CWNP Blogroll

“BR” stands for Branch Router AND Baskin-Robbins!

2012-05-24T19:26:00Z

May was a busy time here at the Hive with the Fun Committee at it again ... spreading fun and charitable deeds throughout the land (or at least the Bay Area). Our activities ranged from shoe-buying to ice cream eating as the Hive covered its quarterly goal of doing a little good, and also having a little fun. Enjoy the photo journal documenting the latest.

First, we helped out with the Sleep Train Foster Kids Shoe Drive by shopping for, and donating, $500 in shoes.

Check out all the loot we found at Payless Shoes!

A close up of just one pair of cheerful, fun pink shoes.

A bit of background: For many foster children, a pair of new shoes helps provide a sense of normalcy during a turbulent time. To help, Sleep Train collects new shoes for foster children of all ages. Last year, this drive provided nearly 3,000 pairs of new shoes, over 22,000 clothing items and over 100,000 school supply items for foster children.

As for fun, yesterday came the Ice Cream Social, where the Hive celebrated all of our great accomplishments this past quarter with the team. It was good timing too - customers and partners who were here taking David Coleman’s training class this week at headquarters were also treated to a nice afternoon treat.

Check out the feeding frenzy going on behind Adam.

We served BR (like our new Branch Router products ) a.k.a. Baskin-Robbins ice cream and ate. And ate. And ate ... we are very good at consuming food around here.

We can’t take credit for the creative spelling of daiquiri, but the non-dairy option was appreciated by some of our lactose-intolerant Hivers.

Of course we had all the Sundae fixin's!

Many Hivers went for it, adding a little bit of everything.

You don’t need to ask us twice. Apparently 2pm is the perfect time to throw an Ice Cream Social – because everybody showed up and crammed in the break room.

All gone! Well, almost. Some leftovers remained for those who wanted seconds (or thirds).

What’s next, you ask? It’s always something around here. Stay tuned.

Let the Customer Decide

2012-05-24T17:42:29Z

The other day, I was sitting with some very smart Cisco people talking about the exciting new developments they’re working [...]

Use inSSIDer on your Mac today!

2012-05-23T20:09:32Z

Did you know: MetaGeek has inSSIDer Wi-Fi Scanning software for Mac OSX! See all the wireless networks around you. When you start inSSIDer for Mac, every wireless network the application can detect is selected and displayed. In some case (like in the screenshot of our wireless network landscape above) it’s too many networks to track. You can deselect all of them by clicking the check box in the top left and then select just the networks you are interested in tracking.… Read More

Network Filters in Chanalyzer Pro

2012-05-22T22:18:51Z

Alright, the developers at MetaGeek have been slaving away on the latest release of Chanalyzer Pro. Network Adapter Selection We moved the wireless network card selection to the main menu. Select your preferred Wi-Fi card to see data populated in the networks table. Custom Live Sessions I am excited about a few of the enhancements included in this update, specifically the Custom Live Sessions.… Read More

The BatCave

2012-05-23T15:48:00Z

It's a funny thing, though not uncommon, that network geeks' home networks are more powerful and sophisticated than the networks at their HQ office, or even at their customers' sites. If you are a networking consultant, does this describe your home network?

This blog will describe my home network and a little about my home networking philosophy. I hope it helps you in some way. My home network is my baby. Oddly, I treat it better than any family pet. Honestly, the non-stop care-and-feeding of my home network, dubbed "BatCave", is how I learn new networking technologies and keep up-to-date on existing ones. Can you relate? I like to call myself a "purist", meaning that I like my networks to be the best that they can possibly be. Every nuance must be the best that exists or I keep striving toward something better. A sickness? Of course. Again, can you relate?

In the last 2 months, I've learned the basics of Junos (it's freakin' awesome, and a big shout-out to my Twitter friends who encouraged me to learn it), dug through Cisco & Juniper switch and router product lines (including capabilities, spec differences, and trends in the market), done a huge amount of research (and a purchase) on small/green/powerful hardware configurations for ESXi servers, learned about SSL proxy, and come to understand some important nuances of web-based filtering via the cloud. I've probably rewired and reconfigured my network 6 times in that 2 months, inserting and replacing various infrastructure devices for learning and testing purposes. It's an on-going science experiment.

Green & Quiet: The New Network Mandates

It all started with my friend Mike Hoberg. He used to piss-n-moan about how everything at his house needed to be quiet and not suck up lots of power. I thought to myself, "What a whiner ... I want the biggest, baddest network of all time at my house." Well, that lasted until I got really sick of paying those outrageous (and unnecessary) power bills and trying to talk over those crazy-loud, turbo-fan-enabled switches on conference calls. I guess it was Mike who was right after all, and his take on things completely changed my home network - for the better. Thanks Mike, you rock.

