The Not Fun “Juniper Has Been Acquired By HPE” Blog

Before we talk about Juniper (and Mist, specifically), let me take you way back in time to another acquisition.

I wrote that article back in 2012 after several great years of enjoying Meraki as a pioneering cloud-managed network vendor at the same time I was dealing with endless bugs in Cisco’s wireless controllers and APs. The cultures of the two companies seemed so different- Cisco tends to be cavalier (in my opinion) about bugs especially in their WLAN related code sets, and customers are very much an extension of the QA process whether they want to be or not. Code roulette is a fact of life, and disruptive frequent remedial code upgrades and engineering builds were a fact of life back then. By contrast, Meraki generally worked well, and when trouble rarely hit, support was extremely responsive.

Since the acquisition, Cisco gave Meraki an extremely long leash to seemingly operate mostly independently (at least from the customer perspective). They are only just now getting around to consolidating business units, switches and access points and pushing even legacy management towards the cloud dashboard. It needs to be noted that the Cisco Catalyst/Aironet and Meraki lines and customer bases were far enough apart in function and philosophy that there was room for both to remain generally unsullied by each other for more than a decade.

Now on to HPE purchasing Juniper.

Unlike the Cisco/Meraki experiment that let customers on both sides breathe easy for so many years, it’s not gonna be that warm and fuzzy with this one. For me, HPE and Juniper more specifically equals Aruba and Mist- and that facet of this acquisition makes me uncomfortable. I have no idea how it’s going to turn out where the rubber meets the road- but I do know that as a Mist customer I did not choose Aruba as a vendor (nor did Aruba customers choose Mist and I respect that). Everyday, customers are choosing Aruba versus Mist and visa versa for their own reasons and requirements.

It’s highly likely that either Mist or Aruba will dominate at the end of the sausage making and there will be pain for many of us on the leftover pile. For anyone to have a vendor you didn’t choose forced down your throat is not a tasty thought regardless of which side of this you are on as a current customer. We all have no choice but to wait this out, but from the customer side let me share some of what sucks in the meantime.

We the customers were never asked.

I’m getting a bit fried on seeing one talking head after another pontificating about how this acquisition somehow creates “greater choice” for customers. That implies we want “greater choice” which will actually be LESS choice in the end. Just shut up already on that- we’re not that stupid out here in networking wilds. We selected what we selected after RFPs and product trials and “greater choice” in the future is just empty BS in this discussion. A clever marketing phrase brings no comfort while we all wait to see how badly our cheese will both be genetically altered AND moved once it all plays out. Don’t believe me, Mist and Aruba execs? Survey your customers. Other than internal evangelists (and zealots) who are thumping their chests about which company is better and will “win” in the end, there aren’t a lot of people that I’ve spoken to that are particularly energized about this whole thing.

Vendor messaging only adds to the tension.

In typical vapid marketing bullshitspeak, HPE promises “accelerated value” from the acquisition. Juniper makes it sound like their AI was the sexy milkshake that brought HPE to the Juniper yard. Some headlines out there seem to push the point.

But then there’s that Aruba evangelist who frequently posts on X taking potshots at everyone else’s AI while touting Aruba’s own, and has only stepped up his salvos since the purchase was announced.

The “mic drop” is from Neri implying that Aruba Central will subsume Mist’s AI and that somehow Aruba Central’s customer numbers prove it’s the right thing to do (?) Yet in other announcements the Mist exec team will supposedly lead the integrated business unit when all the dust settles- so Juniper’s AI must be better (?) AI, AI. AI… blah blah friggin blah. So did HPE buy Juniper because it has better AI despite the passions of their own insiders? On that topic, I need to say something…

Newsflash: AI is a building block and not THE PRODUCT in network access systems. I’m here to tell you that a vendor’s glossy can spin AI to be the grand solve-all, yet their code can be endlessly problematic, and their reporting and support UIs- you know, the daily important stuff to keeping networks running- can still suck ass. I’m talking about no specific vendor here and multiple vendors at the same time. Babies are being thrown out with the bathwater and customers are suffering from AI overhype while the important but unsexy basics of usability and stability aren’t being prioritized in spots.

Speaking of posts on X- Sam the Man Clements hit this whole mess right on the head here:

Nothing is gonna change- we promise! But it’s not a promise you can can count on…

Then there’s the general industry covering media…

And the pundits…

The rest of the year is gonna suck.

