3 Tips and Principles for Vendor Neutral Design with Wi-Fi 6e

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The advent of 6e has changed the way we design wirelessly. That doesn’t mean that you can ignore the fundamental principles of wireless, but it offers flexibility in how we design our networks. 

The new edition of the CWDP certification is a great start, but there are still some quick tips that may help you bridge the gap.

New Clients, New Concerns

Unlike 802.11ax itself (also called Wi-Fi 6), 6e isn’t something that can be feasibly just patched in with a lucky hardware set. A key part of the design is knowing the capabilities of your network, and the biggest part of your network is always the clients. 

This is something a lot of engineers, whether they’ve done the CWNA, CWDP, or even CWNE, still miss – we’re so conditioned to look at our computers and APs that we miss the simple fact that they’re not the things we have the most of, only what we have the most control over. 6e comes with a lot (and I mean a LOT, roughly 1.2 GHz) of brand-new spectrum. This gives us an opportunity we haven’t had before in Wi-Fi since its advent. 

We get to use a brand new spectral space that is incompatible physically and by protocol with the previous iterations. In Wi-Fi, everything has been completely at the mercy of backward compatibility. We’re driving home here because you need to leverage this when planning your network. 

Please influence your company's buying policy for devices. Know what you’ll have on the 6e band and be ruthless with it. You don’t have to allow BYOD on every network, and certainly not uncontrolled. Enjoy the rush; be a tyrant. Just this once.

Turn off or Severely Limit Your 2.4 Networks

Admittedly, I’m biased here. This tip may not make it into CWDP, but you should absolutely disable your 2.4 GHz networks. 2.4Ghz has been suffering for a long time, and almost every BYOD client and device currently being used should be dual-band, if not tri-band. 

Turn. It. Off. 

If you have essentials on the 2.4 Band, clear out all the BYOD and nonessential clients and make it a closed, at the very least, password-protected network. Ideally, you should block all the data hog destinations, too. This can be used to get people to move over to your 5Ghz. “On X date, X SSID will no longer support Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.” is a great way to get your clients to self-segregate to the networks you want them to.

This approach reduces local interference and spares your IoT or business-critical devices from competing on the crowded 2.4 GHz band. The CWDP curriculum explores exactly how and why localized interference can become a bottleneck. Paired with skill-building in advanced design and analysis, you’ll be fully prepared to optimize your wireless environment.

Don’t Rush it

As a break from the rest of the article here, don’t rush it. Just because the standard has been ratified and devices are starting to come out doesn’t mean you have to do your refresh now. Remember that with 802.11ac, we all had to wait nearly four years until we got really good, capable clients and APs. I’d advise you to wait and see. 

As a general rule, following the above, wait until you can reliably say that you’re going to have enough clients that 40% of them will, at the very least, support 802.11ax and at least 10% support 6e. What’s the point of spending an extra grand per device if no one can use it? There’s not one unless you need the tax write-off for capital investment. The last thing you want is your boss asking two months later how much of an effect all that money you spent is having… and not having a good answer for them. 

Remember that these are backward compatible in the 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz bands, so you don’t have to do it all at once. A phased upgrade is easier to sell for expenditure and allows you the time to make some institutional changes and make your migration plans. Remember that most controllers will support the next AP model and the last edition, but there are exceptions. Wireless engineers don’t have the luxury of not understanding all the pieces- even the wired ones, so take your time, make sure you understand it all first, and ease into it.  

Final Thoughts

Hopefully, this has given you some good ideas for approaching your next refresh or design in the Brave New World. If you’d like more information on how to complete your designs and standards to guide you, I highly suggest checking out CWDP after you finish your CWNA. Having niche expert knowledge is best served by an excellent foundation.