My Network

Note: Regardless of my current network configuration, various components are changed out regularly for learning and testing purposes. Those of you who know me know that I won't say, "I only use Aerohive gear at home because it's the only thing that will work." because that would be B.S. My network is currently in its preferred configuration, and I'm not having any issues.

The Switch

Current: Cisco 2960CG-8TC-L

This thing is slick, but about 2X as expensive as it should be. Brain-dead to configure, beautiful GUI, small, cool, quiet, and just enough gig ports. 10/100 devices (e.g. Print servers) are offloaded to my ASA5505's integrated 10/100 switch ports to save the Gig ports for important things.

Alternate: Juniper EX2200-C

This is the baddest little mother of a switch ever, but again, 2X as expensive as it should be. It has extra switch ports beyond the Cisco, but the GUI isn't as beautiful. If I had a more complex environment, I'd switch immediately to this puppy. I LOVE the chassis of this unit - great care was obviously taken to make it look like an indestructible tank. Love the PoE+ alot as well. This is my favorite switch overall, but it's overkill for my house, and overkill doesn't meet the Green requirement for the primary BatCave switch. I'm just learning the CLI, which means it can't be in production until I'm comfy with it. Overall, it still gets an A+, but the Cisco is a perfect fit because I don't actually need PoE at the moment. If I did, Cisco's 3560CG-8PC-S would be the 'perfect' fit, though a tad more pricey than the 2960CG-8TC-L of course.

The Firewall

Current: Cisco ASA5505
*Note: With expense licenses (hey Cisco, that sucks) for unlimited clients and remote access for iOS devices (requires 2 different licenses)

I think I've tried dang near everything within a reasonable price range. I need some special capabilities, which limits my selection. The most difficult-to-meet requirement is the need for remote VPN access from iOS and OSX devices. The two best client applications, in my humble opinion, are Cisco's AnyConnect and Juniper's Pulse. Unfortunately, Pulse only works with the SA appliances, not with any reasonable model of SRX (hey Juniper, that sucks). The ASA5505 is a great little general-purpose firewall, fairly simple to configure, has lingering-and-obvious software bugs, and is WAY too expensive (due to the licensing). If the unit hadn't been free (a gift) to start with, I wouldn't have it. Love the features and configurability. I hate Java. Needs Gig Ethernet. It's a nice unit for branches and homes who want somewhat-easy configurability with good features at an extreme cost.

Alternate: Juniper SRX220H-PoE

This thing is super powerful, and along with that power comes a cost that makes even the Cisco look cheap. The specs are unreal, damn near perfect in fact. Kudos on that. The GUI isn't horrible, but it isn't good either. The learning curve is long, and the feature licensing costs are excessive. Fully loaded with licenses, you have to make a decision between a new motorcycle or this unit. It is a fine unit though. Oh, and for that kind of money, I'll reiterate how ridiculous it is that Pulse doesn't work with it.

The NAS

Current: Synology DS1512+ with five 2TB 6Gbps SATA drives.

Oh my goodness. There is no need for alternative. This thing is the cat's meow. It does everything - even an integrated application server with apps provided by third parties for free. An integrated Linux-based (with NICE GUI) operating system. Built in media server. Support for iOS apps (such as DS File). It plays equally nice with iOS, OSX, and Win7 (all tested). It's FAST. It's quiet. It's not very expensive. It's extendable (other lower-cost units that can be chained to it). It supports iSCSI. It's a homerun. Just buy one. Do it now.

Access Points

Current: Aerohive AP330 (2ea)

Upstairs is covered by a root AP, and it's meshed over a 40MHz, 5GHz channel to the downstairs mesh AP unit. With 5.0r3 code and HMOL, it's fast, stable, and easy. I was using HMOL Express for a while, but recently switched to Enterprise to play with our Branch On Demand solution a bit. For simple home use, you can't beat Express. I'll likely switch back shortly.

Alternate: You name it.

Ruckus and Apple are my two favorite alternatives because my requirements are fairly simple, and they are simple to configure. Aruba Instant might be an appropriate alternative here, but I don't have one, and it's too expensive.

Printers

Primary Laser: HP2300 - Indestructible workhorse. Period. Best printer I've ever owned.

Primary InkJet: HP 8600 - Supports AirPrint, does everything, and very affordable.

