IT@Intel: Building a Faster, More Secure Enterprise Network with Wi-Fi 6

IT Best Practices: Intel IT is enabling business transformation on Intel campuses around the world by standardizing on Wi?Fi for wireless LAN (WLAN) access. Our exclusive use of a wireless infrastructure helps to improve employee mobility, job satisfaction, and productivity—as well as deliver network access in new construction faster and at lower cost. Today, about […]

IT Best Practices: Intel IT is enabling business transformation on Intel campuses around the world by standardizing on Wi?Fi for wireless LAN (WLAN) access. Our exclusive use of a wireless infrastructure helps to improve employee mobility, job satisfaction, and productivity—as well as deliver network access in new construction faster and at lower cost.

Today, about 75 percent of Intel’s workforce uses the wireless network as their main method of connectivity. Real?time services are challenging to support over Wi?Fi, and we closely monitor and manage reliability and stability of applications like voice and video. Other real?time services, such as chip design, requires consistent connection. This typically requires a wired LAN. Based on recent proofs of concept, we decided to upgrade to Wi?Fi 6 on two Intel campuses. This decision was based on the limitations Wi?Fi 5 presents in terms of latency, bandwidth, and radio frequency (RF) channel management. Wi?Fi 6 provides concurrent multi?user transmit/ receive modes, faster speeds, and more capacity. These features enable new use cases in the workplace, and they enable a shift of existing use cases that have traditionally used wires, such as latency?sensitive design applications, to use WLAN.

Intel IT is working to provide a seamless and reliable network experience, covering all existing and future use cases. Upgrading to Wi?Fi 6 can help solve our WLAN challenges and enable new use cases to further increase the penetration in the campus access network.