WLAN Bandwidth Management Is Critical in the Era of Hybrid Work

The WLAN Upgrade

Wireless LAN (WLAN) usage is rising, and many organizations’ networks are not ready to support the load. Although organizations are hesitant to move to a full-time remote work arrangement, a significant number are adopting a hybrid work model. In a recent Gallup survey, 42% of respondents said they work a hybrid schedule and 53% said they expect a hybrid arrangement long-term. Among hybrid workers, 38% said they would look for another job if their employer did not allow remote work at least part of the time.

To support these trends, organizations are moving toward a more flexible office environment. On one hand, anyone who comes into the office can use unassigned workspaces. And on the other hand, installing more huddle rooms and small team conferences. All these changes contemplate the need of meeting and connect with others who are working remotely.

In most cases, these workers are not using wired network connections. On the contrary, they are depending on Wi-Fi to support all of their devices. For many organizations, there’s a WLAN upgrade necessity to provide the capacity and coverage required for hybrid work. However, bandwidth management is also critical to maximizing performance, productivity and revenue.

Bandwidth Management Techniques

Bandwidth management determines how many devices, what types of applications, and how much data the WLAN can support without performance issues or interference. There are several techniques for managing bandwidth.

One technique is to simply place limits on how much bandwidth an individual device is allowed to use. This technique, called policing, sets a maximum traffic rate for various classes of service. Traffic that exceeds this limit drops or transmits with a lower priority. Policing doesn’t take into account varying bandwidth requirements for individual users, but it can be effective in preventing Denial of Service (DoS) attacks.

Traffic shaping places excess traffic packets in a queue for incremental transmission, resulting in a smoother output rate. This approach slows or stops wireless traffic instead of cutting it off as policing does, but it can still create a negative user experience.

Quality of Service (QoS) policies ensure high-performance levels during periods of heavy traffic congestion that exceed the WLAN’s capabilities. QoS prioritizes certain types of traffic, allocating more bandwidth to latency-sensitive traffic such as voice and video and less bandwidth to lower-priority traffic.

Getting the Right Mix

Dynamic traffic shaping provides organizations with the best of both worlds. Groups of users are assigned shared pools of bandwidth. Each pool of bandwidth expands as the group grows to ensure equal bandwidth distribution and high-performance levels.

Dynamic traffic shaping allocates bandwidth by recognizing the application in use, not just the port on which the application is running. It can prevent a user or group from “hogging” bandwidth to ensure that everyone has access to the bandwidth and prioritize mission-critical applications.

Organizations can employ several other techniques to improve Wi-Fi performance. Load balancing distributes traffic among Wi-Fi access points, while dynamic airtime sharing prevents older, slower devices from dragging down performance for the rest of the network. Band steering moves dual-band clients off the 2.4GHz band and onto the less-crowded 5GHz band.

As the demands on the WLAN continue to increase in the hybrid work environment, choosing the right bandwidth management technique is essential. This involves significant testing, planning, and assessments of the wireless infrastructure and application requirements. Let Rahi help you implement a customized bandwidth management strategy for your organization’s specific needs.