Wi-Fi 6已准备好进入黄金时段

Wi-Fi联盟周一发布了Wi-fi6设备的认证标准，标志着这项技术已经为黄金时代做好了准备。

该认证计划向购买者保证，带有Wi-Fi认证6标签的产品将在支持ieee802.11ax的设备上提供最佳的用户体验。

英特尔无线解决方案集团总经理埃里克·麦克劳克林（Eric McLaughlin）说：“Wi-Fi 6是过去十年来WiFi领域最大的进步。”Wi-Fi Certified 6可确保整个行业的产品充分发挥Wi-Fi 6所承诺的潜力，并提供用户体验。”

Wi-Fi Certified 6支持多种不同需求的设备，从要求苛刻的企业环境中需要最高性能的设备到智能家庭或工业物联网设置中需要低延迟和低功耗的设备。

Wi-Fi联盟首席执行官埃德加·菲格罗亚说：“Wi-Fi Certified 6正在开创WiFi的新时代，它以WiFi的核心特性为基础，为用户在每一个环境中提供更好的性能，为服务提供商提高对客户的覆盖范围提供更大的网络容量，并为高级应用带来新的机遇。”Wi-Fi认证6将改善连通性，包括在高密度位置和物联网环境中。”

更好的吞吐量

Wi-Fi 6包括了一些创新，可以提高网络性能，并减少向网络中添加设备可能导致的延迟。

“Wi-Fi 6的效率更高，因为它使用的是从蜂窝世界借来的OFDM（正交频分复用）”，加州圣迭戈安全WiFi路由器制造商Gryphon的首席执行官John Wu说。

正交频分复用（OFDM）将多个窄带信道上不同频率的数据流分开，以减少干扰和串扰。这允许更有效地共享信道，以提高网络效率，并在高需求环境中降低上行链路和下行链路流量的延迟。

Wu告诉TechNewsWorld：“它的性能提高了大约36%，因此整体结构可以更有效地使用。”。

ODFM是Wi-fi6的几个创新之一，应该能吸引消费者。其他一些是多用户MIMO，它改进了对网络上并发用户的支持；1024-QAM（1024正交幅度调制模式），它通过在相同频谱中编码更多数据来增加WiFi设备的吞吐量；以及目标等待时间，其目的是提高电池寿命。

加利福尼亚州库比蒂诺的Juniper Networks旗下IT基础设施公司Mist的产品营销总监Christian Gilby说：“通过OFDMA、1024-QAM和MU-MIMO等增强功能，客户可以期望看到更好的整体网络吞吐量和客户密度。”。

对于像物联网这样的功率敏感设备，目标等待时间有可能将电池寿命提高7倍，”他告诉TechNewsWorld。

只有当网络上的设备支持Wi-Fi 6时，这些好处才能实现。

“很多设备还没有升级到Wi-Fi 6客户端，”吴说，“所以大多数人看不到他们现有设备的任何改进。”

要求更好的安全性

Wi-Fi认证6要求供应商支持WPA3。

WPA3是Wi-Fi联盟发布的最新WiFi网络安全标准。新标准比其前身WPA2有几处改进。例如，它要求对公共网络上的通信进行加密，比如机场和咖啡店的网络。

这也使得破解密码变得更加困难，更容易通过暴力攻击来破解密码，并且更容易使用显示界面有限或没有显示界面的设备来设置安全性。

然而，在WP3协议中已经发现了严重的缺陷，这使得它对密码猜测攻击的抵抗力低于其作者最初的设想。

“鉴于我们提出的攻击，我们认为WPA3不符合现代安全协议的标准。此外，我们相信，如果Wi-Fi联盟以更开放的方式创建WPA3认证，我们的攻击本可以避免，”纽约大学阿布扎比分校（New York University Abu Dhabi）的博士后研究员马蒂·范霍夫（Mathy Vanhoef）和特拉维夫大学（Tel Aviv University）和库鲁文（KU Leuven）的博士后研究员埃亚尔·罗南（Eyal Ronen）在今年春季发表的一篇论文中写道。

Wi-Fi联盟提出了对策建议，以应对研究人员的发现，但在8月，Vanhoef和Ronen发现了由推荐的对策引发的一系列新的弱点。

毫无疑问，WPA3被称赞为对现有协议的改进。

“我们将在今年晚些时候支持WPA3作为我们所有路由器的软件更新，”吴说我们认为这将提高整个网络的安全性。”

为网状网制造

马萨诸塞州韦兰Endpoint Technologies Associates总裁罗杰L.凯（Roger L.Kay）表示，Wi-Fi 6的另一个优点是专为网状网络设计。

“在家里，这将是非常好的，”他告诉TechNewsWorld。

由于WiFi使用更高频率的信号，这些信号的穿透力和距离都会降低，因此在家中重复信号变得更加重要。

Kay说：“在网状网络中，你不必买一台路由器，而是买四台，然后把它们扔在家里，这样它们就可以互相识别，建立起一个网络，以最智能的方式传送信息。”。

“那不会马上就来的，”他补充道马上就要推出许多针对这一点的架构。”

尽管Wi-Fi联盟已经为新wifi6设备打开了进入市场的大门，但这并不是一个闸门。

Mist的Gilby说：“WiFi在过去的20年里经历了多种标准的传输，主流采用的主要驱动力是客户端设备。”。

他解释说：“它们与技术可用性以及设备和基础设施的多年更新周期的依赖性有关。”。

“Wi-Fi 6在大多数客户中加速部署可能需要一到两年的时间，”Gilby预测，“最初，我们预计会看到早期部署主要在选定的垂直领域，比如高等教育，后者的设备密度非常高，而且往往对新的技术周期不抱风险。”

原文题：Wi-Fi 6 Is Ready for Prime Time

原文：The Wi-Fi Alliance on Monday released certification standards for Wi-Fi 6 devices, signaling that the technology is ready for prime time.