It wouldn’t break my heart if this acquisition is blocked, but I doubt it will be. Which means customers on both sides of the deal get to just wait and see what is to come of it all. Small environments that don’t like the results can fairly easily jump ship and go to Cisco, Extreme, Fortinet, or whoever else is out there as alternatives. Large customers (outside of the government who gets to spend everyone else’s money) don’t have the luxury of simply scrapping thousands of access points (modern APs list for over $2K apiece these days, but that insanity is fodder for another blog) and the rest of their access environments, and so many will absolutely have to take whatever’s coming whether they like it or not. That in itself creates enough anxiety- but piled on top we now get to spend the rest of 2024 hearing meaningless promises of accelerated value and tit-for tat proclamations of which vendor is “better”, along with the business-side analysis that spins the pending deal as wonderful or terrible depending on who is pushing the message.

Fun times.

Not.

OMG! Friggin Wi-Fi 7 is HERE! (Sorta)

Are you ready to get like 46 Gbps over Wi-Fi?

ARE YOU?

Because if you’re not, well, you’re just a big fat loser. You gotta know that Wi-Fi 7 is buckets of wireless awesome that will friggin rewrite the ENTIRE STORY of Wi-Fi as we know it, Jack!

Or not.

Big News from the Wi-Fi Alliance

All that silliness aside, today the Wi-Fi Alliance announced it’s Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 7™ program. I also spoke with Kevin Robinson, the Alliance’s CEO, late last week about the news. Kevin is rightfully excited about the promise of Wi-Fi 7, but as a geezer who has been at this kind of juncture a few times before I can’t say that I’m all in. Kevin did share a bit about the benefit of the certification testing process in providing a modicum of “your product needs to support these specific things to wear our Certified 7 logo”, and the Alliance’s members will certainly benefit from the PR generated by the alliance.

But we’ve been here before, no?

Wi-Fi 7 is Interesting. But…

Let’s slow down the hype train for just a bit here. First, realize that “Wi-Fi 7” has no basis in any published IEEE standard, and it is the IEEE that defines the Wi-Fi standards- not the Wi-Fi Alliance. What the Alliance has decided to call Wi-Fi 7 is actually the 802.11be DRAFT standard. It’s not ratified yet. It’s not “here”, even though the Alliance is doing their CERTIFED 7™ thing.

That’s just how the WLAN industry goes… a lot of weird nuances. Speaking of weird nuances- the Alliance and it’s members are getting ready to promote the living hell out of 802.11be, and features like:

• 4K QAM
• 320 MHz wide channels
• Multilink MLO
• and more
  
  There’s not a lot of value in me creating yet another technical overview of these features, so let me refer you to Intel’s decent explainer. if you breeze through the Wi-Fi Alliance’s press release and the Intel Wi-Fi 7 tutorial, you might find yourself getting really jazzed about it all. Unfortunately, all is rarely what it seems in the world of Wi-Fi, where being a marketer means you get to live a fast and loose lifestyle often decoupled from reality.

I didn’t ask permission to use the response from the WLAN sage who gave it on X, so I chose to anonymize him or her for this blog. But this person is one of the single loudest and most articulate voices in the WLAN industry. The response reflects the skepticism that many of us feel when it comes to Wi-Fi 7.

With every single new standard, THE MARKETERS go right to the high end of what the standard technically allows under ideal conditions and with theoretical top-end hardware on both the infrastructure AND client sides, and they tend to promote the loftiest of numbers as if they were going to be the norm for everyone just by buying new products.

Newsflash: Wi-Fi 7 will be better, but it will be a fuzzy, hard-to-quantify kind of better. There are too many variables. For example, smartphones will stay at two spatial streams for the foreseeable future, but Wi-Fi 7’s biggest and sexiest numbers are based on the client and access points doing a whopping 16 spatial streams. And those 320 Mhz channels and 4K QAM? Neither will be commonplace. Both are more or less unicorns.

So what will be better about Wi-Fi 7?

MLO might be interesting- if it works. Meaning, if the many, many vendors that are part of the WLAN ecosystem can get it right individually.

More clients using the 6 GHz spectrum will be good thing. That’s an easy one.

Data rates and latency should be improved across the board, and client device battery life should also benefit. How do you reliably measure these beyond saying they will be better? 

