By Claus Hetting, WiFi NOW CEO Chairman
Qualcomm’s Dragonwing Service Defined Wi-Fi framework – launched in fall of 2023 – is now going mainstream among CSPs and retail device manufacturers, Qualcomm says. The solution provides end-to-end Wi-Fi QoE management, exemplified by Qualcomm’s partnership with Meta to boost Quest 3 Mixed Reality (MR) connectivity performance. Service orchestration, classification, scheduling, and telemetry insights are applied to create the best possible user experience regardless of application & client mix, Qualcomm says.
How do you deliver a great Wi-Fi connectivity experience within increasingly complex multi-client, multi-user, and multi-application environments such as the home or office? It is a formidable challenge particularly because Wi-Fi standards are generally not born with the tools to optimise QoE and sometimes protocol add-ons can even aggravate the situation. The answer lies in end-to-end service orchestration, says John Harrsen, Senior Director of Product Management at Qualcomm.
“In the case of home broadband service providers, Service Defined Wi-Fi is about provisioning Wi-Fi resources in an orchestrated manner in real time for all devices and applications running within the home. For retail devices, the solution can be used to optimise connectivity performance for individual Wi-Fi clients including specific applications and flows. In either case, this is really the ultimate granular framework for optimising Wi-Fi QoE keeping in mind that individual QoE requirements for high-quality gaming, video conferencing, and other applications are all different,” John Harrsen says.
Qualcomm says Service Defined Wi-Fi includes all the tools and features to do this comprehensively for practically any Wi-Fi service or combination of services. For service providers, Wi-Fi home gateways can be managed via the Cloud based on APIs that provide access to a host of detailed service and policy controls. Other APIs offer access telemetry for insights into the actual, delivered user experience and real-time network health. In this way the CSP – or third party platform – becomes the intelligence layer that closes the loop for QoE management right down to individual clients, apps, and specific services, Qualcomm says.
“A good example is how some home broadband service providers – typically cablecos – allocate Wi-Fi resources to private, public, and mobile services. It is even possible to allocate specific policies and percentage Wi-Fi capacities to ‘network slices’. This can be used to accommodate end-to-end 5G FWA network slicing that extends all the way through to the Wi-Fi client device in the home. Ultimately, Service Defined Wi-Fi gives the CSPs a lot of control knobs to turn in order to manage services and policies when before there were few or no knobs at all, or at least few that were transparent,” John Harrsen says.
An example of a third party management platform making use of the solution is Aprecomm’s Virtual Wireless Expert for ISPs. Aprecomm’s QoE engine monitors and analyses Wi-Fi traffic flows at the deep packet level and then uses the Qualcomm Service Defined Wi-Fi APIs to dynamically prioritise the application flow to deliver an optimal end-user experience, Aprecomm says.
Meanwhile Qualcomm’s collaboration with Meta shows how the solution can be used to reduce latency and boost QoE for individual client devices, such as the Meta Quest 3 HMD (headset). In this case Wi-Fi QoS Management Stream Classification Service parameters are mapped to the Service Defined Wi-Fi framework. Results show 35% reduction in latency and 100% improved bitrate in congested environments compared scenarios without QoS management, Qualcomm says. Read more about the Meta demo here.
Qualcomm says that the Service Defined Wi-Fi framework today is offered as an integral part of Qualcomm’s Wi-Fi portfolio and supports both Dragonwing N7 and N7 Pro Wi-Fi 7 chipset platforms (formerly Immersive Home and Networking Pro platforms, respectively). The solution can be applied to home Wi-Fi as well as used to orchestrate Wi-Fi QoE in any other multi-client, multi-application setting, such as in schools or offices, Qualcomm says.
For many more details including performance test results from a variety of use cases also click here to download the highly recommended Qualcomm Dragonwing™ Service Defined Wi-Fi white paper.
/Claus.
