Xirrus Founder, Dirk Gates, Tells Us What’s Coming in WiFI

We were extremely lucky to be visited by Xirrus founder, Dirk Gates on Thursday 24 March at the Mantra in South Bank, Brisbane. He doesn’t visit often from the USA so it was a rare privilege to hear about what’s coming in WiFi from the man in the know.

The biggest takeaways from the meeting with Dirk Gates was the technology that we should be preparing for. Fleeting is the day of 2.4 GHz and everyone should be moving towards 5GHz radios if they haven’t already. The next wave will be introducing 60GHz for in-room WiFi solutions such as purely wireless or cable-free office spaces. Since this technology is so new, it’s exciting to see where the 60GHz WiFi (aka Super Wi-Fi or TV White Space) will progress in terms of end user solutions.

The high density office is a new concept that we’re already rolling out for a few customers. These customers are risk-takers and we applaud their commitment to early adoption of these new technologies. A purely wireless office allows its employees to essentially work anywhere. Users aren’t constrained to a desk. Dirk Gates mentioned that if he were to redesign the Australian Xirrus office today, there would be no cabled telephones or ethernet cables installed.

We’ll also see the movement of some technologies back to 900GHz for lower power, greater range solutions with 802.11ah. Software Defined Networks (SDN) that allow you to reconfigure your wireless network on the fly frequently and by compartments such as individual classes will allow you to flexibly alter your wireless configurations to select the best frequencies for each segments requirements.

We’re already seeing businesses using new APIs for location-based tracking and sharing information. It’s the sharing of information between devices that will introduce some major changes in the future. Devices sharing things is something that will become a norm within our daily lives within the decade.

The EasyPass application recently released by Xirrus was discussed, highlighting the power to have a one-touch sign-in for Google documents. For businesses that have moved to a purely Google Drive environment they no longer have a directory, making user authentication a problem. Xirrus’ Easy Pass gets around this with this simple application. If this is you, talk to us about having one installed today.

The Round Table Discussion

Following Dirk Gates’ informative presentation we had a round table discussion about the biggest challenges facing our customers right now. The Internet of Things (IoT) is a challenge for some industries such as the medical industry, whereas the education sector is mostly consumed with capacity planning for BYOD technologies in their schools.

We had a solid discussion around the Multi-user MIMO (AC Wave 2) and the full power that can bring to any business. You can split up streams of data so that concurrent streams are talking at the same time. This relieves significant stress on your wireless network and ensures the best possible speed amongst multiple devices.

For example, Xirrus can have 16 radios operating from only one cable drop that caters to thousands of devices. The customisation of wireless installations performed by businesses such as Laminar can ensure these installations place only the arrays that you need to complete this top-end solution.

Virtualisation was also touched on when talking about the ability to deliver heavy-loaded data to BYOD. For example, we have one school who uses virtualisation to teach AutoCad to their classes. Cool, right?

The Feedback

We received feedback forms at the end of the event and the general consensus was the same across the board. Those that attended did so primarily to hear about what’s coming in WiFi so that they can prepare a roadmap for their IT. All attendees would happily attend another seminar with a similar round table discussion format this year and some also thought the idea of introducing some webinars might be helpful. Let us know what you think here.

Dirk Gates and his Xirrus team were very complimentary about the large turnout for the event particularly considering the short notice. Many thanks to everyone who came along. We really appreciate the effort.

Dirk Gates isn’t a speaker that we can get a hold of every time, however, just getting the brilliant minds of our top IT customers in one room was a great experience and everyone learned something new.

Even though some of your weren’t able to attend, if there’s any of this information that you’d like to learn more about drop us a line and we’ll get in touch. For those that did attend get in touch if there’s anything you’d like to investigate further.