, you know, what happens to your network?

You know, are there actually tangible benefits to six gigahertz? Um, my answer is yes. And so it turns out we actually have a, a actually a very good benchmark year over year.

So the same event, a one day event held year over year. Uh, so, you know, 20 23, 20 24, 20 25. In 2023, the first year that we did it, the six gigahertz adoption was in the 10% range.

And the, the, the graph here is the traffic, uh, by band. So, you know, the, the six gigahertz traffic was, you know, very low, you know, I think even less than 10% of the total traffic. 8 terabytes.

And the six giga adoption was in the 20 to 25% range. And then, uh, you know, overall traffic volume was, you know, about a third on six gig this year. Traffic increased again to 11 terabytes, right?

More six gigahertz, more capacity, right? Traffic increases. But most importantly, the six gig traffic volume is, you know, probably 40, 45% where, and then five gig is, you know, 55%.

So the six gig, you know, contribution to the network is, is increasing. And maybe next year it will exceed it. And this is, this is a European event where there's, you know, 480 mega spectrum.

I think, you know, results will look, actually, look different in the us but it, it kind of brings up the point of, you know, the way that we think about six gigahertz, at least in Europe, is it's really an extension of five gig that you, you've doubled your available channels, uh, and you know, you can see traffic profile matches. So this is, uh, you know, when I pulled this data, it was very encouraging to see Wes for this event. Were you seeing airtime contention originally, or Yes.

So you've also alleviated the airtime contention by using six gig as well, Correct. Yeah. That's one of the major benefits.

Yes, absolutely. Wes, it's great to see the overall RF traffic STAs. Uh, is there any granularity as to, you know, what, what is constituting, you know, the, the up, uh, swing in traffic?

Uh, like on a per application basis or There's, there's, um, well, okay, not on, it's this, it's a, you know, it's an event, so it's mostly, um, you know, email people posting pictures and uh, and whatever. But, um, the, you know, there's more headroom for those people to do that stuff, which is why, you know, we're seeing the increase in traffic year over year Be interesting to save. How much of it could be related to AI naturally, I dunno.

Um, and, and in the last two years, the six gig traffic volume increased 12 times. Do you have similar data for an event that would be held like in the US or Canada, where we could potentially have a lot more traffic? Mm-hmm.

Not to this, like, this is a, it's a repeatable, like Yeah, it's the same thing every year, so You can compare. Yeah. So it makes it very easy to compare.

We do have US data, but not to the same, like, okay. And then we're using 20 megas wide channels on both bands. Um, first two years were forties, okay?

And then this year was twenties. Okay. Uh, sorry, uh, forties on six, twenties on five.

Okay. And then this year it's twenties on both bands. Both bands, Okay.

Here's another example. Uh, this is a large university customer who, uh, is actually deploying about a thousand aps a month in session. Just incredible.

Uh, but they have 60, 70,000 clients on the network, uh, around the end of the semester. Last year after Thanksgiving, um, uh, they decided to enable WPA a three, right? So they got their feet wet with WPA a three.

Um, and then a few weeks later, at the end of the semester, over winter break, they actually turned on six gig. So when, uh, when the students came back after winter break, this is the, this graph is the capacity, SLE. Uh, and so, you know, before six gig, you know, they're in the low to mid, uh, 90% capacity, which you is pretty good for, you know, their size.

But by turning on six gig right away, 25% of clients connected and their capacity SLE improved about five percentage points. And at that, at their scale, that's a significant, uh, significant improvement. So there's tangible benefits to six gig.

I'm a, you know, who's proponent of it? You know, the, the roaming piece I think is sorted. Uh, security largely has been okay with especially wpa, a three enterprise.

Um, and so yeah, I want that next year. I want that 50% number to be 70%, and then keep going up. I would be remiss if I didn't talk about, uh, two by two and four by four aps because, uh, you know, this is what the industry has settled on.

