Wi-Fi 6 and mesh management – Is it a service provider necessity?

Wi-Fi 6 and mesh management – Is it a service provider necessity?

By Donovan C.E Smith MSc. CEng. MIET, C|EH, C|NDA, ECSA, Telecoms Engineering Consultant at Fine Point Technologies Inc.

For operators, the number of connected devices in the subscriber network continues to grow, and our solutions need to grow with them. The industry has evolved to the point where constant access is a priority irrespective of location within a particular household. From a consumer perspective, Quality of Experience (QoE) is the most important factor that will impact operators’ overall support costs and Average Revenue Per User (ARPU). A pristine consumer experience will help grow your customer base and ARPU, but a bad experience can and will do the exact opposite.

Wi-Fi is understood to be one of the “choke points” where the customer experience is affected. For example, gamers still avoid Wi-Fi due to inherent latency limitations, yet wired solutions are not viable from an installation perspective. Unless we have good visibility into WLAN performance and the ability to manage the solution, then growth, and instantiation of services on Wi-Fi will be limited.

Ensuring a pristine consumer experience

New Wi-Fi technologies (such as Wi-Fi 6 and so called “Mesh or “Whole Home” systems) have helped to mitigate these issues. Mesh Wi-Fi or Whole Home Wi-Fi systems consist of a main router that connects directly to your modem, and a series of satellite modules, or nodes, placed around your house for full Wi-Fi coverage. They are all part of a single wireless network and share the same SSID and password.

This therefore helps give the end-user more coverage and a more seamless experience, but managing and optimizing an end-user’s Wi-Fi network based on analytics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) is necessary to deliver on Service Level Agreements (SLAs), meet regulatory requirements, and ensure that pristine consumer experience. What performance metrics can we use, and how can we utilize them most effectively? How can industry standards help us?

Harnessing industry standards

Armed with this data and confidence in our hardware, we can move to management and optimization. Broadband Forum’s TR-181, that defines the Device:2 data model, contains all the necessary KPIs to enable managed Wi-Fi through the CPE WAN Management Protocol (TR-069), and its successor, the more efficient and future proof User Services Platform (USP/TR-369). The Device:2 data model’s Data Elements Object is based on the Wi-Fi Alliance’s Data Elements, an industry standard certification that enables both the remote capture of customer issues and the ability to proactively enact network changes before a customer is even aware of a problem.

This capacity covers not only the latest Wi-Fi standards, but also mesh deployments, giving service providers an unprecedented view deep into the customer’s network. The coverage and customer experience benefits of a mesh system can be fully realized with access to this telemetry. Additionally, the Device:2 data model contains even more configuration options than it has in the past, treating the Wi-Fi network as a single entity and acting in tandem with other in-home technologies that work together to deliver whole-home connectivity.

Ultimately, we must remember that the objectives of Wi-Fi 6 and mesh systems is to provide high data rates and quality connectivity in a typical Wi-Fi environment. By monitoring these KPIs and using automation to manage and optimize for the customer’s changing needs and changing environment, operators can deliver on their Quality of Experience promise to customers hungry for the services that the modern network offers.