NSI understands the purpose of a wireless network is Information Transportation; to deliver data, voice and video traffic with the lowest latency and packet loss possible. Whether you need a secure indoor solution, an outdoor point-to-point using radio-frequency (rf) or microwave, or a fully meshed network, NSI has the experience and solutions to help you achieve your information transportation goals. NSI has forged strong vendor relationships with Strix Systems, Meru Networks, Cisco, Bridgewave, Proxim and 3Com. Our Certified Wireless Engineers can provide consulting, design, site surveys, implementation, knowledge exchange and custom support plans to meet all your wireless needs.

The IEEE 802.11 committee has developed a new standard for wireless communication, called 802.11n, which supports over 6 times the peak data rate of the current 802.11a/g standards. More than any previous standard, 802.11n is a complex framework that encompasses a variety of different options for spectrum usage, antennas, physical layer encoding, and medium access layer enhancements. Briefly, the 802.11n standard is designed to support higher capacity with longer range by leveraging three key principles:

• Doubling the spectrum per channel, from 20MHz to 40MHz, to increase the raw hertz per channel.
• Significantly enhancing the baseband, using 64QAM encoding and multiple transmit and receive chains that work in concert using MIMO (multiple-input/multiple-output) technology, to increase the number of raw bits/hertz.
• Significantly enhancing the MAC protocol efficiency, including block transmissions, delayed block acknowledgements, and better aggregation of frames, to yield an increased fraction of effective bits/raw bit.

Working in concert, these principles—more spectrum, higher data rates, and higher efficiency—yield an excess of 160Mbps of best case end-to-end application layer throughput, which is over six times the corresponding best case throughput for the 802.11a/g standards. With this increased capacity, it will be possible to effectively unwire enterprises and serve all voice, video, and data requirements with a network where wireless is the primary form of access.

The impact of 802.11n in the consumer space is fairly clear and essentially all positive, higher capacity, higher range, and higher reliability...Enterprises are also poised to reap these benefits and transform the way they use wireless from a usage model of convenience where wireless is a secondary form of access for a few casual data applications like email and the web to a strategic one where wireless is the primary form of access for all applications including the most business-critical like VoIP or video. That said, there are important deployment considerations that must be addressed to achieve the greatest advantage in the most cost effective manner. The transition from 802.11abg to 802.11n marks potentially the most powerful shift in the enterprise since the transition from the hub to the switch, because it encompasses not only a change in the wireless network, but quite possibly the wired network, network architecture, wirelessly enabled applications, and ultimately, end-user behavior.

Please contact an NSI Wireless Network Specialist to assist you with your Wireless Information Transportation (972) 641-7426.