教室是空的，走廊里都空无一人，以及Wi-Fi网络闲置跨越100多K-12公立学校在北弗吉尼亚州劳登郡学区工作。
Schools have been closed since March due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the wireless team has been busier than ever, making sure that all of the 85,000 students in the district have reliable Internet access for distance learning from home, and planning for a future in which wireless connectivity becomes even more vital to the school district's mission.
Mitch Dickey, lead communications engineer, said that when the schools were abruptly shut down in mid-March by order of the governor, the wireless team jumped into action, acquiring 1,500 wireless hot spots and distributing them to students who needed them.
在家工作，迪基现在放在一起的概念（POC）的证明，部署在学校停车场的60GHz点至点无线给学生和员工上网而物理建筑都是关闭的限制。
For Dickey and other WLAN professionals, the pandemic has demonstrated the critical importance of wireless communications. Nearly two-thirds of American workers – double the number from early March – are doing their jobs via home wireless, according to a盖洛普民意测验调查。思科，在其最新的earnings report宣布，其95％的员工在家工作。
这意味着WLAN专业人员不得不把注意力从维护企业网络远程协助工人，其中许多人都是非技术性的，在得到他们的家庭网络提高速度和安全地连接到企业资产转移。
Tam Dell'Oro, founder and CEO of the Dell'Oro Group, surveyed about 20 enterprise network managers and WLAN distributors, and reports that new in-building deployments have pretty much stopped cold. She adds that with WLAN pros charged with setting up and securing at-home workers, "remote access devices, particularly those with higher WAN connectivity and higher security, are flying off the shelf."
IDC analyst Brandon Butler says the 2020 forecast for the WLAN industry has been downgraded from the 5.1% growth rate predicted prior to the pandemic to a 2.3% decline. He adds that industries like retail, hospitality, sports stadiums and theaters, which make up the largest share of WLAN spending, have been hit the hardest by COVID-19. "Overall, we've seen that enterprise WLAN projects are generally taking longer to get approved and executed as decision lead times increase and businesses reassess their investments."
He adds, "For network engineers, this can be an opportunity to optimize their environments while they don't have workers in the office or customers on their premises. It's also a time to support their work-from-home colleagues and plan for future business use cases when employees/customers do return."
而且它是网络工程师，从一个人的时候有一个故障单只谁与工人进行交互，以人谁是积极主动地帮助人们获得在危机的时间内完成自己的工作提高形象的好时机。
These new responsibilities call for a slightly different skill set. As Lee Badman, wireless network architect at Syracuse University, puts it, "We communicate more with various electronic methods, and certainly need to polish our soft skills of patience and consideration as we deal with everyone in this odd time."
Prepping for next phase of enterprise Wi-Fi
现在，公司正开始考虑最安全的方法，把人们带回工作场所，WLAN专家的中心舞台。在Wi-Fi工程师的工作就是不再仅仅是覆盖的技术方面，带宽，正常运行时间和性能。这是关于创造力，适应能力，应变能力，创新和承担领导角色。
For example, a significant percentage of employees may end up working from homepermanently。在盖洛普调查中，五分之三的美国工人谁一直在家在大流行期间做他们的工作表示他们宁愿继续远程工作后也公共卫生的限制被取消。
全美互助保险有限公司刚刚宣布的永久转变混合式工作模式它将继续运作四个主要职责链porate offices, but the majority of other locations will close and employees will continue working remotely. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey recently informed his employees that they can continue working from home "forever。"
"Fewer people at the office means commercial real estate may free up, portions of buildings may be leased and Wi-Fi may become more important than wired Ethernet to accommodate the reallocation of space associated with new office layouts," Dell'Oro says.
Conversely, more people working from home on a full-time basis may require new ways of thinking about remote networks. Traditionally there has been a clear line of demarcation between work and home networks in terms of maintenance and troubleshooting. Enterprise IT was reluctant to cross the line into taking responsibility for equipment that it did not buy or configure.
The current crisis has obliterated that line, with WLAN experts diving in, helping people with their home nets on an ad hoc, emergency basis. But if working from home becomes more prevalent and permanent, formal policies will need to be established. Home networks may come to be viewed as extensions of the corporate network, or treated the same way as BYOD devices. Maybe the WLAN team will end up deploying corporate-approved Wi-Fi routers with pre-set security, access control, compliance and usage policies.
有什么新的标准可能看起来像
几乎所有的变化和调整，人们设想为重启经济的一部分，需要无线连接的某种方式。“WLAN供应商和网络专业人士在中新的，非接触式业务运营的推动者，机会和长期向位置的Wi-Fi技术”，如通过非接触交易酒店客人检查，IDC的巴特勒说。
Other wireless-enabled functions include tracking and monitoring hotel guests or mall shoppers to make sure social distancing is adhered to and that requirements around the number of people gathered in public spaces are followed. Retail stores might decide to use video cameras to track whether people are wearing masks. Then there are the more advanced scenarios like deploying mobile temperature check systems prior to allowing workers back into a manufacturing facility.
瞻博网络，例如，刚刚宣布了cloud servicethat enables companies to use Wi-Fi location data for journey mapping, proximity tracing and hot-zone alerting, based on data collected from badges worn by employees or through mobile phone apps.
Butler points out that Wi-Fi systems have the ability to collect enormous amounts of data about users and devices that are connected to the network, including which APs they connect to, when they connected, for how long they connect and where they move within a facility. "This data could be used for a variety of benefits as organizations think about reopening," he says.
In the event someone at a company tests positive for the virus, Juniper says its system can be used to identify who the person came in contact with, and what areas of the facility the person visited. It can also be used to alert people in real time that they may be heading toward a congested area.
这些无线网络密集的情况下，可能需要企业升级到802.11ax或Wi-Fi 6，它提供更高的性能，增加了Dell'Oro的。
Moving to cloud-based Wi-Fi management
When employees were all working in a corporate office, WLAN management was relatively easy, compared to the current scenario of workers scattered everywhere. This change has sparked interest in offloading WLAN management to cloud-based service providers.
“从长远来看我们希望一些趋势that have been driving the market in recent years to increase in popularity due to COVID-19, namely the shifting to managing WLANs from cloud-based platforms and relying on advanced software-based machine learning and AI capabilities," Butler says.
Dell'Oro adds that around half of the people she polled indicated that the pandemic is serving as a "catalyst triggering enterprise interest in cloud-based applications and infrastructure."
For WLAN experts, shifting to a cloud service requires an entirely different skill set that includes things like managing relationships with multiple cloud service providers and making sure that SLAs are met. These skills will not only make WLAN professionals more effective in their current job but also position them to advance into higher level cloud management roles within the company.
Future of WLANs and WLAN professionals
随着企业慢慢重新打开，无线局域网将实现新的基于无线的能力，并在确保远程工作人员的安全和生产中发挥着越来越重要的作用。
WLAN工程师将需要刷上他们的软技能，扩大自己的视野，包括基于云的管理服务，并在龙头企业专注于创新和创造力的路径，新的基于无线的能力上。
WLAN有关的工作将继续高度觊觎和更高的报酬。例如，在最新的盐湖城伙伴研究，认证无线网络管理员认证，在三个月截至4月1日的市场价值涨幅超过10％。
Badman points out that "the LAN and WLAN are pivotal to keeping our university running." Syracuse University still has a few thousand people (down from more than 33,000) on its wireless network, so he is conducting the usual monitoring activities and responding to the rare trouble ticket.
他还咨询有关工作人员的家庭无线网络。家庭Wi-Fi可能已采取了大流行之前，理所当然，但现在对教师，管理人员和学生它的关键任务，白德曼说。他补充说，“我知道，我们很多人都试图填补任何新发现的额外的时间，我们有自主开发”，以便为任何新的正常可能看起来像做更好的准备。