How AI Helps Keep Your Wireless Network Running

While WiFi started out as a nice-to-have convenience, it’s now a mission critical resource.  Many business devices are only WiFi compatible – such as phones, tablets, and numerous IoT devices – and the number of wireless devices on the market is only growing.  Businesses can have thousands of WiFi devices connected to the network, each one contributing to day-to-day growth and success.  If the network experiences unexpected and unintentional drops in quality – network brown-outs – it can cost companies $400,000 to over $700,000 in damages.

Networks are Dynamic, Making Problems Difficult to Identify

Wireless networks are complicated technologies.  They consist of everything from the RF environment to backend and frontend infrastructure to connected devices.  If any piece of the network changes – whether intentionally or unintentionally – it can cause a ripple effect that affects the performance of the entire network.  Because the network is dynamic, it is effectively always changing, which means those ripple effects are happening consistently throughout the day and night.  According to recent ZK Research wireless troubleshooting surveys:

• 22% of all engineers spend at least one day a week doing nothing but WiFi troubleshooting
• Poor network and application performance accounts for an average 14% loss in productivity
• WiFi association, roaming, and related issues are behind more than half of WiFi outages
• 58% of network professionals spend more than 25% of their time problem-solving WiFi issues

Normally, network problems are reported by end-users.  IT is then in a reactive mode, working to identify the cause of the problem – which is hampered by many issues being intermittent – before they can find a resolution.  With thousands of devices and hundreds of thousands of data packets, IT teams have their work cut out for them.

Artificial Intelligence is a Game Changer

Artificial intelligence (AI) solutions keep eyes on the entire network ecosystem at all times.  They collect and analyze all data packets in real time, and using advanced algorithms, they can recognize normal network behavior and proactively alert IT teams to any anomalies.  Because they monitor the entire network, these solutions can immediately identify where a problem originated, saving IT from having to narrow the problem down to a server, application, AP, or other piece of the network.  This gives IT the ability to immediately jump to troubleshooting and resolution before end-users are affected.  The solution presents information in easy-to-understand ways so that even non-technology specialists can resolve issues and optimize the network.

The Wireless Intelligence Platform’s AI-based Engine

Wyebot provides autonomic WiFi Assurance thanks to its Wireless Intelligence Platform (WIP).  WIP is vendor agnostic and monitors all technology 24/7, performing real-time analysis on all wireless activity, including that from non-WiFi sources.  Pertinent events are sent to the cloud over a secure MQTT connection where AI-based engines perform long-term pattern recognition, fingerprinting, and behavioral profiling.

All results from this collection, analysis, and pattern recognition are displayed on WIP’s dashboard, including any detected problems and actionable solutions.  With WIP’s AI-automation, IT can focus on other strategic initiatives, confident that the network is optimized unless otherwise alerted.

WIP also provides a remote network test suite to enhance proactive monitoring of end user experience.  IT can run the tests on a scheduled or periodic basis from any location.  WIP automatically sends alerts if any test fails, and the entire suite of tests can be run using WiFi 6 technology.

Finally, WIP automatically creates graphs that display historical trends with data on APs, client distribution, and airtime and client utilization.  These trends give IT a visual representation of how network health is degrading over time, supporting efficient and effective budget and network capacity planning.

Businesses using WIP experience:

• 90% quicker Mean-Time-to-Resolution
• 50% decrease in WiFi problem tickets
• 80% decrease in remote site visits

Network Optimization for a Wireless World

With WIP, businesses no longer have network blind spots and finger-pointing is virtually eliminated.  Any problems can be resolved faster and proactively, before end-users and productivity are affected.  Businesses are equipped with the data that they need to optimize the network now and into the future, ensuring that the network grows exactly as it needs to.  Bring AI-automation and insight to your wireless ecosystem today.