Updated White Paper on Licence-Exempt Spectrum in the 5GHz band for Wireless LANs in the UK

-
For the past few years, I've maintained a white paper on the use of the 5GHz spectrum for Wi-Fi networks here in the UK. As Wi-Fi text books tend to focus on the spectrum available in the USA, I put this document together to clarify how 5GHz spectrum may be used in the UK.

Following the release of a Voluntary National Specification document by Ofcom in August 2017 (VNS 2030/8/3), additional channels became available for use in the UK on 5GHz.

As we now have additional spectrum, it's time for an update to my white paper to detail the new spectrum that is available.

Prior to updating the white paper, I published a summary sheet that shows the new spectrum allocation. This can be obtained obtain from my previous blog article: UK 5GHz WLAN Spectrum Allocation (August 2017) (this is definitely one to print off and laminate).

I have now completed my updates to the white paper, which I am pleased to share with you now. Note that in addition to adding the new spectrum details, I have added a few other topics around the use of 5GHz and the unique challenges that it presents. I'd recommend taking a look at my description of how DFS operates in Appendix 2, and have a play with the Opera weather radar location tool shown in Appendix 3.

I hope you find the update useful and informative.

Links:





Popular posts from this blog

The 5GHz “Problem” For Wi-Fi Networks: DFS

-
Image
Wi-Fi networking provides us with 2 bands for the operation of wireless LAN networks: the 2.4Ghz band and the 5GHz band. The 2.4GHz band has a reputation of being something of a “sewer” of a band, due to its limited number of usable channels, the number of Wi-Fi devices already using the band, and the high levels of non-Wi-Fi interference that it experiences. Many wireless LAN professionals will generally advise that you put your “important stuff” on the 5GHz band whenever possible. 5GHz has far more channels available, a corresponding lower number of devices per channel, and generally suffers much lower non-Wi-Fi interference. However, beneath the headline of “2.4Ghz = bad, 5Ghz = good”, there lurks a shadowy figure that can be troublesome if you’re not aware of its potential impact: DFS. Background Wi-Fi networks operate in areas of RF spectrum that require no licence to operate. This is in contrast to many other areas of the radio spectrum that generally require some form of (p...
Read more

What Are Sticky Clients?

-
Image
One term you'll often hear banded about when talking with Wi-Fi professionals is "sticky clients". I thought it might be worth spending a few moments exploring what is meant by "sticky clients", why they are generally considered to be a bad thing in Wi-Fi networks and some approaches to mitigate them. Background Many folks dealing with Wi-Fi networks often talk about the "sticky" characteristics of wireless clients when discussing client roaming within a W-iFi network. In an ideal world, we'd like to have access points providing ubiquitous coverage across our desired area providing high-quality, consistent client coverage where-ever we go. In this wonderful land of rainbows and unicorns, our clients would gracefully roam from AP to AP, detecting and associating with their closest AP throughout the coverage area to ensure their best connection speed at all times. Unfortunately, the real world doesn’t quite reflect this roaming-client...
Read more

Microsoft NPS as a RADIUS Server for WiFi Networks: SSID Filtering

-
Image
The Microsoft Network Policy Server (NPS) is often used as a  RADIUS server for WiFi networks. It can provide authentication and authorization services for devices and users on a wireless network in a Windows Active Directory environment. In this article we look at how we can use NPS to provide authentication for WiFi users across a number of SSIDs. We have previously discussed how to authenticate groups of users using the same SSID and then assign them to a VLAN that is appropriate to their security authorization. However, there may still be instances where two or more SSIDs are in-use on a wireless network and we would like to base policy decisions on the SSID that the authentication request is being generated from. As an example, if we consider a school, perhaps we would like students to only be able to authenticate if they connected to the SSID: "Student_Net". Similarly,  staff should only be able to connect using the SSID: "Staff_Net". This would ...
Read more