Apple and Cisco are making good on last year’s promise to team up in support of business mobility. With the release of Apple’s iOS 10 operating system, iPhones and iPads will optimize Wi-Fi with Cisco access points.
Tests conducted by the companies have shown that iOS 10 will give users up to 8-times faster Wi-Fi roaming, as well as a 90% reduction in web browsing failures, and up to 66% more reliable Wi-Fi calling, according to Cisco. The company also said management overhead can be reduced by 50%.
Cisco access points will provide iOS 10 devices with a list of the six best nearby Wi-Fi connections for any location. The company said this will help devices move quickly from one access point to the next without searching all available channels for the best connection.
For iOS 10 devices, Cisco will also turn on 802.11r, a Wi-Fi protocol the company said will expedite security parameter negotiation. The company said this will mean fewer dropped calls for employees who are using Wi-Fi for voice calls.
Information technology managers also will be able to use a configuration profile provisioned to the iOS device to “white list” mission-critical applications, giving these priority over less important apps like social media, streaming movies and video games.
“You can have different profiles and different white lists, depending on whether you are on the office network, at school, at home, or somewhere else,” blogged Cisco’s head of engineering for enterprise networking, Jeff Reed. “For the first time, your network [quality of service] matches the client QoS.”
Cisco’s cooperation with Apple has implications for wireless carriers as they field requests from corporate customers for better in-building connectivity. Wi-Fi offload is becoming a more viable solution for some companies, especially as voice over Wi-Fi becomes more reliable.
