Cisco Ushers in a New Wireless Era with Wi-Fi 6

SAN JOSE, Calif., April 29, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Today Cisco is announcing innovative solutions that help customers embrace a new age of wireless connectivity. Wi-Fi 6 (also known as 802.11ax), the new standard for Wi-Fi networks, is redefining what's possible for businesses -- powering a new era of immersive wireless experiences and the connecting of billions of things. Cisco is also extending the industry's most extensive campus networking portfolio by delivering a campus core switch purpose-built for cloud-scale networking. By coupling powerful automation and analytics software with a complete array of next-generation switches, access points, and controllers for the campus, Cisco enables the industry's only end-to-end, wireless-first architecture.

Built on the same fundamental wireless innovations as 5G, these new standards will reshape how businesses and consumers interact with the world. Beyond being significantly faster than the previous generation, Wi-Fi 6 delivers up to 400 percent greater capacity and is more effective in high-density settings like large lecture halls, stadiums and conference rooms. Latency is vastly improved, allowing for near real-time use cases. Wi-Fi 6 is also easier on connected devices' batteries and provides an overall more predictable user experience.

Today, Cisco is rolling out several products and partnerships so that businesses can deliver a genuinely unplugged and uninterrupted experience.

    --  Wi-Fi 6 Access Points: New access points across the Catalyst and Meraki
        portfolios go beyond providing the new Wi-Fi 6 standard. With custom,
        programmable chipsets and access to industry-leading analytics
        capabilities, Cisco's latest APs deliver a smarter and more secure
        wireless network. The new access points are also multilingual, with the
        ability to communicate with multiple IoT protocols, including BLE,
        Zigbee, and Thread.
    --  Core Switch for the Campus Network: Cisco raises the bar with the
        Catalyst 9600 core switch family, which will serve as the foundation
        central to any network's successful operation. To deliver the most
        secure and efficient wireless experience, organizations need a single
        networking fabric that brings wired and wireless together. Built as the
        next evolution of the Catalyst 6000 -- the most successful networking
        product in the history of the internet -- the Catalyst 9600 will be the
        bedrock for the next generation of intent-based business networks.
    --  New Developer Resources: Wi-Fi 6 and 5G represent an incredible
        opportunity for developers. To enable them to create the immersive
        experiences that these new levels of connectivity promise, Cisco is
        unveiling the DevNet Wireless Dev Center. DevNet, Cisco's developer
        network, offers the learning labs, sandboxes and developer resources
        needed to create game-changing wireless applications. The Cisco Catalyst
        and Meraki access platforms are open and programmable all the way down
        to the chipset level, allowing applications to take advantage of network
        programmability in new and exciting ways.
    --  New Ecosystem Partnerships: Prior to the launch of its Wi-Fi 6 access
        points, Cisco completed interoperability testing with Broadcom, Intel
        and Samsung to address the inevitable gaps that come with a new
        standard. Samsung, Boingo, Presidio and others are expected to join the
        Cisco OpenRoaming project to solve one of today's biggest wireless pain
        points. The Cisco OpenRoaming project aims to make it easier to
        seamlessly and securely hop between Wi-Fi and LTE networks and onboard
        public Wi-Fi.

"Every leap in connectivity enables the next wave of profound innovation. 5G and Wi-Fi 6 represent a new era of connectivity," said David Goeckeler, EVP and General Manager, Networking and Security Business at Cisco. "Developers are already creating the next generation of wireless-first, immersive experiences. With billions of things connecting to the network, this growth will create unprecedented complexity for IT. Cisco is building a multi-domain network architecture to simplify complexity for IT, allowing CIOs to deliver against their innovation agenda."

Wireless-first, cloud-driven, data-optimized
Wi-Fi 6 and 5G represent an enormous opportunity but require businesses to tackle big challenges. Today, the workplace is wherever we work. Users are more dependent on mobile experiences and have no tolerance for downtime. To meet these demands, the network must be:

    --  Wireless-first: Today, mobile technologies are fueling economic growth
        -- making it easier for workers to collaborate, shoppers to purchase,
        students to learn -- from anywhere. To deliver a great wireless
        experience, IT needs to look beyond the Wi-Fi and solve for the full
        end-to-end experience -- driving consistent security, reliability and
        performance.
    --  Cloud-driven: The cloud enables unprecedented scale. Cisco uses the
        cloud to deliver new innovations faster. The cloud also helps IT move
        from reactive to proactive by taking global insights and delivering best
        practices to help address problems before they impact users.
    --  Data-optimized: The network offers millions of data points, providing
        context on users, their experience, and their vulnerabilities. Using
        powerful analytics, we can unlock new solutions that optimize IT
        operations, support better business decisions, provide innovative
        security solutions and engage customers in more effective ways.

Over the past two years, Cisco has built out its intent-based networking portfolio to prepare customers for tomorrow's challenges. Cisco's new access points and campus switch are purpose-built for intent-based networking and represent the culmination of Cisco's efforts to reinvent its entire access portfolio.

Availability and Services

    --  The Meraki and Catalyst Access Points and Catalyst 9600 are available to
        order today.
    --  Cisco Customer Experience for wireless and switching accelerate
        deployment of next-gen intent-based networking solutions while reducing
        risk and disruption. Cisco Customer Experience's portfolio provides
        expert guidance, best practices and innovative tools so that customers
        can transition with greater ease and confidence. This also allows them
        to innovate faster, stay competitive, extract more value and realize
        faster ROI.

Additional Resources

    --  Executive Blog: Unplugged and Uninterrupted: What's Driving Networking
        Today (Scott Harrell)
    --  Executive Blog: Your Catalyst for the Past, Present, and Future (Sachin
        Gupta)
    --  Executive Blog: Evolving the Wireless Experience...Again (Todd
        Nightingale)
    --  Executive Blog: OpenRoaming: Automatic and Seamless Roaming Across Wi-Fi
        6 and 5G (Matt MacPherson)
    --  Video: Customers need to be wired for wireless the emergence of 5G and
        Wi-Fi 6 (Sachin Gupta)
    --  Video: Wi-Fi 6 improves bandwidth, client density to drive wireless
        future (Todd Nightingale)

About Cisco:
Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide technology leader that has been making the internet work since 1984. Our people, products and partners help society securely connect and seize tomorrow's digital opportunity today. Discover more at newsroom.cisco.com and follow us on Twitter at @Cisco.

Cisco and the Cisco logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cisco and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. A listing of Cisco's trademarks can be found at www.cisco.com/go/trademarks.

Some of the offerings and features described above remain in varying stages of development and will be offered on a when-and-if-available basis. Any such items are subject to change at the sole discretion of Cisco, and Cisco will have no liability for delay in the delivery or failure to deliver any of the offerings or features set forth in this document.

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SOURCE Cisco