By Vince Pandolfi, Consulting Systems Engineer, Service Provider 
The latest Wi-Fi physical layer standard 802.11ac, has been ratified and is enjoying widespread adpotion in the client device marketplace. The hype has been with us for a few years now proclaiming tremendous gains in throughput. The mechanisms 802.11ac uses to gain these speed improvements can also be used to improve client quality of experience and not necessarily just be used for higher data rates. The three key elements of a connect include distance, speed and reliability. These are in most cases mutually exclusive or at least have inverse relationships. You gain distance by trading throughput and reliabilty and gain throughput by trading distance and reliability. You can also achieve reliability by giving up distance and speed.
A service provider can potentially leverage all three depending on the service level agreements required.
I have published a paper to go through the 802.11ac enhancements and help both greenfield and brownfield deplyments in making these 802.11ac trade-off decisions and in understanding the available features to achieve the desired deployment goals. Watch this video to learn more about Optimizing & Monetizing WiFi.
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