Alternative Laser: Xerox Phaser 3250. A good printer, but drivers are a little wonky sometimes. Keeps on working, so no complaints.

PowerLine Crap

Primary: NetGear's XAV5501

This is the best the market has to offer, as best I can tell, do that tells me that the power line networking industry is in a very sad state of affairs. Marketed as "Gig" because it's bi-directional 500Mbps is misleading, and it's important to know that you'll get 20-50Mbps of throughput in any normal scenario. That 500Mbps stuff is an order or magnitude misleading. I use this only for testing, not production networking.

ESXi Server

This is such a big project that it will get its own blog. There are lots of well-thought-out parts (building it from scratch now), it's not cheap, and it hasn't yet been proven to work. I'll be posting this blog as soon as it's built and working ... with pictures.

WAN Pipe

AT&T 6Mbps x 512kbps ADSL. It's my only option. I could double up, with a load-balancer, but I've learned to be patient waiting on file downloads.

I hope this helps or was at least mildly interesting. Ping me with questions. I love talking about home networking. Yes, I know how odd that sounds coming from the Evangelist of a vendor who focuses on SME and Large Enterprise.

Virtual Stacking — the missing link in enterprise switch management

2012-05-23T13:00:20Z

When we launched the world’s first cloud managed switches in January 2012, we wanted to go beyond all the great features you’ve come to expect in a Meraki product. If you look at the enterprise switch market, other than basic improvements in speeds and feeds, there has been surprisingly little innovation, especially in managing large, distributed networks. Meraki developed Virtual Stacking to help address such challenges.

What is Virtual Stacking?

Virtual Stacking is an industry-first technology that provides centralized management for up to 10,000 switch ports. Unlike traditional stacking, virtually stacked switches do not require a physical connection, can be in different physical locations, and can be of different switch models, thereby simplifying large scale, distributed deployments.

Figure 1: Editing switch ports via Virtual Stacking

What does this mean for you? If you have ever tried stacking traditional switches, you know about the expensive stacking modules, special cables, and the limit of the number of switches that you can manage through a single logical interface. This limitation makes managing large, distributed networks unnecessarily complex and expensive, with on-going OpEx needed to maintain all the network devices. With Meraki’s Virtual Stacking technology, managing large, distributed networks is as simple as managing an intuitive single pane-of-glass interface — the Meraki dashboard.

Single Pane-of-Glass Management

The Meraki dashboard gives you a holistic view of all the ports in your network. It doesn’t matter if the switches are located right next to each other or on different continents. Virtual Stacking give you unprecedented visibility and you can manage up to 10,000 switch ports as though the switches were physically stacked in the same room. For example, you can find all the ports across the network that are in VLAN 30, and then edit the entire group. Alternatively, you can enable/disable ports, turn PoE* on/off, define if ports are access/trunk ports, and assign VLANs.

The power and ease of managing individual ports or a group of ports is critical for scalable deployments, but Meraki’s dashboard takes it a step further and enables you to manage network-wide settings, such as defining QoS, spanning tree, and your management VLAN from the same single pane of glass.

Figure 2: Spanning tree, QoS, and port mirroring configuration

If you do not see these features on your dashboard, you may require a firmware upgrade. Please contact support@meraki.com to schedule the upgrade.

Don’t forget to check out our new features under the Help > New features page regularly. We are constantly adding more exciting features and we’re expanding and improving existing features!

Finally, if you’re interested in seeing the MS Switch Dashboard, watch the demo at http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KViCLMKXpkA

*PoE available on the MS22P and MS42P.

AirMagnet Laptop Analyzer Using Multiple Proxim USB Adapters with Spectrum XT Integration

2012-05-23T11:12:00Z

I've recently had the ability to use multiple Proxim/Orinoco 8494-US wireless adapters with the AirMagnet WiFi Analyzer Pro application with the AirMagnet Spectrum XT integrated into the same application interface.

When you use three Proxim/Orinoco 8494-US wireless adapters with WiFi Analyzer pro, you're able to capture data on channels 1, 6 and 11 simultaneously, as well as do roaming testing

From enterprise Wi-Fi to branch office routing: An Aerohive update

2012-05-22T16:12:40Z

In this sit-down with TMCnet’s Rich Tehrani, Aerohive Senior Product Marketing Manager Abby Strong talks about the changes at Aerohive over the past 18 months.

A few highlights from this video:

Aerohive’s evolution away from only offering enterprise Wi-Fi.
Aerohive’s announcement last Fall about branch office routing.
Latest branch router, the BR 200, focuses on larger offices, retail and health care (enterprises with a lot of small offices without dedicated IT staff.)
Aerohive will be working on 80211.ac products as soon as the chips are ready.
Announcement of the Apple Bonjour Gateway, which enables Apple AirPlay and Apple AirPrint across multi-subnet enterprise networks.

