More Smart Wi-Fi from Ruckus

Ruckus Wireless has introduced two new Smart Wi-Fi technologies, SmartWay and BeamFlex+, which simplify the administration and improve the performance of mobile devices and traffic over wireless networks.

The proliferation of mobile devices within organisations of all types is creating new performance and management challenges for IT administrators. Not only are users now armed with multiple Wi-Fi-enabled devices that are much more mobile in nature compared to traditional laptops, but network infrastructure services and devices, such as printers, projectors, digital media receivers and file servers, are becoming mobile with the integration of Wi-Fi.

‚”Network services devices that have historically been accessible through wired Ethernet connections are now integrating Wi-Fi to provide greater deployment flexibility,‚” said Steve Martin, VP of Engineering for Ruckus Wireless. ‚”For these devices to be accessible by users on Wi-Fi networks, they must advertise themselves. These advertisements, often performed by multicast protocols such as Bonjour or UPnP, create unique challenges that administrators must struggle to solve.‚”

Real Problems that Need Smarter Answers

New mobile devices such as Apple iPhones, iPads and AppleTV operating on Wi-Fi networks can generate large volumes of traffic as these multicast protocols constantly advertise the availability of the devices. This broadcast traffic is transmitted at lower speeds and spills across the entire wireless local area network (WLAN), slowing down the performance and capacity of WLANs.

Beyond controlling new mobile traffic on Wi-Fi networks, the use of mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones present new performance and connectivity problems as the orientation of these devices constantly change.

With the typical use of mobile devices, users don’t always hold them perfectly vertical or horizontal. Consequently, Wi-Fi signals are transmitted and received improperly. This causes a signal imbalance between the communication of Wi-Fi access points (APs) and client devices, resulting in the degradation of Wi-Fi performance. The new Ruckus SmartWay and BeamFlex+ technologies were specifically developed to solve these problems.

Introducing SmartWay: Beyond Bonjour Bridging

Ruckus SmartWay is a new Smart Wi-Fi software technology that not only simplifies the administration and optimisation of service discovery traffic, such as Apple Bonjour and UPnP protocols over Smart Wi-Fi networks, it also supports advanced facilities to restrict or ‚”fence‚” these services to a given access point, group of access points or a particular geographic area.

Ideally suited for K-12 and higher education environments, SmartWay helps organisations enable users with Apple devices to exploit other resources on their networks. For example, SmartWay makes Apple Bonjour services such as AirPrint, AirPlay, and the Apple Filing Protocol (AFP) used in wireless printers and multimedia devices usable and controllable across subnets.

Current competitive approaches simply bridge all multicast traffic (e.g. Bonjour) between two virtual LANs (VLANs) or bridge the traffic from a single VLAN to all VLANs on a service-by-service basis. This means that a given service, such as Apple TV, becomes available everywhere – creating security concerns as resources are visible in undesired locations.

Without SmartWay a teacher, for instance, can use AirPlay to transmit from an iPad to the Apple TV in the classroom only if both devices are on the same subnet. But now, with SmartWay support for Bonjour, the teacher can access any AppleTV as well as have any student transmit from their iPad (on the student Wi-Fi network) to the Apple TV (on a different Wi-Fi network).

Wi-Fi deployments supporting multicast traffic such as Bonjour or UPnP can quickly get out of control if not scaled properly. Rather than flooding the network with traffic from all devices and subnets, Ruckus SmartWay selectively bridges this traffic to the subnets of choice.

Ruckus is natively integrating SmartWay support for bridging Bonjour and other multicast traffic directly into its ZoneFlexsoftware system. This allows service discovery traffic to be selectively bridged across subnets to enable large-scale deployments without overloading the network.

Introducing BeamFlex+: Adapting Wi-Fi Signals to Changing Device Orientation

Another Smart Wi-Fi innovation, Ruckus BeamFlex+ adds essential technology to Ruckus-patented BeamFlex adaptive antenna arrays. BeamFlex+ is ‚”polarisation-agnostic‚” and automatically adjusts to deliver the best performance, regardless of the way in which client devices are sending Wi-Fi signals.

As mobile devices change their orientation, BeamFlex+ enables Ruckus access points to ensure the highest possible throughput. Simply altering the orientation of a mobile device or the angle of a laptop can cause dramatic changes in Wi-Fi performance and reliable connectivity. Traditional access points typically don’t have the ability to optimise or adapt to these types of changes within new, mobile device-rich Wi-Fi environments.

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