You really can’t and have it be meaningful. Especially this early on.

What ISN’T Improving With the Wi-Fi Alliance’s CERTIFED 7™ Program?

Unfortunately, operational zingers that have caused us pain from the WLAN operations side for 20+ years don’t change with the new standard or the Alliance’s certification program. It’s still up to the vendors to define how their client devices roam, for example. There is still no clean delineation between Enterprise and Consumer client capabilities, but that line is palpable on the access point side and so Consumer-grade client devices brought into the Business WLAN can be a colossal pain in the ass.

Put it all together, and there ain’t nothing new under the wireless sun.

Related: I recently talked with David Coleman about the future of Wi-Fi. That’s right- David COLEMAN. I run in those circles, you realize.

Contemplating the 2024 Wireless LAN Pros Conference

With 2024 fast approaching, my thoughts are on the February WirelessLAN Professionals Conference (WLPC, for you hipsters in the crowd). We’re looking at the tenth incarnation of this awesome event, which I can only describe as the singular best tech conference I have ever attended.

What do I like about WLPC? For starters, it’s wireless-focused. Under the heading of “wireless”, it’s mostly about Wi-Fi but with enough variety on other wireless topics to keep it interesting. It’s also a conference BY wireless people and FOR wireless people- with very little vendor influence in the mix. The majority of all presentations are by women and men who make their living DOING wireless, and not by sales folks pitching products. The breadth of the content is amazing, and those who will attend the event vote on submissions sent in by those who have something to say.

Like… me.

This year. I’ll be doing two talks- one on the “rules” of Wi-Fi that sometimes you gotta break in the real world, and one on the topic of changing vendors. Over the years, I’ve done a number of presentations, panel discussions, and even led a couple of deep dives. Each has been a privilege. Then there was this back in 2018:

And that was humbling, to say the least.

WLPC is also a fantastic opportunity for those of us who don’t get to a lot of other events to see old friends and to make new ones. It’s an intense few days, with a great mix of content, hands-on activities (I’m doing the Flipper Zero deep dive this time), and socializing with a profoundly diverse range of people. I treat every one of these events as “this might be my last one” and so try to take nothing for granted.

Maybe next year there won’t be budget for travel on my end… or COVID version 19 could scrap the event… or I could have health issues or schedule conflicts… or my books could take off and make me a millionaire (in which case you can all just kiss my arse, if I forget to say it at the time)… Few things in life are guaranteed, so I place great value and appreciation on every wireless-related thing I get to do whether it be conferences, webinars, articles, or good conversation with people who can make me think. But among all of that, WLPC is uniquely wonderful.

While the wireless industry itself continues to change, and those of us in it evolve (or age out), the reliability of WLPC is comforting, and is easy to look forward to. Hopefully I’ll see you there.

And no- they didn’t pay me to gush, so shut up about that.

Learn more about WirelessLAN Professionals here.

Ventev Introduces VenGo, the Network in a Box, at Mobility Field Day 10

Ventev is a company who makes WLAN environments better, regardless of which Wi-Fi solution is in use. Their antennas provide flexibility and reliability when built-in dipoles just won’t cut it, along with an impressive range of power-related components and specialty mounting enclosures that let WLAN designers get effectively creative when required.

Then there is the new VenGo as presented at Mobility Field Day 10.

At least several times a year, I’m asked to provide reliable Wi-Fi for a few hours in some oddball space where there is no easy way to get clients to the Internet. VenGo looks quite promising in that regard, and I was glad I got to hear about it first hand from Ventev when I attended MFD10.

The visuals:

Ventev’s VenGo

Slick, eh?

In Ventev’s own words, regarding the Vengo:

VenGo’s value summarized

It’s a nice looking package, and it appears to be very well designed and easy to use. The presentation on VenGo (as well as Ventev’s new lithium battery strategy for its UPS systems) can be seen here.

Also presented at Mobility Field Day 10 by Ventev:

Hanging in Tough Conditions

Wi-Fi 6E Antennas- Does Size Matter (a must-watch)

---

See everything Ventev has to offer the WLAN industry and those who do wireless at their website.

Wyebot Shows Evolution at Mobility Field Day 10

Back in 1597, Kevin Bacon said “knowledge is power” before he rebelliously danced his way all over 16th century London, or at least I think that’s how it went. Consider this: if Scott McDermott had knowledge that the hotel’s fish and chips were going to be sub-par at Mobility Field Day 10 I wouldn’t have had to watch him drool while he eyeballed my chicken and waffles (which by contrast to the fish were very good). Knowledge is indeed power.