Um, and often, you know, the question comes up of why do you even have a four by four AP when you have two by two, you know, is two by two all I need. And so just as a, you know, refresher, this is, uh, you know, two by two, two transmit chains on the AP to receive chains. Um, and so when you look at, you know, the antenna polar plots, often you'll see a line for each, uh, element, each transceiver, and then you'll see, uh, an outer line.

That's the composite. Um, that composite line is, you know, the, um, you know, usually would be with MIMO gain, and depending on the vendor, you know, usually this is as measured, uh, hopefully it's as measured. Some, some people simulate.

But, um, these are from missed aps. They're as measured. Uh, and then four by four you have, you know, four lines, one for each radio chain.

And then you know the composite line as well. So the theory is you have, um, you know, higher, you know, more ML gain in four by four and you know, better receive for MRC, um, this is a MacBook client listening to the ap. And so just by changing, um, the AP from four by four to two by two in software, right?

Same ap, same client location, just by changing config from four by four to two by two, uh, the signal as heard by the a, uh, as heard by the client, changed from NEG 52 and a drop to neg 57. So the math would be, you know, usually you would expect about a three DB change, um, going from four by four to two by two. Uh, in this case it was five.

You know, we live in an imperfect world. It is what it's, but you know, this is, this is just listening to beacons, right? Um, and our a p is actually beacon across all chains, which is why we see a difference here.

Uh, but you know, this is the initial piece of it, okay? Signal, you know, we have a signal difference from, you know, we can have a more robust signal with four by four. How does that actually impact your data rates?

So if you look, we looked across, um, the missed universe. We pulled, uh, you know, data rate versus, uh, signal strength on, uh, x-axis. And the, you know, just looking at the trend, right?

The, uh, the trend goes up into the right, which means, uh, the data rates went up, and signal strength also went up for, uh, 4 0 4 by four ap. Same thing on receive side, where the trend is also up into the right. So there's a, the biggest difference, you know, multiple d multiple DB difference in transmit, and then, you know, slightly smaller, you know, one or two DB difference in receive.

Um, but, uh, you know, there's, that has a, actually a noticeable impact on the data rates. Again, more robust link, uh, between AP and client. So it has that actually relate to retries, well, it lowers the retries, uh, which is good.

And then how does that actually relate to throughput? Throughput goes up. Um, so, you know, I'm not getting, you know, super into the weeds here.

It's just meant to be a high level of, um, yeah, there is actually a benefit. You have a more robust RF link, and that does lead to speed improvements. Um, you know, uh, user experience performance on the network with four by four aps.

Now, does that mean two by two, you know, is useless? No. Right?

It's, it's all relative. Like, it's, it's what you need on the network. Um, and certainly for the most demanding of, of environments, we would recommend four by four, Uh, with this data, would there be diminishing returns?

If you had a say eight by eight or a 16 by 16, that is technically feasible in the Standard, yeah. Uh, you know, you would see improvements, but it, you know, it gets to, you know, where does it start, start and stop mattering? You know, I, I think with four by four, we're kind of at that sweet spot of power, price, and performance.

Okay? Next up is, uh, the use of directional antennas for everyday use. Uh, and, and so this is something we've been exploring.

Um, we released, uh, the, uh, AP 47 D, this is a AP 47 D, um, with directional antennas, um, you know, built in directional antennas to the ap. Um, and so the, the reasons you know for this AP are several. Uh, and so we've seen a, uh, increasing desire from our customers, uh, to have higher AP density in everyday environments.

This is your offices, you know, maybe auditoriums in our retail customers as well, where they need higher AP density. But if you're deploying Omni aps, even with, you know, our aps have 30 degree down tilt, uh, even with the down tilt, at some point you get to a point where you have too many aps, your roaming sucks, uh, coan problems, it, you know, you, you really have to tune at that point when you, you know, when you've deployed too many aps for your environment. And so the solution to that is, okay, let's go deploy some directional antennas.

And typically we're doing that with AP 45 E, which works, you know, very well. But feedback from customers is, it's kind of a pain, you know, we gotta plug in the ap, you know, the, the connectors to the, uh, to the AP gotta mount it. It's harder to make it look nice.