MetaGeek at Interop 2012

2012-05-21T20:32:57Z

Interop, the trade show where networking nerds and tech junkies find out about new ways to work. This was my first year traveling with the MetaGeek crew to Interop in Vegas. MetaGeek has been at the expo for years – growing their booth as business grew, and you know – tracking down robots, as well as our own Brian Tuttle helping to set up and manage the network operations center.… Read More

Are Apple iPhones Misbehaving on Wi-Fi

2012-05-21T15:00:00Z

The latest generation of mobile devices, including the Apple iPhone 4S, may be causing performance degradation on your Wi-Fi network, which could be reported as a Denial of Service (DoS) attack by WIPS (wireless intrusion prevention systems).

One of my blog readers contacted me about a disturbing finding he had and asked for my opinion (thanks Thanh). The finding in question was that the Apple iPhone, iPad, and other mobile devices based on the latest Broadcom chipsets are setting really long Duration values in the range of 10-14ms within Wi-Fi control frames (e.g. RTS/CTS-to-self). This essentially reserves the medium for the device to transmit without a collision. The problem is that this is an excessively long period of time for an 802.11n capable device, and through my packet analysis I have found that no large frame transmission is subsequently occurring. This indicates that a performance problem may exist with the devices, and may be reported as an NAV DoS attack on the network by WIPS systems.

I've also heard anecdotal reports of this being observed on HTC Google Nexus One, Apple iPad 2, iPhone 4, some RIM Blackberrys, and even on a Broadcom evaluation board. So, there is a distinct possibility that this issue lies in the Broadcom chipset used in these devices and is not isolated to Apple devices. However, I have only tested this on my personal iPhone 4S and cannot directly verify those observations. So this post only details what I have actual been able to test and observe directly.

I had a hard time believing this could be true, so I investigated myself. Sure enough, I found the behavior when I tested.

Apple iPhone 4S Large Duration Value

What you see in the figure above is that the iPhone transmits CTS-to-Self frames at regular intervals, around once every second, with an excessively large Duration value. This causes all other Wi-Fi clients to set the NAV (virtual carrier sense) to the specified Duration value and defer transmission. Essentially, my iPhone was causing a blockage of all traffic on my wireless network for 11ms at regular intervals. Definitely not good for performance.

Possible valid explanations for this behavior could be:

1) Frame aggregation with 802.11n. I did see the iPhone using frame aggregation in other instances and using an appropriate Duration value around 4ms in those cases. But I did not see frame aggregation being used after the 11ms Duration control frames.

2) The use of a Transmit Opportunity (TXOP) on a QoS enabled WLAN in order to transmit a burst of packets within a specific QoS traffic class. I double-checked the TXOP values advertised by my access point and they are using the 802.11 default values of 0ms (single frame only) for best effort and background queues, 3.008ms for the video queue, and 1.504ms for the voice queue, which are much lower than the 11ms observed value.

3) A really large frame transmitted at a really low data rate. This is possible if the iPhone needed to transmit a 1,384 byte or larger frame at 1 Mbps to get such a Duration value. But I have all 802.11b rates disabled on my AP and verified in the packet trace that the iPhone was using 24 - 65 Mbps almost all the time, with only a few frames at my lowest available data rate of 6 Mbps.

After analyzing my packet trace I can find no evidence of my iPhone transmitting any data frames immediately after the control frame containing the high Duration value. This essentially rules out all three possible explanations.

Other possible explanations would be a poor client roaming algorithm that wants to halt traffic while it goes off-channel to scan for other APs to which it could roam, or a poorly designed battery saving technique for mobile devices. However, I captured on all three non-overlapping 2.4GHz channels and found no evidence of my iPhone probing on other channels during that 11ms time period. And using this as a battery saving technique doesn't even make a whole lot of sense because clients can already notify the AP of it's power save mode and the AP will buffer traffic until it wakes up, or at worst case send broadcast traffic at the configured DTIM interval, which is usually 102ms which allows for a much longer sleep period anyways. Regardless, the iPhone indicated that it was staying awake (in active mode) in the control frames, so it appears to have not been putting the radio to sleep.

Frankly, I have no answer to explain this behavior. I don't exactly know what is going on.