Wyebot is in the knowledge business. They are in the INTELLIGENCE business. And good intel makes all the difference, I tellya.

(I’ll thank you not to pass judgement on my Wi-Fi Client Distribution pie chart there.)

Anil Gupta of Wyebot presented at Mobility Field Day 10 but I have a longer familiarity with the company. I also heard their pitch back at Mobility Field Day 8, and have been testing their sensors on and off for quite a while. I can say without hesitation that it is one of the better performance-monitoring sensors you can add to ANY WLAN environment out of the many I have tried.

First and foremost- less false-alarms are a good thing. Generally you can trust what Wyebot tells you about active problems and trends, where as that hasn’t always been the case for me with competing products. Also, Wyebot has robust packet-capture capabilities, including letting you get the entire packet if you so choose, versus just the header as is common with Wi-Fi testing tools. Plus the UI is quite intuitive, with ease of use being prioritized over dazzling you with a mishmash of hard-to digest stuff, as is frequently the case with monitoring modules built in to WLAN access solutions.

Wyebot is all about dedicated radios whose sole purpose is to monitor the health and performance of your Wi-Fi environment. That means focusing on excellence in that role. Here’s a taste of what has been good to date about the solution if you aren’t familiar:

There’s a lot to appreciate here when wireless performance assurance is the goal. But Anil and his team at Wyebot have added a slew of enhancements to the platform, which is why reviewing the MFD10 session is a must for anyone contemplating the challenge of knowing what is really gong on with your WLAN.

One example from many fresh features- a new battery of voice-oriented testing:

But there is soooooo much more. Watch the video– you’ll be be glad you did because you’ll learn how Wyebot can be a 24/7 force multiplier. Every remote site would benefit from Wyebot and it’s rich suite of customizable tests even if you decided the big corporate WLAN can go without, and the presentation of the important resultant data is made effective in it’s simplicity. That’s no easy feat.

Yes, Wyebot is an overlay. But it’s a good one, and it’s far and away better than many native tools that come as part of a number of the newer WLAN systems. Maybe it can’t help Scott to avoid mediocre fish, but it can help you deliver a better WLAN experience- leaving more time to enjoy the chicken and waffles.

Thoughts on Cisco Presentation at Mobility Field Day 10

Now that I’ve wrapped up my trip out west and the dust is settling in my mind, it’s time to reflect on what I heard and took away from Mobility Field Day 10. Here’s at least some of my perspective on Cisco”s session, as written up as a LinkedIn article. Hint: Cisco and Meraki are now same-same.

More to come.

The Mobility Field Day 10 Woozy Flight Blog

Off I went to San Jose for the Mobility Field Day 10 event, starting with the trip to the airport. I had an excellent Uber driver, and it was around 35 degrees and sunny. Security was easy and the TSA did not cavity-check me. Good start, good start…

I boarded my Southwest flight- the first time I used them and fast learned their unique boarding method. I landed in my preferred aisle seat. I cranked up my library of tunes, donned my headset, and dozed in and out of sleep a bit. My musical tastes are far-ranging, and I found myself thinking about the wireless industry, past Field Day events, and all kinds of weird stuff while groove-snoozing…

8 Miles High- by Golden Earring– Gonna need more than just a standard internal antenna at that height.

Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald- Gordon Lightfoot. Meru Networks at Wireless Field Day 5. Broke deep and took water. Wasn’t pretty.

Not Now John- Pink Floyd- “oy- where’s the fucking bar, John?” Indeed. It’s in San Jose, waiting.

JoJo- Boz Scaggs- Boz is always classy, edgy, slick. Just like Tom Hollingsworth.

Working for the Fat Man- Escape Club- not sure here exactly… CEOs getting rich off of insane licensing costs on network hardware? Something along those lines…

Who Do You Love- Escape Club- “where are the good guys, where are they now now now?” Jake, Bender, Ryan, Andrew… folks I have enjoyed talking with that I haven’t seen in a while out in Industryland. Good people.

Extreme Ways- Moby- Used to be “Enterasys Ways”. Run and tell THAT.

Come Undone- Robbie Williams- me dealing with code bugs. Same with Waylon Jennings Man of Constant Sorrows.