The certification program assures buyers that products carrying the Wi-Fi Certified 6 label will deliver the best user experience with devices supporting IEEE 802.11ax.

"Wi-Fi 6 is the greatest advancement to WiFi in the last decade," said Eric McLaughlin, general manager of Intel's Wireless Solutions Group. "Wi-Fi Certified 6 ensures that products across the industry will live up to the full potential and deliver user experiences promised by Wi-Fi 6."

Wi-Fi Certified 6 supports many devices with diverse demands -- from those requiring peak performance in demanding enterprise environments to those requiring low latency and low power in smart homes or industrial Internet of Things settings.

"Wi-Fi Certified 6 is ushering in a new era of WiFi, building on WiFi's core characteristics to provide better performance in every environment for users, greater network capacity for service providers to improve coverage for their customers, and new opportunities for advanced applications," said Wi-Fi Alliance CEO Edgar Figueroa. "Wi-Fi Certified 6 will deliver improvements in connectivity, including in high-density locations and IoT environments."

Better Throughput

Wi-Fi 6 includes innovations to create faster network performance and to decrease the latency that can result from adding devices to a network.

"Wi-Fi 6 is more efficient because it's using OFDM (orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing), which is borrowed from the cellular world," said John Wu, CEO of Gryphon, a maker of secure WiFi routers in San Diego, California.

OFDM breaks up a data stream across several narrowband channels at different frequencies to reduce interference and crosstalk. That allows for the more effective sharing of channels to increase network efficiency and lower latency for both uplink and downlink traffic in high-demand environments.

"It's about 36 percent better, so the overall structure can be used more efficiently," Wu told TechNewsWorld.

ODFM is one of several innovations in Wi-Fi 6 that should charm consumers. Others are multi-user MIMO, which improves support for concurrent users on the network; 1024-QAM (1024 quadrature amplitude modulation mode), which increases throughput in WiFi devices by encoding more data in the same amount of spectrum; and target wait time, which is designed to improve battery life.

"Customers can expect to see better overall network throughput and client density with enhancements like OFDMA, 1024-QAM and MU-MIMO that improve efficiency and parallel transmissions," observed Christian Gilby, director of product marketing at Mist, a Juniper Networks-owned IT infrastructure company in Cupertino, California.

For power-sensitive devices like IoT, target wait time has the potential to boost battery life by up to seven times," he told TechNewsWorld.

Those benefits can be realized only if the devices on the network support Wi-Fi 6.

"A lot of devices aren't upgraded yet to Wi-Fi 6 clients," Wu said, "so most people won't see any improvement on their current devices."

Mandating Better Security

Wi-Fi Certified 6 requires that vendors support WPA3.

WPA3 is the latest security standard for WiFi networks released by the Wi-Fi Alliance. The new standard offers several improvements over its predecessor WPA2. For example, it requires encryption of communication on public networks, like those at airports and coffee shops.

It also makes it tougher to crack a password with a brute force attack, and it's easier to set up security with devices that have limited or no display interface.

However, serious flaws already have been discovered in the WP3 protocol, which make it less resistant to password-guessing attacks than its authors originally envisioned.

"In light of our presented attacks, we believe that WPA3 does not meet the standards of a modern security protocol. Moreover, we believe that our attacks could have been avoided if the Wi-Fi Alliance created the WPA3 certification in a more open manner," Mathy Vanhoef, a postdoctoral researcher at New York University Abu Dhabi, and Eyal Ronen, a postdoctoral researcher at Tel Aviv University and KU Leuven, wrote in a paper published this spring.

The Wi-Fi Alliance made recommendations for countermeasures to address the researchers' findings, but in August, Vanhoef and Ronen found a new set of weaknesses spawned by the recommended countermeasures.

Neverthless, WPA3 is being praised as an improvement over the existing protocol.

"We'll support WPA3 as a software update to all our routers later this year," Wu said. "That's something that we feel will increase the security of the overall network."

Made for Mesh Nets

Another plus of Wi-Fi 6 is it's designed for mesh networks, observed Roger L. Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies Associates in Wayland, Massachusetts.

"In the home, that's going to be very good," he told TechNewsWorld.

As WiFi uses higher-frequency signals, the penetration and distance of those signals is reduced, so repeating signals throughout the home becomes more important.

"With a mesh network, instead of buying one router, you can buy four and chuck them around your home where they can identify each other and set themselves up as a network and move information around in the most intelligent ways possible," Kay said.

"That's not coming right away," he added. "What's coming right away is a lot of the architecture for that."

Although the Wi-Fi Alliance has opened the gate for new Wi-Fi 6 devices to start entering the market, it isn't a floodgate.

"Having been through multiple standards transmissions in the past 20 years of WiFi, the main driver for mainstream adoption is the client devices," Mist's Gilby said.

"They are tied to the dependencies of both technology availability and the multiyear refresh cycles of devices and infrastructure," he explained.

"It will likely take one to two years until Wi-Fi 6 deployments accelerate across most customers," Gilby predicted, "and initially we expect to see early deployments primarily in selected verticals, such as higher education, which has very high device densities and tends to be risk-averse to new technology cycles."

作者：Richard Adhikari

原文网站：https://www.technewsworld.com/story/86245.html