The effect on a home network is likely to be small, since 11ms out of every 1 second is only about 1% of available airtime. However, in a corporate environment where mobile devices are being introduced into the environment at a staggering rate, the compound effect could be a serious reduction in Wi-Fi network performance and capacity! Think of having 30 students in a single classroom all connected with their mobile devices, 200 in a university lecture hall, or 500 at a trade show or conference. This is increasingly likely as smartphone and mobile device penetration is over 50% in the U.S. and other countries already, and consumers are typically carrying 2-3 Wi-Fi enabled devices with them at all time. The worst-case result in these environments would be so much reserved airtime that almost no network capacity would be left for actual user traffic. Just what we need trying to support tons of mobile devices on enterprise networks, huh.

If I uncover more details, I will update this post accordingly.

Thanks,
Andrew vonNagy

Wi-Fi Alliance Rebrands Hotspot 2.0 as Wi-Fi Certified Passpoint

2012-05-20T15:12:00Z

In case you didn't seen the press release back on May 8th, the Wi-Fi Alliance announced official branding for the Hotspot 2.0 program as Wi-Fi Certified Passpoint (TM).

The initial focus remains on service provider and carrier integration for easier authentication and better security on Wi-Fi hotspots. However, there are provisions for other identification and authentication methods to the network that could enable other web identities to be used, such as common social media usernames and passwords. These other methods will be critical for consumer adoption on non-cellular devices, such as Wi-Fi only tablets and laptops, which are heavily favored today over cellular models due to lack of bundled pricing by carriers and higher expense of data plans.

You can register on the Wi-Fi Alliance's website to download this free whitepaper on the Passpoint program.

Cheers,
Andrew

Auto-Tagging with Hazel Embedded Scripts

2012-05-18T20:51:34Z

In OS X, you can tag files using various tools such as Hazel, Default Folder X, Tags, DevonThink and others. The process of tagging consists into attaching keywords to your files so they can be retrieved easily later.

Today I will discuss how I use Hazel and its embedded scripting capabilities to automatically apply tags to files. First, Hazel is a commercial tool that you configure to watch specific folders on your MAC and then take actions. For instance, you can have Hazel to monitor the Downloads folder and then move files to specific vendor folders, e.g., Cisco folder, Fluke folder, etc… As of this writing, Hazel does not have an option to apply tags as an action. But, it does have the ability to either call an AppleScript or Shell script. And this is how I achieve auto-tagging.

All my project notes are stored in text files or better, RTF (Rich Text Format) files. I maintain a structure by project, sub-project, etc, as follows:

The goal of this structure is to have tags applied automatically to files based on the directory path. For instance a file saved under directory NOTES -> PROJECT-NOTES -> LAB -> ASA would have the following tags applied by the Hazel script: notes project-notes lab asa

Here is how it is achieved. I have Hazel to watch the NOTES folder as follows:

Under rule TAG-IT, I defined the following:

Which means that every file added in the last minute that passes the embedded script will trigger a Grow notification. The embedded script always passes since it terminates with <exit 0>. I use a Shell script to achieve this. Here is a partial view of it after you click the <Edit script> button:

At the end of the script, the openmeta command line tool is invoked and will apply the tags to the file that was just added to the sub-directory. This tool is free and can be used independently from Hazel.

I can then retrieve my tagged files with Ammonite (highly recommended tool)

In the above example, I searched for asa lab notes and 1 hit was found.

You can download my shell script here: embedded-script.sh

If you are interested in tagging, I suggest you read Greg Ferro's excellent blog posts:

My Knowledge Management Process With PDF Files – Part 1

My Knowledge Management Process With PDF Files – Part 2

Hazel can be purchased at: http://www.noodlesoft.com/hazel

Ammonite can be purchased at: http://soma-zone.com/Ammonite/

Happy tagging!

An “Escher Moment” for BYOD

2012-05-18T12:30:15Z

So here I am, at a customer event in San Francisco, at an outdoor restaurant (yes, I’m cold). Today we’ve [...]

How to stay educated about Wi-Fi?

2012-05-17T15:09:00Z

Aerohive currently offers several training classes on how to properly design, deploy, administer, and troubleshoot all Aerohive WLAN solutions. In other words, the focus of our instructor-led training classes is how to properly integrate the Aerohive controller-free distributed WLAN architecture into pre-existing networks. Because the focus of our training is about our solution, there is precious little time to cover the basics of Wi-Fi let alone advanced concepts of how 802.11 WLAN technology functions.

Aerohive has a lot of students who are experts on firewalls, routing, switching and other aspects of conventional wired networking, but many are still relatively new to 802.11 wireless networking. So I often get asked, “What is the best way to learn about how Wi-Fi works and can you recommend some good vendor-neutral training resources?”