It's more costly to install and, you know, gotta pay for the antennas. Um, and so, you know, there's, we, we've actually had like a, a bunch of enterprise customers, corporate enterprise deploy 45 Es, um, in, you know, in their office environments, right? 'cause they're, they have such density, such utilization in the office, you know, that they need, you know, the directionality.

Um, that's why there's a 47 D for those types of environments. Um, it, you know, we think it's gonna be useful in those corporate enterprise, in auditoriums. It's gonna be useful in, uh, even some of our retail customers, um, you know, to help support six gig, uh, density, uh, in those environments.

This ap, uh, is specifically a 60 by 60, uh, square pattern. Um, it, you know, and so that gives the advantage of it, you know, it reduces the channel contention. It reduces, you know, the, the AP can't hear as well.

So it doesn't, there's other crap out there that doesn't care as much about it. And, uh, and clients also don't hear as many aps, which also turns out to be a big problem in, in these really dense environments. We, any plans in, uh, having like a 40 by 40 or 30 by 30?

Is that even doable? Like for the physics? No comment.

I, you know, this isn't a, uh, you know, one size fits all. Uh, you know, there's still absolutely a use for external antennas. You know, we, we released a AP 47 E with external antennas.

Uh, you know, especially in the more challenging environments like, you know, warehouse particularly, we use a long narrow pattern, uh, style antenna or high density where we don't have the 30 by 30 today and, uh, you know, other, other niche environments. Um, so as far as, you know, as far as some testing, here is a auditorium. This is a lecture hall at university.

It already had 45 E 45 E antennas, 45 E aps with directional antennas. Uh, in this particular beam, there's three aps. We just took down the AP 45 in the middle, put up the 47 D.

So from a, a results perspective, and you can't really make it out on the, uh, on the projector, but, uh, on the stream, you should be able to see the color difference. So the, in the middle, those two aps in the middle are the 47 D five gig and six gig. And then on the left and right on the top row, uh, are the existing 45 e's.

Uh, and so the, the coverage pattern between the 45 E, which is using a, um, you know, on paper a, like a 45 by 45 antenna, I think, um, is, uh, you know, the pattern is actually very similar, which is, uh, which is encouraging to see this particular customer was, uh, very happy. They're gonna actually go forward, you know, all their autonom going forward will be 47 d It gives them the added benefit of they can support low power indoor on the ap. They don't have to worry about standard power.

Um, and then for, uh, for comparison, the, the two bottom aps are omni 40 fives that just, you know, permeate everywhere in the room. Uh, so there's, you know, absolutely benefits for the directionality, um, you know, for this particular environment. Uh, so I just wanna show some, some real values, real testing.

So Why the two by two for the 47 D when it's expected to be used in higher dense, higher density spaces? Um, they didn't have full, uh, a full power. We didn't fully power it.

Okay? Mm-hmm. So the, you know, for this testing, we didn't really care about it.

Um, but yeah, just to note the, oh, So the, the product is four by four? Correct. Okay.

It just wasn't in this test. Correct. And, you know, so you, you can, you can account for that.

Just, you know, the, the signal strength doesn't match up exactly, you know, with the, uh, with the 45 e, you know, mostly be we, we actually see about a three DB difference, which is what you expect going from two by two to four by four. Okay. And then next piece, um, is dual five gigahertz and dual six gigahertz.

Uh, AP 47, uh, is capable of dual six gigahertz, um, as well as dual five on our previous aps. We've supported dual five as well. And I want to get into a little bit of the, uh, nuance that we've learned, uh, with dual five over the years.

So first is, you know, most vendors out there, and this is how we, you know, do our dual five have settled on this, this sign of, you know, of this kind of, uh, architecture where you have one radio that uses the lower portion of the Spectrum one radio that uses the higher portion of the spectrum, and you put a band pass filter in the middle so you, you know, you can achieve incredible interference rejection with, you know, with the colo co-located radios. Uh, same thing on six gig. You know, we're using Uni five, low band uni six, uh, uni seven and UNI eight as high.

