Tapping the brakes on 802.11ac wave 2

802.11ac wave 2 is the splashy new kid in the wireless technology pool, but some experts caution that you might not want to let it play without lifeguards present just yet. Wave 2 access points are now available from major wireless vendors, and have started to make inroads into the enterprise. The technology has been gaining ground in sales statistics recently, to the point where it’s starting to undercut sales of first-gen 802.11ac gear. Much of that has to do with the fact that it’s the latest and greatest – some shops will simply buy wave 2 because it’s the current cutting edge of wireless tech, and, obviously, that’s not necessarily the wrong idea if budgets are lined up. But it’s unlikely that wave 2 technology, in and of itself, is something an enterprise really needs right now, according to some experts. The main issue is that, since there are almost no laptops, smartphones or other endpoints on the market right now that use wave 2, the most innovative features of the technology simply won’t work. Tom Carpenter is CTO of CWNP, a vendor neutral-enterprise wireless networking certification and training group. He said that smaller deployments, in particular, don’t really need to move to wave 2.