CommScope is redefining tomorrow by shaping the future of wired and wireless communications. Their combined global team of employees, innovators, and technologists have empowered customers in all regions of the world to anticipate what’s next and push the boundaries of what’s possible.
Key Facts
Company: CommScope
Industry: Communications Infrastructure
Company Size: 30,000+ Employees
Consumers are more reliant on internet-connected devices than ever, for everything from work to entertainment, shopping, distance learning, and more. And as people spend more time on connected devices, home networks have become increasingly complex. Innovations in Wi-Fi technology, 5G adoption, remote working, and the rising popularity of IoT have led to a sharp increase in the number of connected devices being used in the home. According to Statista, the average number of connected devices in the home in 2020 was 10, and the smart home market is expected to grow by $54 billion by 2022.
Managing all of those connected devices — laptops and PCs, mobile phones, entertainment systems, and smart appliances — is increasingly challenging, which is why home networking providers like CommScope are looking for ways to enhance the network management capabilities they offer to customers. To that end, CommScope’s Home Networks Retail team has recently partnered with Lansweeper, who previously purchased Fing, the industry leader in device recognition technology. The combination of device recognition with Lansweeper’s unmatched discovery capabilities made Lansweeper a natural choice for the ARRIS SURFboard Home Networking products.
According to Ronen Stern, Senior Product Manager for Retail at CommScope, the integration with Lansweeper was a long time coming, as a complete list of connected devices is a foundational capability of Wi-Fi management. “Device recognition is table stakes for competitors in our market space,” he said. “The device list is where customers get the information, they need about what devices are connected, how much bandwidth or data is being used, connection strength, and more.”
Although CommScope’s ARRIS SURFboard Home Networking products already supported a device recognition solution, they did not provide the broad and extensive capabilities of the Fing solution. “Our existing solution continuously had to be updated with the numerous new Wi-Fi client devices being released on daily basis,” he said. “With the ever-growing list of Wi-Fi clients, there were many devices it was unable to fully identify including the device type and details. Customers would see an ‘unknown’ device icon and manually go into the app and name those unknown devices. As you can imagine, customers with 20 or 30 devices in the home would quickly become frustrated, and it had an impact on the overall customer experience with our brand.”
Stern added that seeing an incomplete device list impacted customers’ interaction with the rest of the products. “We were at a crossroads: Do we work on improving our current solution, or partner with an industry leader in device recognition and benefit from their expertise?”
Stern evaluated several leading solutions but found the data Lansweeper delivers to be far more extensive than the competing solutions. “We chose Lansweeper because it is a very flexible, scalable solution and they are the established leader in device recognition,” said Stern. “Additionally, Lansweeper’s roadmap is enticing in terms of additional capabilities and the extended dataset it provides.”
Lansweeper is integrated with CommScope’s ARRIS SURFboard mAX Mesh Wi-Fi routers as well as its Cable Modem & Wi-Fi Routers, which can be purchased from retailers such as Amazon, Best Buy, and others… The Fing service is integrated into the mobile application that accompanies the product. The Fing service scans the network and provides in-depth information about every connected device. Through the ARRIS SURFboard Central network management app, customers can quickly see what’s connected to their network at any point in time, along with granular information that helps them better manage their home networks.
According to Stern, integration was easy, via Lanswepper’s API. “We had great support from Lansweeper’s engineering team, and we’re up and running in no time,” he said.
With the ability to identify what devices are connected to the network, Stern said, customers benefit from being able to provide context to the important network performance metrics such as data usage and signal strength. “Let’s say they have a buffering issue or something is blocking a device from communicating with the router,” he said. “they can more easily troubleshoot those types of connectivity issues to specific client devices, and it gives them confidence in the products and their ability to manage their home networks effectively.”
With complete visibility over what devices are connected to the network and who’s using them, customers can customize and change network settings with ease, create streaming profiles for individual devices, and control family members’ usage. “Being able to easily identify the devices on your network is the foundation upon which all of those features are built,” said Stern.
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