And then, you know, uh, unify, uh, uni six as a guard band, which means for Europe, uh, and UK and other countries with 500 megahertz spectrum dual six, not useful right now for you. Um, however, actually today, 40 minutes ago, the UK had consultation, uh, for opening up the entire, uh, six gig band for, um, uh, you know, for indoor use. Um, this is consultation, they're taking feedback, um, it just closed.

But that would be actually very encouraging, um, for, you know, opening up the additional spectrum. And, you know, they also want to turn on, you know, a FC for outdoor use cases. Um, that would probably be longer term.

Uh, but if you read actually phase one, ideally by the end of 2025. So that's very fast in, uh, in spectrum timelines, regulatory timelines. So we'll see, you know, what actually comes back in the consultation.

Um, but this is what they want to do at, at least and would help with the, you know, dual six, uh, in, uh, in uk. And it said EU is still in planning. Do you, do you know what their, yeah, so EU had a, um, I forget what to call MRD or they had, they had their radio group cons, you know, consultation, uh, two years ago.

The next one is in 2028 or something. Oh, good lord. Um, and so they said we want to do it, but we'll decide by the next one.

Thank you. Yep. Um, so then what does that, you know, actually mean in terms of channelization?

Well, on dual six, oh, sorry, on dual five, you have eight channels on lower. And you know, depending on, you know, 16, 17 on higher AP 47, we support uni four. So there's actually 20 channels on the upper.

That channel mismatch, right? Is turns out to be a problem. It means that you can't just turn on dual five everywhere because then you've reduced the number of available channels that you have, right?

You run into channel reuse issues, especially if you do 40 megahertz, you have four aps before reuse issues on six gig, not so much of an issue, uh, because the, it's more equitable. There's a better balance now, you know, to just really drive home the 40 megahertz point. Uh, you can, you can see in here there's a lot of reuse.

Uh, so this is, um, this is like an example of what not to do, but it kind of drives my next conversation, which is, um, you know, let's, let's think about what are we actually trying to do. We're trying to increase the capacity on the network by having, you know, more available radios on, on five gig or six gig. So it turns out not all capacity issues are the same.

Kind of comes down to, Hey, maybe I need to add some more aps. Like my clients are u you know, using, there's no other capacity, there's no headroom. I need to add more aps.

Or, you know, conversely it could be, I have too many aps, I'm, I'm interfering with myself or a neighbor's interfering with me. And, and so that leads us to how do we actually, like, let's actually bake that into RRM from a, you know, we've had this auto conversion feature for many years. Um, it, it's worked incredibly well.

4 radio into five gig into six gig now on AP 47. But what we have seen is, in many instances, the radios that we're converting aren't actually the highest utilized aps that could benefit the most from that additional radio in five gig or six gig. That's what we wanna solve.

So today we have a density based approach where we're looking at the density of aps, do I have enough density to support, um, you know, this auto conversion or auto cancellation. What we are moving to is a capacity based approach. You know, sounds simple, uh, but there's actually a, like a lot that goes into it.

Um, and so we, we change our questioning from do I have enough density to, can I do it? Do I need it? Where do I need it?

Right? So can I do it? Is like, are there enough channels enabled in my configuration?

Uh, how many other aps do I hear? Like, you know, are, are there available channels from a capacity standpoint for me to do it? Um, like do I need it?

Meaning do I actually have the utilization characteristics to take advantage of, of, uh, you know, additional five gig radio or additional six gig radio? And then where do I need it, right? Where, where on the network do I need it?

So I I, on a previous MFP, I've shown this slide, which is we want to learn the behavior of the site. You know, what is the five gig utilization, six gig utilization, what is the roaming, how much dwell time? You know, all these, you know, things.

And so this, we are, we are learning, we are doing, and that feeds into this new, uh, you know, reimagination of the auto conversion part of RRM. So this, uh, this plot, uh, on the left hand side is, um, it's a, uh, you know, it's an environment. The blue aps are aps that we're happy with.

There's no, like, they're happy as they are, right? They have plenty of headroom. The red aps are aps that are the high utilized aps that are having capacity headroom issues.

These are candidates for auto conversion. On the right hand side is actually what the algorithm did, right? So the first step is we have to identify these high UAPs.

Second step is let's go, you know, let's actually go convert. So, you know, many environments, especially in retail, you may not have all the available channels. They may, you know, turn off some of the DFS channels.

So this is with 15 available channels in their, you know, in this configuration, um, the black APS turned out to be the APS that we actually converted. Um, and so this is, you know, okay, so what does that actually mean? Well, uh, here is, here's the outcome.

Looking at, um, looking at one of these aps, the blue lines before, and then the red and the green is after on both radios. So blue before, if the left hand side is the number of clients versus the number of samples. So there's, you know, fif, you know, mostly 15 to 25 clients on the ap.

Uh, after the nu you know, we had actually, uh, good distribution between the radios in terms of the number of clients that decreased utilization is on the graph on the right. Uh, utilization decreased significantly after. Was this going to dual five or dual set?

Uh, dual five. This is dual five. Um, this is a AP 43 customer.

Okay? And, uh, and, and then the actual throughput in the AP went up as well. So that's the entire goal of this exercise is how do we identify the aps where we have headroom issues, and then let's go figure out if we can alleviate that And, and going forward, how are you gonna make a decision between whether you go to a dual five or dual six?

Yep. So if you go, yes, we need more capacity, are you gonna look at like, how many clients on each bend? Or Is this, this is why we have to learn the behavior of the site.

We can make those decisions, we can make a bandwidth decision as well. Like, you know, do we, do we change the bandwidth? Do we change the band?

Do we go five, do we go six? Do we mix it? Yes.

That's why we need this. This is the foundation of understanding the behavior in the site. Then we can do all this other stuff.

And so this is gonna be sort of a, a, a learning thing that occurs after your missed network is up for six weeks. You then have the option of doing the thing because we've learned enough about your network, or is this gonna be a model that applies to all networks? Uh, this will be a learning based on your network.

Okay. Um, and so when you deploy, you know, we will do some stuff right away and then over time it'll get better. So, you know, it's, it's not like you're sitting there waiting.

Um, but over time we will, you know, even today we, you know, if you stand up missed aps, you know, the second day, third day the RM even gets better because we have that reinforcement learning loop. Okay. And this Would be part of that obvious, Okay.

Absolutely. I had a question. If you make those changes to the black ones, how do you know it was a good change Part of the reinforcement loop?

So we actually, we looked, so today we're already consuming our capacity, SLE and coverage, SLE and roaming sles. So we make a change. I should have put the slide in.

I was thinking about it. Uh, uh, so we make the change, we monitor, you know, these are representation of, of client experience. So if capacity goes down, that's a bad change, right?

If capacity goes up, if we're actually trying to improve our headroom. And so if the headroom goes up, then that's a good change. We stay today, we don't today, like in today's algorithm, we only go one way.

Um, we will go two ways in the new, uh, in the new world, Is there something plan to get rid of the other red ones? Um, the problem is, uh, in this particular case, uh, they also like how do, so how do we get to dual five? How do we get to dual six?

4 utilization. 4 utilization and not cause coverage gaps. Um, and the, the other problem is in this particular environment, they only have 15 available channels.

So if I convert more radios to dual five, I'm not actually picking up any capacity gains. But, But could it also recommend you should go to six gig and in this scenario you need different hardware, Correct? Correct.

Yeah, that would, so that is absolutely part of, uh, you know, we have to, we have to recognize when we've done all we can and there's simply no more capacity. Will customers be able to blend both a density approach and a capacity approach to, you know, the optimization of the site? 4 utilization.

Alright, So, so the reinforcement landing algorithm, you mentioned it takes into account capacity roaming, and what was it for e you mentioned Three of, uh, coverage. Coverage, yeah. Because has that changed recently?

Because did it used to just be capacity? It used to be, uh, capacity coverage. And two or three years ago, we introduced a roaming S leaf for the purpose of feeding into RRM.