Building for the AI era: Inside Cisco IT’s Wi-Fi 7 revolution

The arrival of Wi-Fi 7 promised to revolutionize wireless networking with unprecedented speeds and capacity. While most enterprises faced months of planning and potential downtime, Cisco IT used the power of its own native, deeply integrated stack to execute a seamless rollout across global offices in record time. Learn how we turned a monumental infrastructure upgrade into a routine deployment with the power of our own Cisco Networking portfolio.

An infrastructure revolution #

It’s no secret: the world is changing. In technology, it’s flying by.

As a network engineer, that means we’re facing new challenges every day – whether it’s network bandwidth increasing due to AI tool usage, or security threats accelerating in scale and complexity. We cannot just respond to the needs of today. We need to play offense, future-proofing our networks for whatever unseen demands may come.

When the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) unveiled its Wi-Fi 7 standard, it changed the game for Wi-Fi infrastructure by bringing higher speeds, lower latency, and greater capacity to users than previous Wi-Fi standards. We knew we needed to upgrade.

With 90,000 employees and hundreds of facilities spread across the globe, this would be no small task.

Luckily, in Cisco IT we’d already been laying bold foundations for Wi-Fi 7 by maximizing every capability of the Cisco Networking portfolio, paving the way for a simple transition on our internal networks.

When it came time for us to make the switch, it was a light lift: routine, simple and seamless. Just as it should be.

Before the rollout: Cisco IT’s head start #

For us, the Cisco portfolio of networking solutions enabled us to deploy robust and overperforming networks far before Wi-Fi 7 even existed. This pushed us beyond the limits of Wi-Fi 6 and 6E, giving us a head start in preparing for Wi-Fi 7. This included:

1. Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) : Strengthened our security posture through the use of certificate-based authentication, preparing us for the advanced security requirements of Wi-Fi 7. Because we required managed certificates on devices, we knew the devices could supportWi-Fi Protected Access 3 (WPA3), the next generation of Wi-Fi security.
2. Meraki : Cisco IT had been adoptingMeraki Dashboard withMeraki Access Points for over a year before Wi-Fi 7 was released. This gave our engineers hands-on experience with the platform and with the access points’ expanded frequency spectrum. This led to a 40% decrease in incidents reported in one of our sites.
3. Cisco Catalyst Center : Enabled the use of AI-enhanced Radio Resource Management (AI RRM), which ensured the physical positioning of our access points was optimized before we even deployed a single Wi-Fi 7 access point (AP). This prevented us from needing to complete days-long site surveys. In one quarter, 39 of our 44 sites skipped predictive design entirely thanks to AI RRM — freeing engineers for more strategic work.
4. Splunk : Gave us a clear, historical view of wireless performance across every site. That meant we already knew which locations were healthy before Wi-Fi 7 arrived — so we skipped redundant site surveys entirely and deployed faster.

These helped us acclimate to some of the new Wi-Fi 7 innovations and requirements ahead of time so that when it arrived, the transition was seamless.

During the rollout: Cisco delivers frictionlessness #

Once Wi-Fi 7 arrived, we began rapidly deploying the Cisco Wireless CW9178I – Cisco’s highest-caliber Wi-Fi 7 access point – across every workplace we build and refresh. We started with our newest office in Austin, TX, and now feature it in several cities across the US, and several other locations worldwide.

Cisco IT’s quick and easy rollout was enabled not only by the high standards we’d enforced, but also by innovative features built into Cisco networking solutions. Rather than relying on one point product, we optimized across the Cisco networking ecosystem, making the upgrade easy with:

1. Touchless configuration of new access points with Meraki Dashboard’s Plug and Play functionality. No onsite configuration was required as we deployed at speed, cutting network onboarding time per site from 2 days down to just 1–2 hours.
2. Deployment of the Cisco Campus Gateway , which allowed us to support seamless roaming and enhanced security at even our largest campus locations. With this, managing networks on a massive scale is easy.
3. Detecting, triaging, and resolving issues with minimal manual effort using Splunk. This automated troubleshooting results in faster diagnosis, fewer on‑site interventions, and digital resilience as new Wi‑Fi 7 capabilities roll out.
4. Validation of our existing access point placement with Cisco Catalyst Center’s AI-enhanced Radio Resource Management (RRM), which meant for most sites we could simply swap in new access points using existing AP positions.

With the power of the Cisco portfolio, our IT engineers were able to streamline the rollout, deploying Wi-Fi 7 with speed and ease.

After the rollout: Unbelievable impact #

After all this talk about deployment success, it’d be easy to ask – how do we actually benefit from Wi-Fi 7?

For us, the Cisco Wireless 9178I access points are the secret weapon. These workhorse Wi-Fi 7 access points transform the experience for everyone connected to our network in these key areas:

1. Drastic increase in data rates, often by 100% or more from Wi-Fi 6E (1.4 Gbps versus 600 Mbps before in our networks).
2. Enhanced reliability and decreased latency with Multi-Link Operation (MLO) and a wider available frequency spectrum.
3. Greater protection from attacks with a secure networking architecture, allowing us to deeply integrate security into the network.
4. Reduced time spent detecting and remediating problems with the AI capabilities built into Meraki Dashboard and Catalyst Center, which have automated troubleshooting capabilities.

Building tomorrow’s network today #

From the prep-work to the deployment, these innovations across the Cisco portfolio transform both the way IT builds networks and the way our employees experience them. Cisco’s broad portfolio ties it all together – the security, the policy, automation, and connectivity – to maximize the power of Wi-Fi 7 the way no other vendor can. With it, we strategically and deeply integrate security into our network with a secure networking architecture, making it easier for us to defend against today’s increasingly intensifying threat landscape.

That’s the kind of network we build at Cisco: ready for whatever comes next, from today’s AI workloads to tomorrow’s unknowns.

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