One of the first places that someone new to Wi-Fi should look at is the Certified Wireless Networking Program (CWNP). CWNP, Inc., founded in 1999, is the IT industry standard for vendor neutral enterprise Wi-Fi certification and training. CWNP offers career certifications in enterprise Wi-Fi technologies from beginner to expert. All of the certifications and study guides are excellent resources but I always recommend that IT professionals start with the Certified Wireless Network Administrator (CWNA) certification. That being said, I would now like to shamelessly plug the release of the 3rd edition of the CWNA Study Guide, which I recently co-authored.

The CWNA Study Guide will help you prepare for the CWNA certification exam. However, over the years, I have found that the majority of the readers use the book more as a reference about the basics of 802.11 technology. I want to personally thank my co-author, Dave Westcott with whom I have now co-authored five books. Dave is one of the world’s best independent Wi-Fi trainers and although he does not teach for Aerohive, he will see the light one day soon . I also want to thank Andrew vonNagy and Marcus Burton for their roles as technical editors. Thanks fellas!

A lot has changed since Dave and I wrote the last edition of the CWNA Study Guide. For example, the RF behavior of multipath used to be a bad word when deploying Wi-Fi, but now MIMO technology is commonplace and multipath is our friend. Dave and I also had to completely rewrite the chapters regarding WLAN architecture because so much has changed in the last three years.

While the CWNA Study guide is an excellent broad reference guide for 802.11 technologies, the other CWNP study guides are more clearly focused towards specific 802.11 topics. The CWSP Study Guide is all about Wi-Fi security, the CWAP Study Guide is all about 802.11 frame analysis and spectrum analysis and finally the CWDP Study Guide is a fantastic book about WLAN design and integration.

Are there any other good vender-neutral resources available besides the certifications and books offered by the CWNP program? Absolutely! The most famous and best selling book about Wi-Fi is 802.11 Wireless Networks: The Definitive Guide authored by Matthew Gast. Matthew’s book has been translated to about 10 different languages. His book is considered by most to be the holy manuscript of Wi-Fi books and should be in your Wi-Fi reference library.

In case you have not heard, Matthew also recently wrote a book all about 802.11n titled, 802.11n: A Survival Guide. This book is a fantastic pocket guide reference book about all that is 802.11n and once again I highly recommend that this book be in your Wi-Fi reference library.

Looking for a great book about Voice over Wi-Fi (VoWiFi)? Although this book is sometimes hard to find, I would recommend that you pick up a copy of Joe Epstein’s book Scalable VoIP Mobility: Integration and Deployment.

Without a doubt, the hottest selling Wi-Fi book at the moment is Vivek Ramachandran’s WLAN security auditing book BackTrack 5 Wireless Penetration Testing Beginner's Guide.

I highly recommended all of these books, however, the only problem with books is that Wi-Fi technology changes so fast and often some of the material in a book is outdated the same day a book is published. That is why I always recommend to students that they follow some of the vendor-neutral Wi-Fi blogs. Without a doubt the vendor-neutral Wi-Fi blog with the most worldwide readership is Andrew vonNagy’s Revolution Wi-Fi Blog. Yes, Andrew now works for Aerohive, but he has promised that his personal blog will remain vendor neutral. I cannot tell you how many times I have been teaching in a far-away country and discovered that everyone was already following and reading Andrew’s blog. Andrew also links to a lot of other great Wi-Fi blog sites. I will mention a few more Wi-Fi blog sites including WLAN Book, My 802.11.com, Not Your Father’s Wi-Fi and WiFi KiWi’s Blog.

One last vender-neutral Wi-Fi learning resource that I would like to make sure everyone is aware of is the podcasts from Wi-Fi expert Keith Parsons. Keith produces some amazing free Wi-Fi podcasts that are always available at here.

I hope we will see you in a future Aerohive Networks training course, but please also do yourself a favor and take the time to educate yourself about 802.11 technology using some of the resources mentioned in this blog

802.11ac: The Fifth Generation of Wi-Fi Technology

2012-05-17T13:33:12Z

802.11ac: The Fifth Generation of Wi-Fi Technology In the last few months, there have been a lot of written on [...]

The Need for Speed

2012-05-16T13:00:00Z

Maybe. Maybe not.

Every manufacturer brags that their AP is the fastest AP in history. I'm here to tell you that Wi-Fi network speed is based on a large set of variables, such as:

Mix of client population.

AP and client radio capabilities and specifications (data rate support, beam forming, TPC, output power, sensitivity, radio quality, etc.)

