Technology: Voice Over Wi-Fi

Making voice calls over Wi-Fi has always been a historic problem for users.  Most equipment in today’s market cannot provide the quality of service that voice requires.

Bandspeed AirMaestro Access Points support the latest standards for QoS (Quality of Service) to ensure that latency is kept to a minimum and voice calls are prioritized properly.  In addition, the automated configuration and interference management built into each AirMaestro AP ensure that the network is operating on the best channels.

When multiple Access Points are deployed, wireless phones are required to roam from one AP to another.  This process is typically done by the phone and requires a phone to disassociate, re-associate, and re-authenticate to a new Access Point.  This process is timely and always results in a dropped phone call.  The Bandspeed AirMaestro cluster architecture supports seamless fast-roaming of Wi-Fi phones, handheld scanners, media devices, PCs, etc.  Fast-roaming handoffs are handled by the cluster and are transparent to the Wi-Fi client device.  The AirMaestro cluster automatically determines when a Wi-Fi client device should be transferred to another AirMaestro Access Point and facilitates a hand-off that is transparent to the phone.  Hand-offs occur in less than 50mesc (not detectable by the human ear) and in most cases less than 12 msec.

The Wi-Fi client device never disassociates and always stays connected to the network.  The phone sees the AirMaestro voice service as a single wireless service and never attempts to perform a hand-off.  This technology works very similarly to how a cell phone network works as cell phones move between towers.

The Bandspeed AirMaestro solution allows up to 25 APs in a cluster to provide seamless load balancing even when complex encryption (WPA, WPA2) and authentication (802.1x) is being used.  The Bandspeed AirMaestro solution also does this without a complex and expensive hardware WLAN controller.  It is compatible with any Wi-Fi client device and any VoIP/VoWLAN technology.

This diagram shows a Wi-Fi phone seamlessly moving between two AirMaestro Access Points