White Papers

5
Internal Use - Confidential
Band switching on the same AP
Most of the modern APs have two operational bands: 2.4GHz and 5GHz. If the
user network names both bands with same SSID (Wi-Fi name), band switching
occurs more frequently (fewer hysteresis conditions) to ensure maximum
effectiveness.
Network diagnostics and telemetry
This feature is designed to let IT decision makers (ITDMs) understand the network
infrastructure through diagnostics. This functionality recommends the best
infrastructure and client system, required to maximize performance. Telemetry of
user data is sent occasionally to understand the overall ExpressConnect efficiency.
All the data that is collected or sent is nonprivate and security-compliant user data
with opt-in mechanisms.
Uplink packet tagging
The communication between client device and access point (router) occurs in
terms of packets. Traditionally, these packets are not differentiated among each
other. ExpressConnect tags these packets for prioritization, which can be helpful
in two ways. Tagging involves Wireless Multimedia QoS tags (WMM) and
Differentiated Services Codepoint tags (DSCP). WMM bits are for prioritization of
packets in the immediate access point. DSCP tagging is useful for prioritization of
applications in the backend.
Dynamic bandwidth control
Dynamic bandwidth control estimates the bandwidth of the newly connected APs.
The estimation is performed by sending small packets and tracking the latency of
these applications. If the user is experiencing speeds of at least 80% of the limit
set and more than 30 Mbps, it regulates the bandwidth, based on the traffic priority
.Voice mode feature
This feature is exclusively designed to provide best conferencing experience.
When a voice or video call is in progress, all the other traffic is restricted to use a
total of 15Mbps only to ensure the extra bandwidth is given to the conference call.
This feature intends to increase the video quality and reduce latency in audio.
Conference calls tend to increase the video quality when a clear channel is seen
and when all the other traffic is restricted. This gives conference application as
much traffic as it needs for maximized experience.
ExpressConnect Solution Walkthrough and Use Cases
As discussed in the earlier sections, ExpressConnect is broadly divided into two
important segments.
Best AP selection (BAPS) engine scores all the APs near the user, including the
different bands with same or different Wi-Fi names. This engine connects the
user to an AP with the highest score before the current connection is dropped. To
not connect to a better AP often, a threshold-based switching is implemented.
This threshold is based on a heuristically determined optimal value and is
proprietary. If the difference in the score between the currently connected AP and
a new AP is higher than a certain threshold, the switching occurs. Otherwise the
AP does not switch.
Network Traffic Shaping (NTS) engine detects the application and maps it to a
priority based on a lookup table. It has priority assignments to more than 40,000
applications. The priorities are as follows: