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.

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)

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

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.

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.

Synology Adds Networked Cameras to It’s Lineup

I’ve never met a fellow Synology customer that wasn’t impressed with the company’s Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices. Regardless of the specific model in use, these boxes go far beyond storage and to me equate to being mini-data centers. Among their far-ranging applications is Surveillance Station, which I have ran for several years now using a couple of no-brand cameras. The application itself is pretty slick, though my cheesy cameras have been less than impressive at times. That’s one of the reasons I was tickled to hear that Synology was introducing their own camera models- the BC500 and the TC500.

This is Synology’s first dip into the IP CCTV camera market, and they are starting with a bullet camera and a turret style camera. There is not yet a wireless offering or a PTZ model, but the the BC500/TC500 models are a decent start to what I hope blossoms into a bigger pool of camera devices from Synology over time.

Synology TC500 at Wirednot HQ

Synology TC500 setup page and live view

I had the advantage of being familiar with Surveillance Station when I started to look at the two new Synology cameras. It is worth mentioning that these cameras (to the best of my knowledge) are most usable within the Synology ecosystem- they wont play with other DVRs beyond providing an RTSP stream. (This isn’t unheard of- my Ubiquiti UniFi Protect cameras are also vendor-locked.) I have two Synology NAS devices, and I run Surveillance station on the beefier of them, the DS1618+ which has a RAM upgrade to 16 GB from the 4 that it shipped with. The use of Surveillance Station with multiple cameras streaming to it has not bumped my NAS CPU or RAM in any discernible way.

For those who didn’t know, Synology also has dedicated video storage solutions versus using your NAS for other purposes and video storage.

Synology BC500 mounted for testing at Wirednot HQ

Synology BC500 live view

Both cameras feel solid enough in the hand, and the simple mounts and manual adjustment features for both are effective. I have the BC500 fully exposed to the elements and it has done fine in two pounding rainstorms so far and both are IP67 rated.

You’ll need Power over Ethernet (PoE) in the form of an adapter or Ethernet switch port as the cameras do not come with their own adapter or transformer. I interpret this to mean that Synology expects to sell these primarily into environments beyond the home, like to businesses who would have PoE ports available to leverage. I ran both cameras on PoE switches from Meraki, Ruckus, and Ubiquiti with no issues whatsoever. They power up quick and just work faithfully in my environment, using only Fast Ethernet (100 Mbps).

Male model on loan for this blog

Back to Surveillance Station. For third-party cameras, Synology gives you two free licenses before you have to pay per-camera to use them in the application. The BC/TC500s don’t require a license, and are an order of magnitude easier to set up in Surveillance Station than third party cameras. There is a range of recording and detection options, on par with even big systems I’m familiar with like Genitec. The person and vehicle detection is nice, as is the capability to mask parts of the recording view for privacy concerns and to define detection zones. There’s really a lot here if you choose to use the system beyond the very capable default settings. The digital zoom with the new Synology cameras runs circles around any other camera I have in use right now, as does the nighttime IR feature.

I did not attempt to use the cameras in stand-alone mode, where instead of recording to Surveillance Station you record to MicroSD cards on the cameras. I did read that if you opt for that the card has to be removed to view it’s contents, which is a really strange requirement that Synology needs to address sooner rather than later.

At $219 per, I feel that Synology has priced these on the high side of fair, but still within what I would consider reasonable. At the same time, only Synology customers are likely to buy them, so hopefully we see bundling deals or something similar to keep us interested when weighing the BC/TC500s versus less expensive cameras to use with Surveillance Station. I have no doubt that Synology’s own cameras will always integrate better, but price is a big deal to people. I would buy these, especially after having used them, but I also would understand if cheaper third-party options were chosen to use with Surveillance Station by people who don’t have the luxury of trying them out.

Rather than regurgitate specifications for Synology’s two new cameras, let me point you to the company’s spec sheet. Overall, they are absolutely wort considering and as mentioned earlier, I hope to see more models from Synology.

