We Shouldn’t Need Wyebot, But We Do

Just a taste of the Wyebot UI

Wireless network systems are expensive- like insanely expensive- and they are only one part of a given enterprise network environment. You can spend top dollar on market-leading WLAN hardware, switches, RADIUS servers, DNS and DHCP systems, Active Directory resources, security stuff and more You can have veteran IT craftspeople design, install and configure it all- and still have problems that are not only hard to solve but also hard to even start looking at when an end user tells you they aren’t happy. It is what it is, and many of the built-in tools that SHOULD help don’t do a particularly good job when you most need them.

Enter Wyebot.

I’ve been dipping toes in the Wyebot waters for a few years now, and was happy to see the Massachusetts-based company presenting at Mobility Field Day 8. Through the years I have been less than impressed after testing other 3rd party sensors and monitoring overlays (excluding 7signal, whose methodology I find to be quite effective), as false alarms are the norm and the systems frequently become just another high-cost glass of pain to ignore shortly after implementation.

I’ve personally found Wyebot to work well in effectively characterizing the WLAN space it operates in, exposing all of the WLAN-oriented details a wireless admin needs to know about. What’s there? How are the SSIDs configured? Where is contention and the potential for trouble? Which Wi-Fi networks are deviating from best practices? That’s the easy stuff. It also does highly-reliable synthetic testing that you define (one area where other sensors just don’t get it right) to help tell when any of the non-WLAN parts of the network are misbehaving in ways that frequently tarnish the WLAN’s reputation. I like the information delivered from the monitoring of spectrum, client behavior, and testing of upstream network resources. I find Wyebot to be a force multiplier in that it watches and ACCURATELY reports on what I care about when my pricey wireless system can’t natively get it done.

All network problems feel wireless to wireless users.

I particularly like that Wyebot not only has a robust packet capture capability for problem analysis, but you can also import wireless pcap files taken outside elsewhere using Wireshark on a laptop (just one example) and display that capture through the graphical Wyebot UI for Wyebot’s analysis of that capture. I also like that I can do wireless backhaul from the Wyebot sensors if needed.

The company is generous with free trials, and has some interesting case studies that show how organizations are using the solution.

Have a look at the Mobility Field Day 8 presentations by Wyebot. Also, see my past blogs about Wyebot here,

Well-designed and maintained wireless networks ought to not need outside tools to help keep them running well. Unfortunately, WLAN professionals know that we live in a very imperfect world. Unfortunately, not all of those outside tools are particularly effective, but I personally like what I get out of Wyebot.

Fortinet Leads With Security at Forti-Field Day

You are the reason
I’ve been FortiWaiting for so long
Some FortiThing holds the key
And I’m FortiWasted
And I can’t FortiFind my way home

(Apologies to Steve Winwood there.) Having watched Fortinet do their thing at Mobility Field Day 6 as a delegate at the event, I was struck by a handful of realizations:

1. Fortinet faithfully gets their message of security-at-every-level out with each presentation. On this point they are remarkably consistent and articulate.
2. They have a product line that is expansive beyond what I tend to think I know of the company- from hardware, software, monitoring, and performance measurement, they are generally on par with anyone else in the game.
3. The company continues to buck the trend of licensing the living shit out of EVERYTHING, like their competitors tend to do. In this regard, Fortinet has not flushed their customer empathy chip down the toilet as others have, and their execs aren’t out writing BS-blogs explaining to customers how being gouged with endless micro-subscriptions is somehow innovative.
4. They overplay the Forti-prefix to the point of FortiDistracting from the FortiMessage. I personally FortiStruggle to FortiFocus during the FortiPresentations. That may just be me, but I’m guessing it’s not, for whatever that is FortiWorth… (hmmm… reminds me of a George Straight song- Does FortiWorth Ever Cross Your Mind?)

Where Fortinet can be FortiFrigginExhausting in their FortiSpeak, I cannot say the same about their security messaging- the company does a solid job of weaving their security priorities through the product narrative without overplaying it. You’ll see the focus on security in all their MFD6 presentations. Given the daily spate of network breeches in the media these days, you’d be a FortiChump not to listen.

For their bits and pieces, I like this slide that summarizes their various network building FortiBlocks:

FortiStuff

Without even watching any of their presentations, this graphic gives the un-FortiFamiliar a sense of the robustness of their offerings. But there’s a heck of a lot more to the FortiStory, so I do recommend watching the presentations.

Having seen a couple of other vendors present before Fortinet, I realized when the FortiAiOps session unfolded that the notion of “AI Ops” is one of those “all the cool kids are doing it” things that every vendor has to have to compete. That’s not to throw dirt in any way, it’s more of a statement on where the industry is right now- AI has become a fact of life as an important underpinning of various solutions, but is still new enough to be held up to the light as if Zeus himself gave birth to it. I’m glad Fortinet has a hand in the AI card game, too.

We all have our own frames of reference, and to me Fortinet is still somewhat exotic in that I don’t see a lot of their wireless gear in my own corner of the world. I do know colleagues in other areas that use Fortinet, and also truly appreciate several Fortinet employees as just awesome people. With the likes of Wi-Fi 6/6E, AI in the house, and many customers considering how to evolve their WLANs (and frequently being tired of the incumbent vendor) all potentially catalyzing market shifts, perhaps we’ll see more Fortinet in more places in the days to come. They certainly are equipped to compete and do have interesting differentiators, from what I can see.

Aruba Said the Right Words Regarding Dashboards

I wanna be a dashboard ranger
Live a life of guts and danger
I better stop before this song gets stranger…

Ah, dashboards. We got ’em these days, in quantity. We got so many freakin dashboards we need a dashboard to keep track of our dashboards when it comes to networking. But beyond dashboards, we got… AI.

That’s right- we got Artificial Intelligence, baby. And it’s teamed up with Dashboards, Inc. to make sure we have ALL KINDS OF STUFF to worry about. And maybe, if we’re lucky, some time those alerts will actually be actionable…

If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m dashboard-jaded. I’ve seen many dashboards from market leaders that cost a fortune (they gotta make money, no fault there), that are fraught with Chicken-Little noise that is so overwhelming and uncorroborated by any other practical metric that they become one more Glass of Pain that gets ignored. Will AI help that? The answer will depend on how that AI is coded- like does the team behind the AI actually GET that endless petty alerts aren’t really a good thing?

Which brings us back to REAL intelligence… and Aruba Networks at Mobility Field Day 6. In particular, the presentation on what Aruba calls AIOPS– their version of system monitoring, root cause analysis, system adjustment, etc. This is something all the major vendors are doing these days, and all make sure that “AI” is sprinkled liberally in the marketing so you know that you are good to go. Unless you’re not, because the AI flags a bunch of stuff you don’t care about that takes you away from real work.

But Robin Jellum at Aruba said something profound in it’s simplicity as he presented on AIOPS… The exact wording escapes me, but Robin alluded to the fact that we all get bombarded with data. There’s no shortage of it in today’s network systems. But turning that data into MEANINGFUL alerts versus just lots of red and yellow dots to get lost in is the challenge, and Aruba recognizes that gratuitous, copious amounts of alerting on transient stuff does no one any good.

As a customer, I don’t want to buy ALERTS by the pound. I want to buy INFORMATION that comes from my data. It’s nice to hear Aruba recognize the difference. Time will tell if AIOPS can deliver.