A friend of mine recently wrote about the "joys" of having slow internet in the Grand Bahamas. Of course, he was there on vacation; vacation is just a word in the dictionary to me. I'm the type of person who used to send stories using a 300 baud acoustic modem on a pay phone. That was slow!
But, for today's work, we need the fastest Internet possible in our offices and workplaces. In fact, more than ever, whether we're working from home, at the office, or a combination of both, we need fast Internet with a capital "F."
As analyst firm CCS Insight found in its latest 2022 Employee Workplace Technology Survey, 37% of respondents said slow networks were the biggest source of connectivity frustration. Bad mobile signals follow, 30%; Unreliable home Wi-Fi, 29%; and corporate Wi-Fi, 29%.
I feel your pain.
I'm working from our Myrtle Beach condo this week with their 5 Mbps DSL Internet connection. Oh how I miss the Gigabit connection in my home office!
I got my nose rubbed at how bad this was when a recent Zoom meeting snuck into oblivion. Today, as counted by CCS Insight, businesses are relying on video conferencing programs like Microsoft Teams and Zoom like never before. In 2021, the use of online video conferencing increased by 50%.
At the same time, old phone calls are rapidly losing popularity. Their survey showed that calls to desk phones and cell phones were down 20%. Instead, people use instant messaging systems like Slack and, you guessed it, video conferencing apps.
By comparison, a phone call, even if made using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), can take as little as 100 kilobits per second (Kbps). A Zoom group call requires a minimum of 1 Mbps upload and 600 Kbps download per user. (In practice, you'd triple those bandwidth requirements.)
Looking ahead, CCS Insight and its ilk see desk phone usage declining rapidly over the next 12 months. Instead, we will see voice and video calls grow strongly.
This will have two business impacts.
The first is that you'll need faster internet speeds to meet the demands of video conferencing. Second, it's time you reconsidered how much you're paying for PBX and traditional phone services.
I'm not saying it's time to empty your PBX, it's not. But I can see the final end of business landlines from here.
Of course, your home workers need all the fast internet they've got. They may not share an Internet connection with a dozen other employees. Still, they're likely to share it with kids playing video games and family members watching "The Batman" in 4K resolution on HBO Max.
While faster internet access in the last mile helps, you need more than that; you also need to speed up your local office network and Wi-Fi.
For actual speed, you still can't beat Gigabit Ethernet. Wi-Fi is all well and good, but it will never replace Ethernet cable to servers and routers.
However, for most users, Wi-Fi is where it is.
If you haven't upgraded your Wi-Fi hotspots and meshes since 2020, it's time to upgrade.
What you should be looking for is a device that supports Wi-Fi 6, also known as 802.11ax.
The main reason for the update is that Wi-Fi 6 offers a nearly 40% increase in pure performance over its immediate predecessor, Wi-Fi 5.
Behind the raw speed boost, Wi-Fi 6 also uses multiple user, multiple input, multiple output (MU-MIMO) and orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) to allow the Wi-Fi router to split connections into eight simultaneous transmissions. . The net result is four times the effective bandwidth per user.
Another feature of Wi-Fi 6, Target Wake Time (TWT), is a beneficial energy saving system. Allows Wi-Fi 6 devices to go to sleep until they need to send and receive data. This gives useful Internet of Things (IoT) devices like security cameras and video doorbells better battery life. It also helps smartphones and laptops.
You can get Wi-Fi 6 gear for as little as $70, but you don't want to come cheap unless you have no other choice.
The cheapest PC doesn't have the processor power and multi-gigabit ports needed for peak performance. Decent handsets, like the TP-Link Archer range and the Asus ZenWiFi ET8, are priced between €200 and €500.
If you want even more speed and the ability to handle dozens or hundreds of devices, you'll want to upgrade to Wi-Fi 6E. In particular, Wi-Fi 6E can handle multiple Internet addresses.
It happens more often than you think. Today, every piece of equipment in your home, including your refrigerator and washing machines, can have its own IP address.
Wi-Fi 6E is also faster than Wi-Fi 6. In fact, the Netgear Orbi Wi-Fi 6E is the first Wi-Fi router I've tested capable of delivering a Gigabit per second signal over the air.
That's the good news. The bad news is that Wi-Fi 6E hardware is expensive.
Prices start at around €400, and my Orbi Wi-Fi 6E Mesh set me back €1,500. On the other hand, it also covers two 3,500-square-foot buildings.
So you get what you pay for.
Finally, when considering the future of your Internet and network, remember that a network is only as fast as its slowest link.
If your laptops, for example, are still using the outdated 802.11n Wi-Fi chipsets, they still can't go faster than 300Mbps, even if they're sitting on top of a 6E router pumping out 1Gbps.
Copyright © 2022 IDG Communications, Inc.