Distance of each client device connecting to the AP.

Wi-Fi and non-Wi-Fi interference in the channel.

High density handling features such as Airtime fairness, band steering, load balancing, RRM, and many others.

Antenna gain (and directionality) of the AP and client devices and related features such as beam forming that improve RSSI and SNR.

Signal blockages (e.g. barriers such as walls) in the environment.

Location of each client relative to the AP and other clients, as well as location of each AP relative to each other.

Interference rejection (directional antennas or smart antennas).

AP CPU speed and load (data through the Ethernet ports, application layer functions, control-plane functions, filtering/QoS functions, etc.)

I could likely think of some other affecting factors given more time. Maybe you could leave a comment to list some I forgot.

Just saying, "We have the fastest AP" is like saying, "I'm the best engineer." It should be followed with the questions, "At what?" and "Under what circumstances?"

Such claims are OK if they are accompanied by detailed scenarios and use case descriptions, but a broad claim is easily disproven in the real world. Such bragging will only get worse with the introduction of 802.11ac of course, so expect more of it.

User Experience

How do you define a good user experience? 1Mbps/user? 5Mbps/user? 10Mbps/user? A specified amount of throughput combined with levels of QoS per application type? Think about that for a second. Now ... Think about how many users you could provide "your version" of a good user experience to with a single, high-end AP. 50? 100? 200? 500? Keep it real brotha. Airtime is finite, and management and control frame overhead alone in a super-high density environment becomes an airtime problem, not to mention client-side RF interference when you try to pack so many client devices within range of a single AP. Re-read the list of affecting factors above and apply that to your AP, factoring in your experience with deploying Wi-Fi.

Deployment Scenario (Use Case)

Think about your deployment. Classroom? iPads? As many as 40 iPads per classroom perhaps? Let's dig into this one familiar use case and see how much speed we really need.

Each iPad can pull ~25Mbps, as it's single spatial stream (1SS), non-SGI (65Mbps) capable. If you have 20 iPads on a channel, guess what ... they all basically still share 25Mbps because that one iPad will push the channel to over 80% utilization by itself, and the group of 20 doesn't have much more airtime to work with beyond the first iPad. If you get 30Mbps aggregate throughput on a channel with 20 iPads, you're more than lucky. Count on 25Mbps per channel for each group of 20 iPads due to channel saturation and a nominal amount of noise/interference in any channel (especially in 2.4GHz).

If your system has an excellent Band Steering function, you could then put 20 iPads on each of two radios per classroom, totaling 40 iPads per classroom. Each AP would offer each iPad 1.25 - 1.50 Mbps of throughput.

What does your "walks-on-water-like-Jesus AP" get you now? Nothing if it doesn't have the appropriate features to handle all of the variables. Your client devices don't connect at 450Mbps with 3SS amigo ... and that's the real world. A mixed client population (data rate, band support, power output, radio sensitivity, distance from the AP, etc.) is the 95% use case in the enterprise. So whether in the classroom with iPads (1SS) or in the enterprise with a mixed client population, jack-jawing about "my AP is the fastest" just isn't where it's at.

Netgear recently launched an 802.11ac AP, but you don't see enterprises running out to buy them, right? Why? Features. They don't have any. Just having high-data-rate-capable radios doesn't mean the AP is appropriate to the market or use case, and it doesn't mean that the radio will offer you speed or throughput under most conditions.

"Fast" is relative brotha-man.

Know thy Wi-Fi.

BYOD: No Longer a Four-Letter Word to Enterprise IT Leaders?

2012-05-16T12:00:10Z

Until now, it’s been assumed that enterprise IT leaders probably view the current BYOD (“Bring Your Own Device”) movement with [...]

Setting Up Partners For Failure?

2012-05-16T07:26:22Z

A short post, but this has been on my mind for a few months.

People who work for resellers and vendors typically have access to competitor information. This is usually a comparison or contrast against whomever the vendor sees as their competition. Sometimes it is generic in nature, and other times it is tailored to specific competitors.

For example, if you were an EMC partner, you might get to see what EMC’s views are regarding NetApp, HP, IBM, Hitachi, Dell, and other storage vendors. They give you this information so that if you have to go and sell against these other vendors, you can emphasize all the benefits of your vendor of choice, and bring up all the negative things about the competition. If you happen to work for a vendor, you probably have access to even more information about the competition as vendors trust partners to a certain extent, but they aren’t going to give them everything as it relates to their competition.