Laughing- The Guess Who- vendors sales folk when you protest the new “license everything” paradigm.

It goes on and on. The Killers, Mellencamp, Lou Reed, The Cult, Toney Carey, Chumbawumba, Joanie Mitchell, and many more. All songs intertwined with random thoughts related to the coming trip.

Then I landed in Denver, and caught up with an old friend for the last leg of the trip. No tunes there, but lots of good conversation.

Nile Pushes GUGORaaS- Give Us Guaranteed Ongoing Revenue as a Service

(Please note- Nile has rescheduled their Mobility Field Day appearance to 2024)

This is being written BEFORE I strap my fine posterior into a sleek American aircraft and wing out to San Jose for Mobility Field 10 (I run in those circles, you realize). A few days from now I’ll be sitting in front of the networking vendor Nile at some point and hopefully hearing something of substance about their actual products. I say hoping because their web pages and articles about the company don’t actually tell me a lot beyond that they are evangelists for subscription-based revenue sent to convert me by the elders of the Church of Networking as a Service .

From what I can tell, next-gen BaaS (Buzzwords as a Service) is also in play with Nile. That’s my first takeaway as I try to learn about the company through the fog of promises of digital transformation and such.

Disruptive Simplicity

(Didn’t he win at the Kentucky Derby a couple of years back?) That seems to be an over-arching theme with Nile. As I read through their promotional and introductory pages, I think I’m supposed to embrace “pay us then keep paying us and you won’t really have to do much of anything ever again”. Sounds intriguing, yes? Here’s what bothers me now, today, as I look over the public-facing face of disruptive simplicity:

• I don’t see any actual products listed. No switches. No routers. No security appliances. No access points. Evidently you don’t get to lay eyes on that stuff until you engage with Nile (?) As a network engineer and architect, that rubs me weird. And not good weird, like Sam Clements grabbing my ass every year or so. There are lots of interesting feature-detailing white papers and such, just no mention of the specific building blocks.
  
• Something about the whole presentation just smacks of “innovation first and foremost now equals endless subscriptions and you’ll never actually own your network bits and pieces again.” Yeah, I know… capex vs opex blah blah blah”. I get it… we all live in that world now whether we like it or not. As us gray-hairs age out, the youngsters will have grown up thinking that subscriptions out the wazoo are swell- but sometimes it’s just presented in a way that us network geezers can’t help but bristle at. Both founders of Nile are former Ciscoers, and I’m guessing they were around when Cisco figured how how to make you rent what you also own and lots of blue-jackets wrote lofty blogs about “subscriptions = innovation”. Like there was no innovation before every mounting bracket and power cord started getting licensed? Pffft… whatevs. Yes we get that Silly Valley wants us to LOVE subscriptions. But that kinda feels like too much of the message here as I eyeball the company.
  
• I went looking beyond Nile’s site for their actual products. I never did find anything on that. But I did find a bunch of articles about how great Nile is for those on the money-making side of the IT equation. Like…
  
  Nile sells exclusively through partners. Like its technology, the company’s Connect partner program, also launched last week, emphasizes simplicity. There are no entry requirements or tiers, and all members regardless of size receive the same “very, very rich” margins, says Serlenga, who declined to specify what those margins are.
  
  Someone has to pay for Sting to serenade the CEO and for the rental of the amusement park at the annual party, I guess. Thank goodness for very rich margins.

Did I mention that you can’t see any Nile hardware on the web pages? Disruptive Omission.

I really hope that the upcoming Field Day presentation isn’t just a sales pitch for the NOTION of Networking as a Service, and that a room full of technical people will actually get to see some technical stuff.

But then again, maybe Nile will make us all irrelevant.

Talking Wi-Fi’s Future With David Coleman

I recently had an opportunity to talk one-on-one with none other than David Coleman, WLAN sage and author. Those of us in the Wi-Fi world know him as a frequent speaker at industry events, and as half of the writing duo that brought us that big honkin’ CWNA study guide. David is prolific in his wireless evangelism, so it’s easy to forget that he’s also the Director of Product Marketing for Extreme Networks… the big showoff.

I stole that picture from extreme, BTW. So what did my fellow CWNE and I talk about?

