Wi-Fi QoS Management™ brings robust service delivery and high quality Wi-Fi experiences
Austin, Texas – February 23, 2021 – Wi-Fi Alliance® introduces Wi-Fi CERTIFIED QoS Management™, a new certification program delivering a standardized approach to traffic prioritization that improves the Wi-Fi® experience with real-time applications. Wi-Fi QoS Management™ builds on widely adopted Wi-Fi CERTIFIED WMM™ to deliver a consistent, end-to-end approach to Quality of Service (QoS) treatment in Wi-Fi networks. The program introduces two new technologies that allow Wi-Fi devices, applications, and network managers to prioritize traffic flows by establishing a standards-based approach to QoS mirroring, and by aligning with IETF recommendations for QoS mapping between Internet Protocol (IP) and IEEE 802.11. Residential, enterprise, and public networks benefit from Wi-Fi QoS Management, particularly when using applications requiring low latency and low jitter, including videoconferencing, interactive gaming, AR/VR, industrial IoT, and healthcare monitoring.
Wi-Fi QoS Management provides standardized mechanisms that allow client applications to request QoS treatment, and for network managers to implement QoS policies. These mechanisms allow user devices and access points to select differentiated prioritization depending on the application. The result is robust service delivery and higher quality Wi-Fi, including better experiences with real-time and immersive applications, and reduced latency and jitter when online gaming or accessing interactive cloud and edge services.
“Today’s Wi-Fi networks carry a demanding amount of real-time data applications that require discerning treatment to deliver high quality experiences,” said Edgar Figueroa, president and CEO, Wi-Fi Alliance. “Wi-Fi Alliance is introducing Wi-Fi QoS Management as a new way to manage Wi-Fi traffic and ensure end-user expectations for superior performance continue to be met.”
Wi-Fi QoS Management features two key technologies:
- Mirrored Stream Classification Service (MSCS): enables a client device to request the access point to apply specific QoS treatment of downlink IP data flows using QoS mirroring
- Differentiated Service Code Point (DSCP) mapping: aligns QoS treatment across Wi-Fi and wired networks and also enables network managers to configure specific QoS policies
MSCS – based on the concept of “mirrored” QoS – provides a simple means for applications on user devices to request traffic be assigned the desired priority level. This bidirectional QoS treatment ensures consistent, reduced latency for the device application and delivers positive Wi-Fi experiences even when the Wi-Fi channel is congested. DSCP mapping allows the network manager to map traffic from both access points and client devices to a particular QoS priority across the network. In enterprise networks, a network manager can configure videoconferencing traffic as high priority and configure a mapping table that can be updated to ensure the requirements of mission-critical services are met.
Member companies providing interoperability test bed devices that are among the first Wi-Fi CERTIFIED QoS Management products include Broadcom Inc., Intel, and Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.
Industry support for Wi-Fi QoS Management:
“Airties and Wi-Fi Alliance share an ongoing commitment to improve the home Wi-Fi experience. We commend Wi-Fi Alliance’s new efforts in Wi-Fi QoS Management aimed at enhancing the performance of real-time applications. This feature can certainly serve to complement the kind of advanced Smart Wi-Fi software and cloud management solutions provided by Airties to service providers around the globe.” –Metin Taskin, CTO, Airties
"Wi-Fi QoS Management is the first step to transform Wi-Fi connectivity from "best effort" to consistent availability for specific data traffic streams, especially for teleworking and distributed enterprise applications. Wi-Fi QoS Management capability is a key building block for ASSIA products." – Tuncay Cil, Chief Strategy Officer, ASSIA
“Broadcom applauds Wi-Fi Alliance for releasing the Wi-Fi CERTIFIED QoS Management program, and is honored to be selected as a test bed supplier. Wi-Fi QoS Management provides the tools to empower application developers and vendors of mobile and gaming devices to manage bidirectional traffic flows on home and enterprise Wi-Fi networks to enable the required quality of service for all applications. It also provides essential tools to enable network administrators to manage QoS at a system level. Wi-Fi QoS Management combined with Wi-Fi 6E will enable enterprises, operators, and users to enjoy latency sensitive applications such as live video streaming, gaming, augmented and virtual reality, even in spectrally congested and challenging environments.” – Thomas Derham, Sr. Principal Scientist, Wireless Communications and Connectivity Division, Broadcom Inc., and contributor to the Wi-Fi Alliance Wi-Fi QoS Management task group
“CommScope is committed to ensuring that the networks and homes we serve are capable of enabling the lower latency and more deterministic connectivity that services require. Wi-Fi in both single family and multi-dwelling unit homes needs to be capable of prioritizing services such as working from home applications and emerging low latency immersive experiences (gaming, AR/VR). We welcome the new Wi-Fi QoS Management certification program and any initiatives that can deliver round trip quality of service for Wi-Fi.” – Ian Wheelock, Engineering Fellow, CommScope
“End-to-end QoS support is extremely important for our devices to deliver better Wi-Fi experiences for a new breed of applications such as cloud, gaming, AR/VR, and video conferencing that demand low latency and higher traffic priority treatment. Intel is happy to be a leader of the QoS work at Wi-Fi Alliance and having our product be among the first ones to be certified for Wi-Fi CERTIFIED QoS Management.” – Eric McLaughlin, VP Client Computing Group, GM Wireless Solutions Group, Intel Corporation
“Wi-Fi is an essential enabler for today’s digital economy and provides the backbone for multiple real-time applications with simultaneous usage of voice, video and data. ON Semiconductor has been a strong supporter of Wi-Fi Alliance’s certification programs to optimize Wi-Fi network performance. As such, QoS is a cornerstone of our technology platforms with built-in functionality to differentiate between traffic flows, giving precedence to high priority traffic and ensuring airtime fairness across both flow types and devices. It is all about improving user experience, and reducing latency, packet loss, and jitter.” - Irvind Ghai, vice president of marketing, Wireless Connectivity and Signal Process Division, ON Semiconductor
“Wi-Fi QoS Management is very valuable to provide improved user experiences for throughput and latency intensive applications, such as gaming, video and multimedia applications. By verifying interoperability between access points and client devices on Wi-Fi networks, this certification program from Wi-Fi Alliance is an important milestone to help the benefits of Wi-Fi QoS Management reach their full potential.” – Rahul Patel, senior vice president and general manager, Connectivity and Networking, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.
For more information, please visit https://www.wi-fi.org/discover-wi-fi/wi-fi-qos-management.
About Wi-Fi Alliance®
www.wi-fi.org
Wi-Fi Alliance® is the worldwide network of companies that brings you Wi-Fi®. Members of our collaboration forum come together from across the Wi-Fi ecosystem with the shared vision to connect everyone and everything, everywhere, while providing the best possible user experience. Since 2000, Wi-Fi Alliance has completed more than 65,000 Wi-Fi certifications. The Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ seal of approval designates products with proven interoperability, backward compatibility, and the highest industry-standard security protections in place. Today, Wi-Fi carries more than half of the internet’s traffic in an ever-expanding variety of applications. Wi-Fi Alliance continues to drive the adoption and evolution of Wi-Fi, which billions of people rely on every day.
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Media Contact:
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