The Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA), the global industry body dedicated to driving the the experience of Wi-Fi across the global wireless ecosystem, has today released a set of “L4S Implementation Guidelines” for Low Latency, Low Loss, and Scalable (L4S) throughput over Wi-Fi networks.
The guidelines demonstrate how demand for low-latency Wi-Fi applications such as augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality (VR) can be achieved with an
explanation of implementation approaches, Access Point (AP) tests and simulation studies for L4S AP performance in different scenarios.
Demand for L4S applications is growing,
with both telecoms organisations and developers beginning to implement the technology. Apple, for example, provides guidance to developers on how to implement L4S in
their apps, in 2024 Nokia and Vodafone conducted the first trial of L4S over an end-to-end Passive Optical Network (PON), reducing latency from 550
milliseconds to 12 milliseconds, demonstrating its suitability for real-time applications, and Comcast recently announced deployment of L4S technology, which will be rolling out across its
entire footprint.
Buffering is a primary source of delay in both wired and wireless networks, occurring when incoming packets exceed the departure rate, leading
to high buffer occupancy. Latency in Wi-Fi networks is largely influenced by two factors: delays associated with queuing and buffering under load, and delays
introduced by the 802.11 Media Access Control (MAC) protocol.
The adoption of L4S technology is set to revolutionize Wi-Fi performance, particularly for applications that
demand low latency and high throughput. To address these issues, the L4S project aims to minimise buffering delays, reduce data loss, and enable scalable throughput