Well, Wi-Fi of course. The state of things now, and where it’s going. We shared skepticism and optimism, and I also gained some perspective from David that I hadn’t yet developed as I look forward to Wi-Fi’s coming days. Time spent with Mr. C is time well spent. What follows are some of the more salient points from our banter.

6 GHz is The Thing

One of the first things I hit David with was my skepticism on how the Wi-Fi standards roll out- lots of hyped up promises of ridiculously high throughput and heavily marketed features that end up never really working (MU-MIMO, anyone?). Where I might piss and moan that the IEEE 802.11 working group has lost it’s freakin’ mind, David is a lot more of a gentleman about things. I squawk about features in the standards that the vendors marketing teams convince us to pay for at premium prices but that aren’t real-world usable, and David talks me down.

“The features in the standards can be a bit decoupled from reality, sure… but 6 GHz is what we should be excited about.”

OK. That I can live with. There are SOME features that David says are more likely to eventually impress for real, but we’ll get to those in a minute. Throughout our conversation, the new 6 GHz spectrum that came with 802.11ax is where David’s enthusiasm is rooted. For now, it breaks us out of the downsides that come with the double-edged sword of backwards compatibility in Wi-Fi. Sure, eventually Wi-Fi 7’s 6 GHz will be backwards compatible with Wi-Fi 6E, but that is far less performance-sucking than 802.11ax being backwards compatible with 802.11b. 6 GHz is new, expansive and in many ways a clean RF canvas.

David says that we should be thinking critically about how we actually use 6 GHz, and maybe we ought to reserve it for our mission-critical clients like corporate devices while relegating guests and utility devices to 2.4 and 5 GHz rather than simply repeat the common all SSIDS in both bands habits of the past.

I pointed out that in my own 6 GHz deployments, I’m seeing around 5% (give or take 2%) 6 GHz client penetration. I asked David when this will change, and when we should expect 6 GHz to become more exciting from the client perspective. His answer is twofold: we need (and expect) Apple to add 6E to it’s next round of iPhones- likely to happen in Fall of ’23. And we need more Android phones in the lower price tiers to catch on to 6E chipsets. It’s in flagship Android models, and will eventually make it’s way down-market.

And whether we are talking Wi-Fi 6E or 7 and beyond, David sees a role for 6GHz in high-throughput mesh backhaul. With so many channels to use in 6 GHZ, it’s not unrealistic to remove a few from the client-servicing channel plan and reserve them for mesh duty- not a luxury we really had in either 5 or 2.4 bands. I’m digging that as it could make mesh less “only as a last resort” feeling.

Wi-Fi 7 Right Around the Corner

David rightfully pointed out during our talk that 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6) has been with us for FOUR years. Time flies, especially when measured in WLAN years. He pointed out that WLAN 7 is right around the corner, with the usual absolutely foolish start on the consumer side of the market- like so:

It matters not that there is no Wi-Fi Alliance Wi-Fi 7 testing program yet, or an actual ratified standard… and you just KNOW these things are going to come with moronic default channel widths of 160 or even 320 MHz. It won’t be long before goofy consumer stuff with these foolish defaults interfere with the careful 6 GHz channel plans us enterprise folks use. Some problems just don’t go away.

At the same time, the enterprise players all have their chips selected for eventual WLAN 7 products (Extreme uses Broadcom here) and you just know development is happening furiously behind the scenes in Silly Valley. David says to watch for early enterprise product announcements in Q1 or Q2 of 2024.

One Feature That Actually IS Worth Getting Jazzed Over

Back to the specifics of the 802.11 standards- those words that get translated to features for product marketing. As mentioned above, there has been lots of hype and matching amounts of disappointment with real-world applicability through the years. At best, in David’s words, OFDMA that had so much promise for Wi-Fi 6 “sort of works, sometimes”. There’s a ringing endorsement of the 802.11ax working group if I ever heard one…

Looking forward though, David says again that 6 GHz itself is THE FEATURE to appreciate even as other ones role out with Wi-Fi 7. Think you’ll actually achieve 4K QAM in Wi-Fi 7, as will be hyped out the wazoo? yeah, maybe if you’re inside the AP itself given the high SNR required. On the other hand, MLO (Multi-Link Operation) has the potential to be real and transformative. (Here’s the egghead version of how MLO works.) There will be complexity in the timing across bands in busy environments to let devices send and receive data on multiple bands simultaneously, but when MLO gets there it *should* be impressive.

