Cisco Ushers in a New Wireless Era with Wi-Fi 6

Cisco is announcing solutions that can help customers embrace a new age of wireless connectivity.  Wi-Fi 6 (also known as 802.11ax) is the new standard for Wi-Fi networks.  Built on the same fundamental wireless innovations as 5G, these new standards could reshape how businesses and consumers interact with the world.  Beyond being faster than the previous generation, Wi-Fi 6 reportedly delivers up to 400 percent greater capacity and is effective in high-density settings, like large lecture halls, stadiums and conference rooms.  Latency is vastly improved, allowing for near real-time use cases.  Wi-Fi 6 is also easier on connected devices’ batteries and provides an overall more predictable user experience.

Cisco is rolling out several products and partnerships so that businesses can deliver a genuinely unplugged and uninterrupted experience.

• Wi-Fi 6 Access Points: New access points across the Catalyst and Meraki portfolios go beyond providing the new Wi-Fi 6 standard.  With custom, programmable chipsets and access to analytics capabilities, Cisco’s latest APs deliver a more secure wireless network.  The new access points are also multilingual, with the ability to communicate with multiple IoT protocols, including BLE, Zigbee, and Thread.
• Core Switch for the Campus Network: The Catalyst 9600 core switch family will serve as the foundation central to any network’s successful operation.  To deliver a secure and efficient wireless experience, organizations need a single networking fabric that brings wired and wireless together.  Built as the next evolution of the Catalyst 6000, the Catalyst 9600 will be ideal for the next generation of intent-based business networks.
• New Developer Resources: Wi-Fi 6 and 5G represent an incredible opportunity for developers.  To enable them to create the immersive experiences that these new levels of connectivity promise, Cisco DevNet is unveiling a new wireless developer center.  DevNet, Cisco’s developer network, offers the learning labs, sandboxes and developer resources needed to create wireless applications.  The Cisco Catalyst and Meraki access platforms are open and programmable all the way down to the chipset level, allowing applications to take advantage of network programmability in new ways.
• New Ecosystem Partnerships: Prior to the launch of its Wi-Fi 6 access points, Cisco completed interoperability testing with Broadcom, Intel, and Samsung to address the inevitable gaps that come with a new standard.  Samsung, Boingo, GlobalReach, Presidio and others are expected to join the Cisco OpenRoaming project, which aims to make it easier to hop between Wi-Fi and LTE networks and onboard public Wi-Fi.