All marketing is aspirational. Quoted throughput and user counts are hopeful at best. All IT professionals know this. In this episode, Tom Hollingsworth is joined by Kerry Kulp, Scott McDermott, and Mark Houtz as they discuss the inflated claims of marketing teams and how they factor into buying decisions. They also discuss how Wi-Fi compares to other technologies and why the enterprise experience is vastly different from the consumer perspective. Lastly, they provide some ideas for keeping a grasp on reality when it comes to working with Wi-Fi numbers.
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Wi-Fi Marketing Numbers are Lies
All marketing is aspirational. Quoted throughput and user counts are hopeful at best. All IT professionals know this. In this episode, Tom Hollingsworth is joined by Kerry Kulp, Scott McDermott, and Mark Houtz as they discuss the inflated claims of marketing teams and how they factor into buying decisions. They also discuss how Wi-Fi compares to other technologies and why the enterprise experience is vastly different from the consumer perspective. Lastly, they provide some ideas for keeping a grasp on reality when it comes to working with Wi-Fi numbers.
When you see the numbers on the data sheet for an access point, you can bet those are the ideal conditions for a single user as close to the device as possible. Unlike traditional wired networking, wireless has a lot of characteristics which can degrade communications. Despite being marketed as gigabit-capable very few users actually see those kinds of numbers under the best of circumstances.
This is especially true in the continual release of new specifications. These have received marketing terminology, replacing standards designations with simple numbering schemes. Wi-Fi 7 has to be better than Wi-Fi 6 because it’s higher, right? However, the speed numbers are only part of the story. New standards often reduce latency or provide better efficiency. Some even focus more on the crowded enterprise space instead of making consumer devices faster. Even if your AP is running at full speed in your house you may not see the same performance in an office building when the deployment is running with more efficient channel sizes to handle the extra clients.
Rather than obsess over the fastest possible speeds it is better to steer them toward more useful metrics, such as efficiency. These utility aspects make it simpler for people to see that while the speeds may not be the fastest they’ve ever seen they’re experiencing more coverage and reliability instead of peak throughput followed by bad connectivity.
Podcast Information:
Tom Hollingsworth is the Networking Analyst for The Futurum Group and Event Lead for Tech Field Day. You can connect with Tom on LinkedIn and X/Twitter. Find out more on his blog or on the Tech Field Day website.
Kerry Kulp is a founding partner at Velaspan. You can connect with Kerry on Twitter or on LinkedIn and find out more about Velaspan on their website.
Mark Houtz, Senior Network Engineer with a passion for Private LTE/5G and Wifi networks for Education and Business. You can connect with Mark on LinkedIn and on Twitter, and learn more about him on his website.
Scott McDermott is a consultant and trainer with a focus on wireless networking. You can connect with Scott on LinkedIn or on X/Twitter. Learn more about Scott on his website
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