Netool.io Pro2- A Good Thing Just Got Better

Netool.io Pro2 at Wirednot HQ

Today’s network tool market really isn’t all that big. We love our support tools, sure- but if they don’t bring consistent value, they won’t stick around. Back in 2017, I think it was, the small Nevada company brought the original Netool to market. I wrote about the introduction of the Pro model back in 2020. Now, three years later, we see the company and the product have stood the test of time.

For those totally unfamiliar, all versions of Netool.io are meant to be highly pocketable (or carried in the available belt holster) so those in the field working with Ethernet switches always have it with them. The tool talks via Wi-Fi (or now Bluetooth) to an application on your phone or tablet, and you connect a patch cable between the Ethernet port on the tester and a network switch. Then what? Let’s see some visuals.

There’s a lot more to show, but hopefully you get a general sense of what the little unit offers. Beyond pretty decent characterization of the local environment, there is a switch configuration side as well. Complete feature list stolen from the Netool.io web pages:

Netool.io Pro2 Features

The USB-C charging port is handy in today’s world, as is the ability to connect a flash drive for .pcap storage during packet capture. CPU and memory are bulked up over the last version, and run time exceeds a typical busy work day.

I have been playing with the Pro2 in my home lab environment which at current is Meraki and Ubiquiti on the wired side (the Netool is not a wireless tool, remember). It’s peppy, easy to pull information and performance feedback from, and I am a fan of the new Netool.io Cloud service. In my opinion, NetAlly absolutely aced this way of storing and sharing test results with their Link-Live service, and it’s nice to see another network field tool provider follow suit.

My current on-hand cloud-managed switches don’t lend themselves to benefit from the config capabilities of the Pro2, but other environments I do manage could absolutely benefit and I look forward to trying out the possibilities again, having kicked tires a bit on the earlier Pro version. One example of configuration capabilities is here.

It really is an impressive, super portable tool that pretty much any network field technician would benefit from. On my wish list for refinements would be a single app for all models of the tool. Right now there is an app per model- no one’s biggest problem but feels a bit odd. Also, Power over Ethernet has become such a pervasive part of networking that I would hope to eventually see some basic PoE verification in the Netool.io mix.

Learn more about Netool,io Pro2 here.

Hamina, bitches…

So, how long HAS it been since a new WLAN design tool hit the market? Arguably, this has been a space long-dominated by de facto monopoly. And sure, most of us in WLAN Land created and supported the monopoly. It was working for everyone. But then circumstances changed. Companies were bought. People changed. And people have a way of making things great, or laying waste to years-cultivated credibility. Such is life.

But wait- I was talking about WLAN design tools. There’s a new one out there, you realize… Now, I know that you know that I know that a whole bunch of us already know about Hamina. It’s really a rather small community of wireless professionals, and people talk to each other. They share. And Hamina is definitely a hot topic right now.

Beyond just being weary of what an incumbent tool vendor might be doing under new management, I think many of us are ready for a more lightweight design experience. Lighter on the wallet, lighter on the hardware required to run the tool, and lighter on the fable that Wi-Fi design is something akin to rocket science that requires razor precision. After a while, some stories start to collapse under their own weight. That’s not to say existing tools aren’t still effective, but paying ever more to use to use them is in no way a privilege. The notion of who is working for who sometimes gets blurred,

So why look at Hamina? To start with, it is feature-packed for WLAN design, on par with any leading tool. It’s in version 1.0 currently, and feels very intuitive to use. Everything you’d expect to see for 2.4, 5 and 6 GHz are there. Bring in the CAD files if you’d like or do your walls and such manually. You can model your designs, and then model what a client (using various device types) would experience in the environment as they move around. It works well in my experience, so far as a design tool.

Differentiators? Hamina is browser-based. Run it on Windows, run it on Mac without installing software. Run it on a locked down corporate machine. And for me at least, the 12-month cost for the WLAN-only version is a fraction of what the competitor charges just for renewal after purchase. Add in 4G/5G features, and the cost is still quite comfortable for the higher tier. And it all seems to work well in my experienced opinion- even in the early versions. There are other niceties in the mix that I may or may not personally use- BLE and LoRaWAN planning, planning for cable runs and network switches and such.

Take a look at Hamina, says I.

Hamina, bitches!