 from our studios in the heart of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, California, this is a CUBE Conversation. Everyone, welcome to this special CUBE Conversation here in Palo Alto, California. Here at the CUBE Studios, I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We're here talking Wi-Fi 6. If you have used the internet anywhere outside and inside companies, you know Wi-Fi is a lifeblood connectivity. And here, expert in Wi-Fi. Todd Knight and Gail, Senior Vice President and General Manager at Cisco, Maraki has been around the block around Wi-Fi. Knows a lot about wireless. Great to see you again. Good, welcome back. Yeah, thanks so much. Love the CUBE. Last time we chatted, we were at DevNet Create, which is events Cisco runs around bringing developers, you know, cloud native developers into the DevNet community and programming the infrastructure house is a key part of the Cisco. You've been doing a lot of great work there. Making things programmable. Switches, wireless, and you guys have a very big success at Maraki. But now you're involved in something that I'm super excited about, which is Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi 6 is upon us. Love the name, it's simple. It's not some acronym letter. Tell us about Wi-Fi 6. What is it? What's the new innovation around Wi-Fi 6? Sure. Actually, I've spent practically my whole career in Wi-Fi and we've had just this alphabet soup of Wi-Fi for years.11a and bg and n and ac. And finally, we are putting that behind us and getting out of the alphabet soup. So there was a new standard called 8011ax, which is just about to launch around the world. And as an industry-wide change, we've decided no longer to call that 8011ax, but instead Wi-Fi 6, which will be hopefully just dramatically easier for people to kind of relate to and understand. And now we have a shortcut. So I'll take it. All right, and we want seven, eight, nine. So innovation around wireless is happening. Seeing a lot of discussion around 4G, 5G, anyone who has a smartphone knows the importance of connectivity. How many bars do you have? How much battery life do you have? So the world has been indoctrinated now. It's pretty standard that we kind of get this. We kind of understand the value of having connectivity. What is the innovation on Wi-Fi? Because it's become a critical need in people's lives that's been joked as one of the maslows hierarchy of needs. You go to a sporting event, you can see the bandwidth getting choked away. You go to a spotty office, you know the limitations of Wi-Fi. People have experienced it firsthand. What's the new innovations for this next generation in Wi-Fi? Yeah, look, I think wireless has become a basic need and whether that comes from the cellular side and 4G and we hope soon 5G or if it comes from the Wi-Fi side. The future of wireless probably looks more and more like outdoor with cellular and 5G and indoor really Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi 6. And Wi-Fi 6 is just an enormous step forward for that Wi-Fi technology. It has far better performance, especially when it comes to bandwidth, client density and latency and that can give us just much more immersive experiences, much cleaner video, much better density and performance. It also has a really unique performance optimization, something I think that has a lot of power in the industry which is a very sophisticated change to PowerSafe, PowerSafe mode which means that a Wi-Fi will be able to support a whole new generation of IoT devices operating on batteries for months or years and this can just open up the door to new IoT use cases we really never thought possible before. So the next generation, higher bandwidth, better power sounds like two market or trends or user trends that we see on the consumption side are immersive experiences, video, people are streaming more than ever now whether it's in the office or at home or on the go, you have AR and VR, more pressure to have real-time rendering, more bandwidth. So this is the bandwidth pressure, device pressure on the power. These are the two big ones and IoT has been an enterprise now, emerging cloud space but IoT use cases but really it's about the new experiences that are really kind of jamming up the highway, the digital highway if you will. What's the new things that's going to help that go better? Well I'll tell you, we're seeing just a larger and larger percentage of the bandwidth on the internet and on all networks as video. I mean that is the way people want to consume content. At Meraki we actually launched a whole line of smart cameras just a couple of years ago and we see this enormous surge in people deploying cameras and wanting to see real-time, truly real-time video feeds from around the world. They want to consume content that way and video is driving just and these immersive experiences whether it's VR, AR, it's just driving this enormous need for true, you know, high bandwidth connectivity. The wireless office in Wi-Fi 6, the wireless office feature, it has to feel like a wired connection. It has to be better than a wired connection, more bandwidth, lower latency, more efficient and that's the promise of Wi-Fi 6. So just to nail you down on this, I want to get kind of the, I'm thinking of the spec sheet in my mind. So Wi-Fi 6 has what better than Wi-Fi current version? What's the last version, new version? What are the key bullet points if you can just go down, stack rank the features that you think are most important? I think look, it quadruples the bandwidth, quadruples the capacity of these channels. It lowers