As Wi-Fi has evolved from WiFi 4, 5, and now to 6 (802.11ax), Wi-Fi now offers the stability required for voice transmission and there are superb products on the market to make voice-over-Wi-Fi the first choice, especially for consumers and home offices.

 Wi-Fi is now the most commonly available and widely used medium of internet access for most of the world’s occupants and according to STATISTA, out of the 4.66-billion active internet users worldwide, 4.32-billion accessed the internet via mobile devices that are Wi-Fi capable.

The misgivings around the common challenges such as packet loss and jitter that made for unreliable voice calls over WiFi networks have faded, however, as more devices connect to a single access point, the worse the end-user experience can be.

Grandstream's powerful WiFi Access Points (APs) offer high-performance networking, tremendous Wi-Fi coverage range, fast and easy provisioning and management, thanks to a built-in controller, outstanding network throughput, and support for a large number of clients per AP. Its APs can be paired with third-party routers, future Grandstream routers as well as existing WiFi networks, making them ideal for both new and existing Wi-Fi deployments.

The introduction of dual-band access points, which offers connection on both the 2.4GHz and the 5GHz frequency band, and the ability for access points to implement band-steering and airtime fairness are some of the features that aim to eliminate the capacity issue and provide for a smooth end-user experience across the WLAN. With a capacity that ranges from WiFi 4 at  600Mbps, to WiFi 6 APs offering as much as 2Gbps, it’s clear that Wi-Fi has evolved and will continue to evolve as the connection choice for consumers and businesses home office.

Quality of Service (QoS) protocols incorporates roaming. The 802.11k standard helps clients to speed up the search for nearby APs that are available as roaming targets by creating an optimized list of channels. When the signal strength of the current AP weakens, the device will scan for target APs from this list.

When your client device roams from one AP to another on the same network, 802.11r uses a feature called Fast Basic Service Set Transition (FT) to authenticate more quickly. FT works with both pre-shared key (PSK) and 802.1X authentication methods.

The 802.11v protocol allows client devices to exchange information about the network topology, including information about the RF environment, making each client network-aware, facilitating overall improvement of the wireless network.

On the Grandstream WiFi access points, it is important to note that 11R is required for enterprise audio features, but 11V and 11K are optional. This field is available only when the security mode is set to WPA/WPA2 or WPA2. Enable 11R Check to enable 802.11r.  - this field is also available only when the security mode is set to WPA/WPA2 or WPA2. Similarly, enable 11K Check to enable 802.11k and 11V Check to enable 802.11v.

VoIP requires jitter to be at 30ms or less and no more than 1% of packet loss for clear voice calls.  The latest codecs used by WiFi phones ensure that the compression of VoIP packets is done in such a way to ensure smooth, clear voice calls. MiRO’s Grandstream offering of Wi-Fi-enabled VoIP phones supports the latest codecs for clear voice transmission over Wi-Fi, including the Opus codec.

Grandstreams’ GS-WP810 and GS-WP820 can be onboarded to the Grandstream Device Management System (GDMS), which is Grandstream’s free, cloud platform for managing, configuring, troubleshooting and provisioning.  Pair your installation with Grandstream’s series of Wi-Fi 5 access points that are designed to integrate with Wi-Fi phones to provide the necessary functionality for an enterprise VoIP solution with features such as QoS, easy mesh capability, roaming, and cloud onboarding to monitor the AP performance and connected Wi-Fi phones. For more information on the GSDM watch our YouTube video here: https://youtu.be/UMC5md4JytE

As MiRO strives to empower you to connect communities, our training academy has created two courses that will assist you with your VoIP solution. Either select Zero-to-Hero: Understanding VoIP or the Grandstream Certified Specialist training. Please visit https://miro-academy.co.za/ for more info.

If you would like to learn more about how you can evolve your current VoIP phone solution to a voice-over Wi-Fi solution, please contact one of our MiRO solution specialists or alternatively, order yours online by visiting www.miro.co.za.