Tuesday, November 29, 2011

WiFI News: Ruckus Wireless Introduces ChannelFly

Stephen Lawson reporting –

Ruckus Tackles Channel-changing in Wi-Fi:

Ruckus Wireless took another shot at optimizing Wi-Fi capacity on Monday, introducing a technology called ChannelFly that is designed to place network clients on the best possible channel based on the actual capacity of that channel.

Because Wi-Fi uses unlicensed radio spectrum, Wi-Fi networks are susceptible to interference from Bluetooth devices, microwave ovens and other spectrum users, as well as from other Wi-Fi systems. The two bands where it works, in the 2.4GHz and 5GHz ranges, can be divided into several channels. But the growing number of Wi-Fi devices and networks all have to contend for the use of those channels.

Intelligently assigning clients to the various channels is one way of making the best use of a network's capacity, and other vendors have targeted this solution. For example, in 2008, Aruba Networks introduced its Adaptive Radio Management 2.0 network management software, one purpose of which was making better channel assignments. Ruckus, which pioneered beamforming, another Wi-Fi optimization technique, said it has taken a new approach to picking channels with ChannelFly.

The software, which is available free for all Ruckus access points, determines how long it takes each packet to traverse the network in order to gauge the performance offered by each channel. It uses both current and cumulative results to predict which channel will be the best for a client to use. The access point communicates a change of channel to the client via the IEEE 802.11h standard.

By contrast, most other channel selection systems involve an access point passively listening for evidence of interference or congestion in adjacent bands, said David Stiff, director of product management at Ruckus. ChannelFly directly measures the impact of interference or congestion on actual packets.

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