the latency significantly. Both of those are important. It has a technology embedded in it called OFDMA, OFDMA which will help us increase the client density per channel and especially for highly dense deployments like in stadiums, we'll be able to support more clients on more channels which is more clients on each channel which is the key to making those deployments work and this power save change for IoT devices, for battery powered devices. That's really remarkable and that power save change will affect everyone's mobile phone too. I mean, I'm a person who worries about the battery life on my phone almost every day and I'm hoping Wi-Fi 6 will really change that. There's other changes going on in the Wi-Fi space as well. There's more spectrum opening up. We're starting to see the six gigahertz band being opened up which will have a unique type of partially licensed, regionally licensed model and by opening up more channels, again, we can gain better density. So good density on the modulation and the multiplexing side of that. That's for large stadiums, we've all been there. Offices, what's the impact to like say an enterprise who have been architecting elaborate wireless networks because this channel and all the configuration that goes on has to be done? What happens there? Is it easier to manage or what's the improvements with Wi-Fi 6 over in an office space example? Yeah, you know, I think what we'll see is in the high density spaces in conference rooms and auditoriums immediately see this benefit, this higher density, this better performance. Many of the Wi-Fi platforms being built for Wi-Fi 6, they have twice as many antennas as the last generation. So the high end of Wi-Fi 5, which was called the 11 AC, that was a four antenna system, what we call four by four radio. The high end of Wi-Fi 6 will be an eight by eight. And what that means is far better response to a multipath meaning these are radios that can see through walls, that can see around corners. It's remarkable the performance, the RF sensitivity of these devices. And that solves what people call the dead zone kind of areas where you know like, okay, the bars are down or why is the video stopping and kind of buffering? Exactly, it also solves issues around interference. So places that have interference extra antennas can help see through that as well. And we sometimes call it the line of sight problem. If I can see the AP it works, but if it's around a wall, I can't. Wi-Fi 6 and especially eight by eight antennas as well. And you mentioned concrete earlier before we get into camera. It also bounces around a lot if it's a little environment where the RF bounces around. That solves that problem too, helps that. Absolutely, that's called multipath in the industry. And yeah, this eight antenna or eight RF chain system really makes a difference there. Does that change the form factor? Is it still getting faster, smaller, cheaper kind of thing going on in War's Law? Or is it same size radios and chipsets? Yeah, that's a good question. The APs that we were building at Meraki, they're about the same size, maybe a little bigger, but we've just built them in a slightly different shape. But I think generally speaking, the technology has hit a point where the size of these devices is similar to where they were in the last generation. Our eight by eight AP will be maybe about the same size as War's Law. I think generally if you polled anyone who's in the Wi-Fi business, whether deploying or rolling out or users, they really don't care as long as they get the best performance. As long as it's not like massively like a tower of his small form factor, it's not going to change much. Do people really care? That's interesting. There's some people who really care. And the aesthetic of the device really matters. They either want it to look like physical plant, like maybe it should look like it's kind of part of the building, or it should be really aesthetically pleasing and mixed. And then in your right, of course, there's some people who really don't care. It's above a ceiling tile or something. All right, so let's talk about the, it's a good point about the word matters, size-wise, also kind of footprint. A wind tower, an IoT device, this does matter because size is important, whether it's a physical factory floor or somewhere out in the wild, out in the open. Rugged, durable, can it fit in with something? How does Wi-Fi 6 save that? Is there any changes there? I think we're going to see pretty similar kind of idea. We will see the industry building internal antennas, so we call it integrated antenna system, and external ones for people who want to put custom antenna solutions. And we'll see indoor and outdoor APs and the ruggedized outdoor ones. I don't think that'll change too much with Wi-Fi 6, but we will see perhaps just higher density deployments because these radars are so much more powerful. Talk about the impact to the industry. Is it going to change the chipsets? How is Wi-Fi 6 going to roll out? Is there OEMs who manufactures it? Standards, can you just add some commentary around the industry coalition around it and impact? Yeah, so Wi-Fi 6 will become the new standard of Wi-Fi. Over time, it will replace not just the consumer at home, Wi-Fi standard, but also the business and enterprise Wi-Fi standard. What it means is today we're starting to roll out the very first deployments of Wi-Fi 6 in enterprise B2B use cases on the access point side, and the client devices are just starting to come out. And so we're really right at the beginning of this transition, of this curve, and