Even if the QAM promises are overblown for Wi-Fi 7, the assumption is we’ll still see reduced latency and 6 GHz goodness that enable the predicted groundswell of VR and AR applications that the guessers see coming.

Of Wi-Fi and 5G/6G

To me, there is tremendous overlap in the hype that has accompanied both Wi-Fi 6/6E and 5G- both public and private. For some reason, some “journalists” and marketers feel compelled to insist that one or the other has to “win” and eventually dominate. David and I both find that to be silly and rather uninformed as both technologies have their place. And NEWSFLASH: Wi-Fi isn’t going anywhere. It’s just too deeply ingrained in our culture, our personal lives, and our work. Private 5G is still very nichy and likely to stay that way for a while, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value as an alternative wireless offering in specific use cases.

David does predict the Private 5G will become more attractive beyond specific niche scenarios when a couple of convergence milestones are achieved- both Private 5G and WLAN can be managed and monitored in the same framework, and the two technologies can do seamless handovers of clients that support both technologies. We’ll see if either plays out in the years to come.

What else?

We talked about a lot in just a short time. David made sure we didn’t close without getting a few other thoughts in. We did cover some cool stuff to come out of Extreme, but that’s not for public consumption yet. But David does predict that sooner rather than later Wi-Fi is going to have to get cozy with edge computing as both evolve. He also sees more impact from AI/ML beyond anything we see now from vendors who incorporate AI in the WLAN solution. Think about the likes of an always up-to-date Digital Twin copy of your network that you can interact with in test, for example. Cool stuff.

Anyone who has been fortunate enough to hear David Coleman present knows that he’s a fountain of wireless knowledge and a pretty decent industry analyst as well. If you have yet to catch him, make sure you do either in person or online. He’s a must-follow for WLAN professionals.

A Cheap Wireless and Solar Camera Proves Itself

You gotta love it when things just work- especially things like cameras that you rely on to help safeguard your property in this unfortunate age of what’s yours I want and so I will take. I really wasn’t expecting a lot when I took a chance a few years ago on a brand called Zumimall I somewhat randomly picked off of Amazon, but fast forward to today and I got praises to sing.

Zumimall solar-powered wireless camera standing guard at Wirednot HQ

Here’s what I bought- and I bought two:

The price does vary on this… like in $50-$75 range

Yeah, yeah… “But Lee, it only does 2.4 GHz!” It’s also just a 802.11n geezer device, but you just shush up about THAT. Where I use this camera, it’s old-school specs are just fine. And where exactly am I using it? Well, I first bought these to augment my Ubiquiti Protect system when I lived in upstate New York. I needed a camera I could put way up on my roof-mounted ham radio antenna mast to show how much snow I had on the roof in winter (we got a LOT up there) and to also cover parts of the yard and driveway. The other one was out in the backyard.

Did I mention these are SOLAR powered? Despite gloomy New York winters? That little solar panel has done a fantastic job of keeping the internal battery charged, I’m going into the third year with the Zumimalls, and they just don’t run out of juice regardless of weather.

We have since moved to Indiana, and the heat here can be intense. The bodies of the cameras are yellowing, but they continue to work wonderfully.

The latest version of the camera claims to have greatly improved resolution and clarity at 2K 3MP. My older units are adequate but not stellar, but were also bought more for their solar/Wi-Fi capabilities.

As you can imagine, I have pretty stellar Wi-Fi at the Wirednot Compound. My daughter here in Indiana and a son in Seattle do NOT have stellar wireless where there own Zumimalls are located, but the cameras do well even on weak signal.

Cloud storage is a paid option, but I have found the MicroSD card option to be just fine. Motion detection is surprisingly good, as are pretty much everything else you’d want to play with in a camera- especially at the low pice. I use the companion app on iOS and Android, and it works very well on both.

From the wireless network side, here‘s one glimpse- nothing special, but again it just works:

I wish Ubiquiti had a comparable option with solar and wireless- Zumimall has shown that it can be viable, and reliable. These aren’t enterprise-grade cameras, but for home and small business you simply can’t go wrong. And the solar power aspect is absolutely empowering. Get it here.

I have had these cameras connected to wireless networks using access points from a number of vendors including Aruba, Meraki, Mist, Ruckus, and Ubiquiti and they simply connect and go in each case.

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Speaking of Indiana… there’s this.