There are a lot of people out there who don’t really care for the competitive information. They see it as marketing nonsense and don’t waste their time reading it. I tend to read a fair amount of this stuff since my company partners with so many different vendors. I do this because I like to be prepared when it comes time to discuss the pros and cons of various vendors. I will never think of everything on my own, so I can leverage this type of information and gain a bit more insight into the various vendor products.

The Problem

As I read through this stuff, I find myself wondering if vendors aren’t setting partners up for failure. Two issues I have noticed are:

Vendors do not admit their own shortcomings in the competitor info documents. I realize you only want to emphasize the good points, but eventually someone will bring up a deficiency and your salespeople won’t know how to answer it unless they have an engineer with them, or they REALLY know the product they are pitching. Some of the competitor info will mention what to respond with if the other side brings up any “perceived” weaknesses, but it is usually some vague statement attacking a “straw man” and not really dealing with the initial claim.

2. Some of the information regarding other competitors is just plain wrong. I was recently combing through a particular vendor’s competitive analysis documents on one of their competitors, and the points raised in opposition to the other vendor were incorrect. I don’t mean that they embellished a little. I meant that they were factually incorrect. They were wrong enough to where even a semi-competent customer would be able to shoot down the claims made in the competitive info document as false.

Closing Thoughts

Competitive info can be useful provided it is realistic and somewhat sincere. Filling people up with outright lies or generic marketing messages will eventually get them in trouble. Someone is bound to call them on it, and when they don’t know how to respond, they end up looking like an idiot.

What are your thoughts on competitive information?

Setting Up Partners For Failure?

2012-05-16T07:26:22Z

A short post, but this has been on my mind for a few months.

The Problem

As I read through this stuff, I find myself wondering if vendors aren’t setting partners up for failure. Two issues I have noticed are:

Vendors do not admit their own shortcomings in the competitor info documents. I realize you only want to emphasize the good points, but eventually someone will bring up a deficiency and your salespeople won’t know how to answer it unless they have an engineer with them, or they REALLY know the product they are pitching. Some of the competitor info will mention what to respond with if the other side brings up any “perceived” weaknesses, but it is usually some vague statement attacking a “straw man” and not really dealing with the initial claim.

Closing Thoughts

What are your thoughts on competitive information?

Ode to Vucajnk

2012-05-14T16:39:00Z

Once there was a Wi-Fi guy,
Studious, stellar, and Slavic.
Everyone loved him, hired him, and retweeted him,
Though he wreaked much Eastern European havoc.

This Wi-Fi guy was Slovenian,
Smart, technical, and funny.
If he touched anything with a radio,
It was sure to result in money.

His given name was Gregor,
With a surname, who could say it right?
But what’s in a name, you know what I’m sayin’
When a Wi-Fi guy’s got skillz that tight!

Spoke three languages, two that sounded the same,
Border patrol never paid him any mind.
Never a finer gentleman you would meet,
That's something strangers would always find.

If Wi-Fi’s your game, and Eastern Europe is your plan.
Then trust me, Gregor’s your guy, because he’s THE MAN.
I suggest that soon you connect with him on LinkedIn,
And if you're as lucky as me, hopefully someday you too will be Mr. Vucajnk's Friend.

-------------------

My name is Devin, which literally means poet.
I really suck at this, and believe me, I know it.

-------------------

I've had the distinct pleasure of working alongside Gregor Vucajnk across Slovenia, Poland, and Serbia, and have had significant conversations with him as we drove across Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia – and even waved at Bosnia from 300 meters away!

Notice in the pictures above that Gregor is always smiling, whether crushed into a tiny, hot elevator in Serbia or walking down the street, lost in Poland. It’s all good.

I've known Gregor via Twitter (@GregorVucajnk) for some time now, but nothing substitutes working with him in person. He's a pro. He does his homework, he's well-prepared, and he's fabulous in front of customers and partners. Sweet!

He's a tremendous teammate and team player and is both strategic and tactical. He's a hard worker, dependable, and focused on the mission. At every turn, there's yet another nice thing to say about him. I enjoy watching him "do his thing" in front of customers, because I know he'll present everything accurately and with integrity.

I've had the privilege to work with him in person twice now, and I look forward to the next trip. Aerohive is extremely proud to have Aero-IT as a distributor, and we know that Gregor's technical abilities are second to none in his region - and among the best in the world. I say this without reservation: I trust him to represent both Aerohive and me personally. Further, I'm proud to call him my friend.

This blog is to give credit where it is due, and to offer my personal thanks and the corporate thanks of Aerohive to Gregor Vucajnk for his support of our mission. He's an amazing advocate.

#WorldDomination