Clearing FUDDY Waters Date:   Tuesday , August 25, 2015 Ruckus Wireless (NYSE: RKUS) is a global Wi-Fi technology company headquartered in California. Founded in 2004, the company has a current market cap of $1.02 billion. Wave goodbye to slow Wi-Fi. Wave 2 of 802.11ac is here and now, adding new capabilities that improve overall Wi-Fi system performance and capacity. So don\'t be put off by naysayers spewing FUD that Wave 2 APs won\'t add immediate value to existing Wi-Fi infrastructures. They already have. As multi-user MIMO clients hit Wi-Fi networks this year, Wave 2 is capable of serving those clients simultaneously allowing others the opportunity to access the RF spectrum sooner. It\'s carpooling. If you can get people to carpool, even those who don\'t carpool benefit because there are fewer cars on the road. Having more spatial streams available to use also provides incremental value in the form of spatial diversity, regardless if the clients have one, two, or three spatial streams. More antennas improve MIMO by increasing reliability and signal quality, pushing data throughput closer to data rates. The other obvious and BIG benefit that wave 2 provides is simple: investment protection. Customers are tired of having to architect and re-architect their Wi-Fi networks every couple years to accommodate the barrage of new devices with new capabilities that can\'t benefit from their existing networks. Wave 2 effectively mitigates this risk, extending Wi-Fi refresh cycles. To help demystify a lot of the fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) that vendors are belching, here are some more detailed radio truths to help you in your buying decision. Increased Wi-Fi Capacity with MU-MIMO Looking closer, if there\'s only one reason why Wave 2 makes sense now (and there\'s much more) it\'s this: MU-MIMO allows an AP to send downlink frames to multiple stations at the same time. This increases capacity compared with single user MIMO. Historially, Wi-Fi was only capable of serving clients one-at-a-time. Slow devices consume extra airtime, and all devices served by that AP suffer as a result. This is especially true in mobile-rich deployments. And what networks aren\'t packed with smart mobile devices today? Better Transmit and Receive Performance There may not be many 4x4 clients on the market this year, but adding radio chains helps improve reliability even if you have 1x1, 2x2, or 3x3 clients. Adding more transmit radio chains improves downlink performance, especially for MU-MIMO. That extra transmitter provides more signal steering control and higher data rates with less interference. Adding more receive radio chains also improves uplink performance. Using maximal ratio combining (MRC), the AP has the ability better hear signals on multiple antennas and in different polarizations (if the AP supports dual polarization), combining those signals to ensure better reception. This is especially useful for single- or dual-stream clients with small antennas and weak transmit power (e.g. smart phones). Legacy Clients Benefit If you\'re having a hard time seeing the benefit of MU-MIMO because some portion of your client devices won\'t support MU, realize that every MU-capable client in your network ultimately benefits legacy clients (single-user, or non-MU) as well. With 2-3x greater efficiency from MU, every extra bit of productivity gained is added to the airtime pool for other clients (especially legacy clients that need the boost) to utilize. More Spatial Streams Helps Everyone The number of spatial streams and the transmission bandwidth together indicate potential throughput performance and number of devices supported. Initial Wave 2 radio chips are 4x4:4 (4 transmit and 4 receive radio chains with support for 4 spatial streams), while most Wave 1 chips were 3x3:3. Investment Protection MU-MIMO is a long-term investment - it\'s simple myopia to defer Wave 2 because \"no MU clients exist today\". And even a short-term AP investment spans three years, so why would we focus on client support in the market RIGHT NOW instead of forecasting client feature support 6 months from now? With that perspective, MU-ready APs make even a 4 or 5-year AP investment plan very reasonable. Newer Chipsets Bring Efficiency and Performance Gains Every new generation of Wi-Fi chips comes with efficiency and performance improvements. Every new AP hardware revision is an opportunity to improve radio components, fine-tune the layout, enhance antenna subsystems, and generally improve performance. If you remember back when the first 11ac APs were coming out, the industry as a whole saw a marked performance increase even for 11n clients (specs didn\'t change, but performance did). For all clients, expect new APs to enhance speed. Other Thoughts Wave 2 will be slightly more expensive than current Wave 1 APs, so you can still buy Wave 1 if you are budget conscious. IT JUST may not take you as far. And if you\'re worrying about 802.11ac stabbing you in the backhaul, don\'t. Given the real world device and traffic mix, you\'ll rarely need more than 1 Gbps uplinks for Wave 2 APs. Even if you do, link aggregation is there to help.