Two of the key use cases for a VPN are to connect multiple sites together, such as an enterprise's satellite offices to its central headquarters, and to provide remote workers to a central network so they may access an organization's network resources. VPNs are widely used throughout business, education, local government, and other deployment verticals that require dispersed locations to be connected together. Within this blog post, we'll be discussing the types of VPNs that you can create with Grandstream's GWN series of routers, and how you can use them to connect workers into one centralized network.

More than three years after a pandemic shifted companies to remote and hybrid work overnight, businesses still struggle to support their employees with robust, flexible, and secure IT infrastructure. The problem is unlikely to go away any time soon. Gartner, for example, reports that 82% of business leaders intend to allow employees to work remotely into the foreseeable future.

Grandstream's portfolio of networking devices has grown rapidly over the past few years. This trend will only continue with our introduction of more switches, routers, and Wi-Fi access points. While our Wi-Fi access points have built-in controllers that can be used to manage a deployment of APs, a more robust platform solution for configuration, management, and troubleshooting of network infrastructure is often a better choice. Grandstream's GWN.Cloud and Grandstream Manager are just this. GWN.Cloud and GWN Manager are free, enterprise-grade, management platforms for Grandstream access points, routers, and switches. Thanks to streamlined monitoring and maintenance, managing a network or several networks across multiple locations has never been easier.

Grandstream's Wi-Fi access point solution has evolved over the years. From our first Wi-Fi access point, the GWN7610, to our newer wide range of Wi-Fi 6 APs, our GWN devices are being utilized by clients worldwide and are helping businesses, schools, and governments provide powerful wireless networks to their users. If you are new to our GWN series, with over 14 Wi-Fi access points, three deployment configuration and management platforms, and other solutions to come, it can be a bit daunting to start learning. In this blog post, we'll take a step back from in-depth technical details and look at our GWN series as a whole, examining differentiators, key features, and providing you the introductory knowledge needed to begin working with our GWN access points. 

A captive portal has a variety of benefits when deployed into a Wi-Fi network. Being able to keep control of who can access the network, provide lead generation for commercial Wi-Fi environments, or ensure the user accepts terms and conditions are all advantages of a captive portal. Setting up a GWN captive portal is an easy process, and the variety of features available means that you can create a captive portal that is ideal for your deployment. Within this blog post, we’ll provide a step-by-step guide to creating a captive portal for the GWN series of Wi-Fi Access Points.

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802.11ax, MU-MIMO, and OFDMA

Wi-Fi 6, also known as 802.11ax, was released in 2019. It has only now begun to see mainstream adoption as the go-to Wi-Fi standard for Wi-Fi manufacturers and businesses alike. Although it may be more expensive, Wi-Fi 6 access points deliver key advantages over Wi-Fi 5. 801.11ax performs up to 4x better in denser environments than its 802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5) counterpart. Wi-Fi 6 is also designed to better manage multiple types of Wi-Fi devices that are simultaneously connecting to an access point. Lastly, according to chip manufactures, Wi-Fi 6 delivers up to 3x faster performance.

There are two major Wi-Fi 6 features that we'll be covering in this blog post, which makes all this possible, MU-MIMO and OFDMA.

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With the release of our WP810 cordless Wi-Fi IP phone, we wanted to revisit a popular blog of ours that evaluates the pros and cons that Wi-Fi has against traditional DECT solutions. The WP810 was designed to suit a variety of enterprises and vertical market applications at an affordable price point that competes with most DECT offerings. Continue reading to learn how Wi-Fi voice is changing the shape of UC mobility. 

Fig.A Grandstream Networks’ GWN7630LR outdoor long-range 802.11ac Wave-2 4x4:4 Wi-Fi access point

Note: This review was originally published on TMCNet's UC Network Management website, which can be found here.

As an end user in a mobile society, for high bandwidth applications and high-client density scenarios indoors or outdoors we are ever more reliant on good Wi-Fi connectivity. We now have outdoor long-range 802.11ac Wave-2 Wi-Fi access points (APs) that are equipped with an embedded controller and that also supports centralized, scalable management system choices such as cloud hosted /cloud Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) or a premise based Virtual WLAN (vWLAN) controller. These APs are also equipped with features, networking standards and protocols such as: Multi-User Multiple Input Multiple Output (MU-MIMO) technology, band steering, multiple service set identifiers (SSIDs), dual-2.4GHz/5GHz radio bands, mesh networking, gigabit ethernet ports with PoE/PoE+,802.11ac, 802.11ac Wave 2, 802.11k, 802.11r and 802.11v, air time fairness, captive portal for custom branding experiences, client bridge function, client steering, multicast stream to unicast stream conversion, beamforming, Wi-Fi and system security features such as- digitally signed firmware for anti-hacking secure boot, randomly generated default password, unique security certificate, WEP, WPA/WPA2-PSK and WPA/WPA2 enterprise,  ports to connect external antennas, master controller failover function for  redundancy and backup etc.

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If you deploy VoIP solutions, you’re used to creating customized networks to help customers users communicate, be more productive, and work more efficiently. Recently, companies around the world have also started to utilize Wi-Fi technology more and more to achieve this same goal. In fact, in their recent 2019 annual report, Spiceworks found that 70% of surveyed organizations are expecting to utilize gigabit Wi-Fi technology by the year 2021¹. If you're use to deploying VoIP, Wi-Fi is a natural addition to add to your offering – and one that your customers will soon be looking for. In this blog post, we’ll go over some of the crossovers and similarities between Wi-Fi and VoIP and why you should add Wi-Fi networking to your offering.