over the next couple of years we'll see more and more devices move over to Wi-Fi 6 until essentially all devices in a couple of years are launching on that standard. Well, everyone who's been in the wireless business you've been in for a long time, they all kind of have this, you know, comrade of arms kind of thing because Wi-Fi became so revolutionary and then it just grew so fast, but there's been trouble spots. It's been hard, you had frequency, physics, laws of physics, security, all kind of coming together. What's your personal take on where we are now? You mentioned 5G, great backhaul potential. The network's getting better and faster. Your thoughts just on the industry, your personal perspective. I'll give you something I think is really important about Wi-Fi is as an industry, Wi-Fi sort of developed together as part of a consortium called the Wi-Fi Alliance. And what that means is these are truly standardized protocols and we run interoperability testing with our partners at Cisco. We work closely with Intel and Samsung and we run tons and tons of interoperability testing. The day this equipment ships, it is operating in ultra high quality and interoperates with all types of devices made by all types of different vendors. Many other standards don't have that type of strong consortium, that kind of strong ecosystem of partners and that's really powerful for Wi-Fi and I think that's why it has become such a strong standard. You know, I know you're really humble, Todd, but I'll give you the plug because I've been following Cisco for many, many decades, so I've been following. You guys have done a lot of wireless early days, you know, misfires, stop-start, acquisitions, airspace, one of the notable acquisitions in the Wi-Fi space. I think a bunch of MIMO based acquisitions also come in. You guys have a lot of experience, almost 20 years plus experience, 15 that I can point to, direct wireless experience at Cisco. So you guys obviously care about it, you're involved, you're part of the Alliance group ecosystem. What's the vibe internally at Cisco and Wi-Fi? Packets are packets, they're moving through the air, they're moving through cables, it's the same kind of philosophy, right? Packets are packets, but it's how you care for your packets that really matters. That's why Cisco is different. Now, I think the Cisco teams are all super excited. I'm of course part of the Meraki acquisition and our team is just like, I don't know, we're pumped. Wi-Fi 6 is going to be the new standard of Wi-Fi across all of Cisco, across all of our regions. We're starting to roll out education about it and getting ready for a big Wi-Fi 6 product launch in the coming weeks and... What pumps you most about Wi-Fi 6? Just is it the tech, is it the programmability? What are some of the key things that gets you excited? I just think we will put the era of wiring desks behind us and that is an enormous step forward. The Wi-Fi 6 enables truly a wireless workspace and what we call the true digital workspace and we just won't be wiring offices anymore after the Wi-Fi 6 rollout and that's exciting. Wireless has arrived. I mean, one of my friends built this big house and he was so meticulous, he's a nerd. He wired fiber to every port, every room and I'm like, I don't think you need that anymore. He's like, I'm gonna have the highest bandwidth. So now, again, to your point, that kind of becomes obsolete as long as you've got an access point to some backhaul, whether it's Comcast or two networks, maybe three. Yeah, realistically actually the wireless devices for the enterprise especially, wireless capacity is driving switch capacity at this point. We're building M-GIG switches to connect our access points primarily and so the performance on that Wi-Fi access point is really what's driving the wired performance and that's I think just a tell-tale sign that this is a wireless digital workspace. So I totally agree with that, I think it's great vision. I think it's pretty plausible. What would be your advice to your friend if I was your CIO buddy and I said, hey Todd, how should I be thinking about architecting my network for the next 10 years? Okay, I buy the wireless thing, I got that. What should I be thinking about? How should I be architecting the big holistic plan? Yeah, I think right now, we're really talking about building for the future. Most CIOs are thinking about rolling something out today or over the next 12 months and they want to be using that network deployment for five years, seven years. And in order to do that, you really need to look, the two technologies really need to look at are Wi-Fi 6 and MGIG in the access layer and you have to find a solution that provides a holistic secure access. And don't think about any of your network deployment without bringing security into that thought process and decide how you're going to secure these sites because as the bandwidth goes up, as the capacity goes up, all of our security concerns, of course, just increase with that and we have to be meticulous about that. My number one piece of advice to CIOs is plan for the future of Wi-Fi 6 and MGIG and plan for security because even if it's not top of mind today in six months and 12 months and 18 months, it will be. The reality for them is the surface area is just now the world. Todd Nightingale here, breaking it down. Wi-Fi 6, next generation wireless ethernet, wireless connectivity. We all know Wi-Fi, wireless 6, going the next generation. Secure bringing you all the coverage and tech here inside our studio. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching.