Aerohive and AirTight Announce IoT “Firsts”

There aren’t too many opportunities in life to claim “we’re the first to _____!”  There’s a bit of a glow that comes with being first to market, even if the first whatever isn’t really monumental or exactly disruptive.  In the last couple of weeks, both Aerohive and Airtight (cloud-managed WLAN vendors for those of you late to the party) made a “We’re first!” announcement, each with Internet of Things (IOT) implications. Let’s take a look at both.

Aerohive- First Integration of WLAN and iBeacons

Here’s the official news from Aerohive. The nuts of it is that Aerohive and beacon-maker Radius Networks are pals, and Aerohive APs can directly host ibeacons via USB port on the access point. The notion of ibeacons (and altbeacons) is really just getting started, so this could become big and will likely ripple out far beyond it’s infancy in retail spaces. Though the companies are partners on the initiative, there’s really no changes per se to Hive Mananager that goes with having RadBeacons attached to APs.

Here’s my own coverage of the story at Network Computing. If you’d like to further the iBeacon discussion, please post comments over there.

Then there’s this:

AirTight- First Access Point with ‘IoT-ready’ WiPS

I’ll admit to being underwhelmed when I saw the press for Airtight’s new C-65 access point. Sure, any new 11ac AP is worth noting, but the up-play of it’s “IoT readiness” seemed to be a stretch. So, I asked- what makes this one so special versus the competition?

Here’s what AirTight says about the C-65 in their own words:

Two key things in IoT readiness for WIPS are system scalability andoperation scalability because of increasing device volume and diversity and growing attack variants.

 

1.     System scalability

o    AirTight increased the ability to monitor active wireless devices from 500 to 2000 per AP/sensor

o    On the cloud side, we increased the ability to scale to hundreds of thousands of devices being monitored across multiple geographies and customers

 

Scalability bottleneck in IoT will be coming from neighborhood devices that you need to track for threat detection, compliance reporting, etc, rather than your own APs that you manage in the cloud.

 

AirTight’s tests and customer POCs have shown that because the competition does not have this scalability today, device history is not maintained long enough; alerts are quickly purged to maintain scalability; reporting and forensics are thin; and threat detection is slow.

 

This happens today; what will happen tomorrow with hundreds of IoT devices in your wireless neighborhood?

 

2.     Operation scalability

o    The detection is behavioral based rather than signature-, rules or MAC heuristics- based

o    “Zero day protection”: no learning or adding of signatures is required

o    Minimal human intervention required

o    False alarm free

o    Reliable automated prevention without neighbor disruption

 

Our detection algorithm has matured over the years because of our focus on WIPS and is able to handle nuanced protocol implementations. So AirTightWIPS is better suited to handle device diversity. Other vendors are mostly doing MAC heuristics to detect rogues and have not invested in detecting all variants of threats and attacks.

 

Again, we have seen the impact of this in POCs and internal tests. We have seen competition raising false alarms (false positives and false negatives), along with creating large number of alerts for the administrator to sort through. Some products even discourage users from turning on automated prevention via product messages and technical documentation.

And there you have it.  Neither of these announcements is mind-blowing yet at the same time they serve as examples of where WLAN vendors’ heads are regarding IoT at this stage.

In case it isn’t obvious, we’re likely to hear a lot more about how the Internet of Things will shape wireless solutions, and how vendors think we should be preparing for the IoT onslaught. It’s gonna continue to come at us in little chunks as the seeds of IoT take root, so keep your eyes open or you’re going miss something.

Liking One Social Wi-Fi Case Study- and Disliking Another

Depending on what niche in the WLAN space you call home, you may be very interested in goings on with “Social Wi-Fi” these days. And depending on your humor, you might really dig Social Wi-Fi, you might detest it, or you may come down somewhere in the middle. I’ll state straightaway where I stand on Social Wi-Fi: I mostly find it intrusive, lacking in full disclosure, and problematic in a number of ways. It plays fast and loose with the definition of “free”, can be downright creepy while sporting a “wow, that’s cool!” facade, and yet I don’t totally hate it.

For those who still don’t know what Social Wi-Fi is, the basic premise goes a little something like this: I offer you Wi-Fi at my business. You login through a web page with something like your Facebook or Twitter account, and through the magic of services like Oauth, you proceed to using my WLAN while in the background a thousand evil elves start eating your soul as they grind it into Big Data Elf Chow, or something thereabouts. Of course the cover story is different, and Social Wi-FI is touted as a way to better engage customers and promote loyalty.

On the plus side, I recently had the privilege of spending a couple of hours with AirTight Networks, at Wireless Field Day 7. This was my third visit at AirTight, and it’s nice to see that they are still alive and viable in a tough market, given that they were a late-comer to the WLAN access game (having made the jump from WIPS-only). Much of AirTight’s strategy seems to hinge on delivering Wi-FI access, PCI complaince, and Social Wi-Fi to small businesses (or large businesses distributed over many small sites). I did hear one case study that brought me a bit of comfort in my distrust of Social Wi-Fi (and it’s not about MY personal data, it’s about the way the whole thing is packaged, presented, and sold in ways that I don’t like as an analyst and viewer of the world), and another that gave me the heebie-friggin’-jeebies, despite the excellent delivery by perhaps the nicest guy on the planet.

Noodles, Anyone?

The Noodles & Company case study presented at AirTight was informative, and the Noodles rep obviously was happy with the level of customer engagement that using Social Wi-Fi was providing the company. For example, after opting in customers are presented the opportunity to enroll in the Noodles’ ECLub, and sufficient numbers of them do to deem it good ROI. Customers get wireless access (I cannot perpetuate the myth that it’s “free” in this example) and various offers and interactions with the company if they opt in, and Noodles gets a wealth of data on aggregate customer trends as well as information on individual customers’ habits and preferences (no mention of whether this data is ever sold, or whether customers can egress the program once they’ve opted in- and if their data is deleted once they leave).

What I liked best in this case is that those customers who opt out of the Social Wi-Fi thing are still free to use the Noodles Wi-Fi network, and with no performance penalty in the form of rate limiting.

I Love Drew Lentz, But Not Buyin’ What He Was Sellin’

Drew (of Frontera Consulting, Twitter handle @wirelessnerd) is an amazing, passionate speaker and you can tell that he loves what he does and really believes in it. He’s a techie with a big world view, and I consider him a kindred spirit in that way. At the same time, I got a bit creeped out by Drew’s presentation. Retail analytics and monetizing the customer is one thing, but there are a number of slippery slopes in this neck of the woods, says I. In Drew’s narrative, the same sort of retail analytics used in the Noodles model to tell what’s selling and when along with how long I’m staying on site to spend money are coupled with my “likes” and information on my friends, etc. from my social media accounts. By the time it’s done, the establishment “knows” what beer and music I like, knows who I hang out with and what they like, and has created it’s idea of who I am, to a certain degree.

Stop: hammer time.  Again- no mention made of:

• If I opt in, can I opt out? (The example here is a bar- what if I’m crocked when I opt in?)
• If I opt out, can I ask that anything to do with me personally be deleted?
• Can I expect that anything to do with me that was sold to others in exchange for “free” Wi-Fi be deleted from those other data stores as well?
• If it becomes common knowledge that my personal life preferences are manifesting through the establishment’s environmental reaction to my presence, how might a stalker or identify thief leverage that simply based on what they observe, even if they don’t know my name?
• What if “the algorithm” somehow gets it wrong, and turns me into someone I’m not based on what it reads in my profiles and shares that with the outside world through interactions with me at the establishment?
• What if the algorithm gets it wrong, and sells my flawed persona to other companies who now think I’m someone I’m not?

Granted, we only had limited time at AirTight, and maybe Drew could have answered all of these concerns to my liking (but I’m guessing not). And I’ll freely admit that at least a couple of my fellow delegates thought that Drew’s magic was pretty slick and saw value in it.

For me, there’s always more to the story than meets the eye. 10 years in the military, more years in IT security, and a lot of investigative work and interactions with Law Enforcement make me jaded on Social Wi-FI as it tends to be presented. I’ve yet to hear how users and their data are protected (opt-in shouldn’t equal “have your way with me”), how far my data is going to get sold off, what new middle-men now have access to information about users (anyone and everyone can be an MSP these days- does this new tier of unvetted data shepherds now “own” pots of data they can sell off, or drill into without legitimate reason?).

Please spare me the “but we already put lots of information on Facebook!” copout- this situation is incredibly nuanced, and that’s the first thing that has to be realized.

 

Sure, I’m skeptical- and I stand by that. But make up your own mind- here’s the AirTight presentations.

 

Nothing Magic About Gartner’s Quadrant When It Comes To Wi-Fi

I just digested the latest “Magic Quadrant for the Wired and Wireless LAN Access Infrastructure”, and I have a feeling I’m not the only WLAN professional or analyst that finds significant fault with what this once-decent “evaluation” has become.

Where to start with this train wreck? Maybe a little background is in order. Through 2011, Gartner dedicated a Magic Quadrant report to WLAN only, and one to Enterprise LAN. That changed in 2012, when they moved to  “Magic Quadrant for the Wired and Wireless LAN Access Infrastructure” format. And here’s where the problem starts. This thing doesn’t know what it wants to be… is it enterprise-oriented? Is it supposed to somehow capture the spirit of unified access? Is there supposed to be a decent analysis of the WLAN industry in here? I really can’t tell as it’s named and delivered. Despite Gartner’s overview of criteria up front in the report, it just feels bizarre when you dig into it.

You’ll notice this is not named the “Magic Quadrant for Unified Access”, which might more justify the “if you don’t have your own LAN switches, you can piss off as a WLAN vendor” reasoning that is in play here. But with a title like Wired and Wireless LAN Access, I’d expect to see companies that do LAN, WLAN, and both.  But since 2012, if a vendor doesn’t have switches AND a WLAN solution, then there’s No Soup For You. Forget that vendors OEM each others stuff, and that a company might be best of breed at either WLAN or LAN and mediocre at the other- you gotta have both to come to this weird party. Which leaves out some important players in the WLAN industry, like:

• Ruckus Wireless – who happens to be rolling out one new municipal Wi-Fi deployment after another, doing many stadium deployments, and is visible all over my immediate area as viewed through the rogue detection on my own WLAN NMS
• Meru Networks – who not so long was #3 in a market that was fairly defined as consisting of Cisco, Aruba, and Meru when it came to enterprise WLAN. Lately Meru is making noise in the SDN space, but more on that in a minute
• AirTight Networks – An interesting newcomer to the WLAN access market (made the jump from WIPS-only), with growing market share and has been connected to some of the brightest technical minds in the industry (Akin, von Nagy)
• Ubiquiti – like ’em or hate ’em, they are selling in volume, and are as viable of a Wi-Fi option as other players that made it into the Quadrant
• Meraki – yes, Meraki is listed under Cisco, but even that is wonky in this context, as Meraki and Cisco have fundamentally different paradigms

Flash forward (clever plot device): D-Link made the quadrant, while Ruckus did not. 

Now let’s pick apart what is in the report a bit. Where vendors have “end to end” offerings that Gartner seems to harp on for this exercise, some of them are almost irrelevant because they aren’t “seen” the same way by those shopping for a solution. Adtran has a “complete” solution cobbled together from Adtran switches and Bluesocket Wi-Fi (purchased a few years back). Yet they are a niche player in the Wi-Fi world. Adtran made the quadrant, but Ruckus did not.

Aruba is a top-shelf, WLAN-centric market Force To Be Reckoned With.  They absolutely belong where they landed in the Leaders rankings. But Aruba is rebadged by Dell and Alcatel-Lucent. So Dell is “allowed” to combine their own switches with rebadged Aruba hardware to get into the quadrant… meanwhile, Dell made the quadrant but Ruckus did not.

The treatment of Cisco is pretty weird here, but that may be more Cisco’s problem (to a point) than Gartner’s. Though Meraki WLAN and Cisco WLAN are both technically Cisco WLAN, Meraki WLAN is worlds apart in functionality and approach from Cisco WLAN (I know, because I use them both). Gartner attempts to explain this, but when a product set like Meraki is reduced to being a bullet item under the Cisco heading, there’s something lacking in the analysis and delivery.

Uh… Huawei? Really? Guess what- Huawei made the quadrant but Ruckus did not.

For D-Link, I know pitting them against market leaders is unfair. I have no ill-will against D-Link, and frequently recommend D-Link products for the SMB/residential spaces. But Gartner’s own “cautions” outweigh the listed “strengths”, and the report stresses that D-Link lacks an enterprise reputation, and is a brand that “seldom comes up in conversations with Gartner clients”. But I bet of few of those clients ask about Ruckus on occasion.

Now that the SDN tide is rising (albeit not as fast as the media hype that goes along with it), the notion of “everything from one vendor” starts to be less important. Meru Networks, who I’ll remind you also did not make the quadrant, gets that. Fast forward down the SDN timeline, and the fact that a single vendor has switches and access points both becomes more irrelevant when it comes to what happens on SDN-enabled networks. Sure, you still need to manage the underneath networking, but many “single pane of glass” NMS are so poor at either WLAN or LAN that you’re frequently better off with one for each.

Finally, it’s my conjecture that Gartner is out of touch with who the WLAN industry itself sees as worth comparing. Each of these views shows head-to-head comparisons of various sorts by different vendors or IT experts (click picture for source doc):

I can’t remember the last time I saw a bake-off between Cisco, D-Link, and Huawei. Can you?

So how do you fix the Flawed Quadrant?

I’d urge Gartner to consider any and all of these:

• Bring back a WLAN-specific quadrant
• The market is so striated, show some effective creativity. Quadrants for MSP-suitable wireless, cloud-enabled wireless, true enterprise WLAN and other tiers
• Stick to single lines (break out Cisco from Meraki)
• Do a “Rebadgers Quadrant”

Just shooting from the hip with these, but the point is that the current Quadrant is a defective vehicle, and I think anyone who drives it is getting ripped off.

AirMagnet Changes It Up- With a WLAN Security Overlay

(OK, so it’s a Performance and Security overlay…)

I was an AirMagnet fan long before Fluke Networks bought them. I’m sure that I’m not alone in appreciating the long line of excellent tools that have come from AirMagnet, from the software-based utilities to the likes of AirCheck. But for some reason I was also a bit surprised to get wind of Air Magnet Enterprise as a big old’ overlay- think AirTight for security, and 7Signal for performance.

First Impressions, Having Never Tried It

For me, Enterprise is just different from all of the AirMagnet tools that you can hold in your hand. It gives me a bit of discomfort, because there’s yet another server or two to upkeep as part of the solution. There are sensors to deploy that have to be kept up in parallel with installed APs. There’s yet another system to learn, while you learn to ignore those same functions that are part of the system you probably already own… These mushy feelings of concern have nothing to do with Air Magnet, but rather they come from having well  over a decade of running and managing many small and very large WLANs and suffering pain, a la:

• Managing a WLAN is a lot of work, managing the boxes that manage the WLAN can suck
• When you make a significant investment in the likes of CleanAir (or anybody’s native equivalent) it’s hard to get a clear read on what yet one more system will do for you as a delta, and how that delta is worth the usually steep accompanying price
• Dashboards full of rogues and interference sources that you often can’t do anything about (thousands of ’em sometimes) because you are located in an urban setting become visual noise that get ignored
• Auto-containment sounds nice- until you lay waste to a network switch or an important client after putting faith in a tool that promises not to do the bad thing that it just did
• Trying to figure out how your WLAN security posture might be so deficient with your own vendor’s native capabilities (that you spent big, big coin on) that you still need an expensive overlay is a miserable task

But I realize that these are MY issues. Again, no reflection on AirMagnet (or 7Signal, or AirTight).

What immediately looks nice with Air Magnet Enterprise:

• Can be set set up in VM
• Uses a mix of pretty sweet looking hardware sensors and software agents
• Transactional stuff feels like it might be 7Signal-esque
• Hardware sensors can do wireless backhaul where wiring is difficult/cost prohibitive (yes!!)
• Full-time security scanning versus APs that only do that as a small percentage of their operational time
• Scales well for large environments
• It’s Air Magnet- which implies maturity of feature set and good design (to me, at least)

It’s hard to say much more about it without trying a tool like this. And if you’re busy or don’t feel obvious performance or security pain, it’s hard to make the time or case for something as involved as an Enterprise trial done right. At the same time, WLAN is the preferred mode of access for a growing number of complicated environments with PCI/HIPPA/etc. concerns that are also likely BYOD hornets’ nests that might be distributed over a number of sites that aren’t easily covered by limited IT staff- and so I can picture a client base (but it’s likely to be a small fraction of the number of WLAN environments that have bought other AirMagnet products).

Personally, I’d love to see a major WLAN vendor or two completely scrap their own performance/security suites and partner with specialists like Air Magnet or 7 Signal for that side of the total solution.

An Outsider Looks At AirTight’s Recent Hires

I don’t get to the Silicon Valley very often, but I am a professional free-lance media type and have been monitoring and covering goings on in the WLAN space for a lot of years. Last night I got an email regarding Steven Glapa leaving Ruckus, and heading for AirTight networks as the company’s new Chief Marketing Officer. I don’t usually give coverage to staff changes in the Valley, as there are just too many of them that happen frequently, and I’m not big on puffing up egos by reporting on individuals’ career decisions. But something about the AirTight email got me thinking beyond their new CMO.

The sender of the email used the words “snagged” and “talent poaching” to describe the luring of Glapa away from Ruckus, and perhaps that’s what set the Hook of Deeper Thinking into my handsomely chiseled jaw. I have no knowledge of what made AirTight appealing to Glapa, or what it is about Ruckus that made him want to move on, and frankly I don’t really give a rip. But being a habitual Big Picture thinker, here’s what Glapa’s move got me thinking about.

• The notion of Validation has gotten used often lately. Cisco buying Meraki validated cloud-managed wireless, which also made Aerohive and PowerCloud happy.  More recently, Aruba Networks released their opening cloud volley, followed by an interesting offering from Enterasys– again, validating the model. AirTight is part of the growing cloud-managed WLAN space, and though it’s roots are in the love-it-or-hate-it security overlay realm, has picked a hot direction to evolve given all of the validation of cloudy wireless going on these days.
• AirTight also recently “poached” a couple of high profile staff assets from Aerohive Networks, in the forms of one Devin Akin and one Andrew von Nagy. Again, staff moves aren’t my kind of news as a rule, but there is a significance here- cloud-managed wireless has matured to the point where cloud vendors can steal each others’ expertise, as there is now an experienced cadre of cloud-savvy networkers to court. This wasn’t the case not so long ago.
• Perhaps a “shaking out” of this market sector is imminent? AirTight gained a CMO from Ruckus, two “Evangelists” (I’m starting to of tire that term, Jimmy Swaggart) from Aerohive, and all three companies are arguably “small”. Though wireless itself is a big and growing market, could these sorts of moves reflect some hidden gloom at the “donor” companies? This is pure speculation, obviously, but also a natural mental path to wander down. How many smaller and/or cloud-managed companies can the market sustain at this point?
• AirTight better make a splash soon, as none of these guys are probably working for cheap. Akin certainly has name recognition as a WLAN deity, with von Nagy no slouch in this regard. I don’t know much about Glapa, but given that Ruckus has been on fire at times, he must have a good business touch. So three strong HR adds have been made to a company that has a product line that needs to do some catching up before (in my opinion, at least) it legitimately competes with Meraki and Aerohive for robustness of feature set. Hopefully the new guys hasten that development for AirTight’s sake, given that payroll seems to be swelling for a company “new” to the WLAN access market.
• Despite all of the growth and media coverage of cloudy WLAN of late, the controller-based folks still own the market. But… the division between controller-based and cloud-managed is being blurred as more vendors are doing unholy things to the control and data planes and diluting the bajeezus out of the controller model at times. The point? There is still an awful lot of industry evolution to be done. Each and every vendor in the mix has the daunting task of evolving while not losing customers or overwhelming them with constantly changing license models, lexicon, and topologies. Whether controllers completely age out and the cloud wins, or whether we end up with options in a few years remains to be seen. Meanwhile, the religious wars surrounding each kind of WLAN will rage on.

And that pretty much ends my lunch hour of deep thought- back to work I go.

Aerohive Throws Hat Into The 802.11ac Ring

Ah, this crazy wireless world we live in. It’s easy to forget that 802.11ac is still not “really” a standard, although we’re getting very close.  It’s also easy to get sparkly-eyed by the 11ac products available now, despite the fact that with the new standard’s promised weird and protracted “wave” planned evolution, 11ac in a couple of years will likely feature many a new AP. But.. let’s talk about the here and now, because we’re here- and it’s now.

Since Ubiquiti announced their 11ac offering in April of this year, many of us have watched as different WLAN vendors have pitched their new 11ac products (and accompanying back stories). There was Motorola, Meraki, Meru,  Cisco, and Aruba. And then there are the not-yet-to announce, like Ruckus,  Juniper, and until today, Aerohive.

Aerohive brings two new APs to the 11ac market, and No Jitter does a nice introduction of the AP-370 (internal antennas) and AP-390 (external antennas) along with Aerohive’s take on how the new units fit into a smooth, take-your-time-and-don’t-fret-it migration plan to full 11ac deployment. Aerohive’s entry into the 11ac market does two things: it both pushes the message of early 11ac adoption but in a less aggressive way than some competitors are going about it, and further delivers the truth that cloud-based networking is both viable and capable of evolving with new WLAN standards. This second point gets some added umph when you consider that Aerohive announced their 11ac APs on the same day that Aruba Networks announced it’s own maiden voyage into cloudy WLAN. (It certainly smells like the WLAN industry is marching towards both faster WLAN and a welcome de-emphasis of controllers, says I.)

It’s a bit curious that Aerohive took so long to let their 11ac cat out of the bag (though I confess to getting a sneak look at the AP-370 under NDA at Wireless Field Day 5) given that Matthew Gast is is both Aerohive’s Director of Product Management and the author of the current Bible du Jur on 11ac. Many of us have come to personally  associate 11ac with Matthew because of his book, his excellent presentations on 11ac, and his willingness to talk with anybody who reaches out to him via social media. (If you think about it, this really isn’t fair to Matthew, the IEEE, Aerohive, or even ourselves!)

For what it’s worth, Matthew’s fellow cloud/11ac evangelists Devin Akin and Andrew Von Nagy recently left Aerohive, and both went to AirTight Networks (yet another cloud WLAN company)- who have yet to announce their own 11ac product.

Here’s What I Want NOW From My Wireless Management System

When it comes to the management and security of wireless networks, I want a lot of things. I want new things, and I want legacy things that aren’t going away to get better. I want slick, I want fast and I want effective. I want powerful, feature-rich, and a say in what features are worth devoting UI resources to. I want it all, baby- and here’s my latest rant on the topic. You’re going to love this.

Before I drop the bomb, lets set the stage.

I had the privilege of hanging out with the fellows from 7signal at the recent Wireless Field Day 5 event, and seeing how they do WLAN RF health characterization,  as well as getting a peek at what AirTight is up to. Being a long-time Cisco wireless customer, my mushy brain cant help but bring everything back to my vendor for comparison; but more on this in just a bit.

In my spare time, I’ve been having more fun than a person should be allowed to with the addicting Wi-Fi Pineapple (along with some tricks from the much-revered BackTrack Linux.) And at work, we’re gearing up for thousands of students to flood back into the dorms, which means Rogue Hunting Season is neigh. Put all this together and feed it into the “It’s Easy For Me To Demand Things From Other People That I Can’t Do” engine, and out pops the following wireless support and security gem:

Wouldn’t it be cool if…

• You could take one of your in-service APs and turn it into a virtual client that associates with other APs? (stay with me, I know you’ve heard this part before)
• Synthetic testing with said virtual client was possible: do my DHCP and RADIUS servers work? Can I reach the Internet? Can I reach other locations, from each of my SSIDs?
• The virtual client AP could report on nearby rogue networks, after I set a min threshold value, (getting closer to the money shot) and tell- Is the SSID open or protected?
• My virtual client could associate to the open SSIDs, and report back what the public IP is of the rogue?  (I could find it then through MAC or ARP tables if on my own network- doesn’t need to be automated)
• Here’s the LAGNIAPPE, baby- If the rogue SSID was encrypted, I’d like my virtual client to execute Aircrack-NG, Reaver, Fern, or whatever. Somehow, the power of my management system harnessed to this virtual client/pen testing-mode AP would give me a big-assed, infinite dictionary from hell and lots of power to crack. Then I could go back to the “find the public IP” step, which to me is the ultimate and definitive “game over” versus a lot of wireside detection systems that are so-so with their success rates.

I know there are lots of ways to do “wireless support”, but I am enamored with the force-multiplying capabilities of a well-constructed virtual client mode for installed APs (as I imagine them working). I’ve been beating the drum for Cisco to consider basic virtual client functionality for years, to no avail.

But now I want even more- I want a “virtual client AP meets BackTrack Linux, and they have offspring” mode.

I’m not asking for too much, am I?

What I Hope To Get From Wireless Field Day 5

Being selected as a delegate to a Tech Field Day is a bit like winning a Golden Ticket to Wonkaland for us tech types (instead of chocolate, there is a lot of wireless fodder to enjoy). I’m pleased as can be to be going back for my second Wireless Field Day event, having attended WFD4 and soon, WFD5.

Given the Silicon Valley’s prominence in the IT world, a trip there is something akin to a pilgrimage for those of us too far away (by both distance and circumstance) to get there very often. And that touches on my first goal for Wireless Field Day 5: simply being immersed in the tech-rich backdrop of the San Jose area. I’m not a tremendously spiritual person, but there is a powerful vibe afoot just under the surface “out there”, and it bubbles up time and again throughout the few magic days that are Field Day.

The corny stuff aside, here’s some of what what I hope to get out of my time at WFD5:

• Reconnecting with organizer Stephen Foskett and my fellow delegates. Most of the group was at WFD4, but there will be three new-to-me faces among the delegates, as well as Stephen’s expanded staff. These folks are sharp, down to earth, a pleasure to do the event with, and extremely deep in wireless networking knowledge. This alone makes the trip worth it.
• In general, I’m looking forward to all of the companies that are presenting to give us a glimpse behind the curtain at what they are about to release, what they are thinking on a number of fronts, and what they want to know from us, the delegates. Expected hot topics: 802.11ac, analytics of various sorts, new tools and optimization methods.
• Speaking of tools and optimization, 7Signal is sure to be a delegate favorite. I’m guessing we’ve all seen at least snippets of their case studies and what they recommend to make good WLANs even better. I hope to hear clarity on this topic, and to get a sense of whether 7Signal gear is more affordable than it seems and to hear about optimization tweaks that are real-world applicable.
• With Meru Networks in the lineup, I’m guessing I’m not the only delegate hoping to walk away with a better understanding of their “secret sauce” for single-channel virtual cells, and whether there is more than just bluster to their occasional hubris (as I’ve covered in my Network Computing column). To a certain degree, the same goal applies to Xirrus– I’ve covered them a number of times but never quite got totally comfortable with the array thing. But I keep an open mind…
• For Aerohive Networks, I’m both looking forward to updates and just as much to meeting the likes of Andrew von Nagy (perhaps the most approachable and willing-to-share senior tech guy from any vendor) and his homies. Aerohive just seems to have a different culture, and it’ll be nice to spend time in it for a couple of hours. (my latest Network Computing piece on Aerohive is here).
• AirTight Networks will be interesting because they are “new”, at least as a wireless access player, in a very competitive market. I have a Network Computing piece on AirTight now running, and also recommend this piece by Man-of-Action and  fellow Field Day Vet Matthew Norwood.  Hearing their story in person will be pretty neat.
• MetaGeek, WildPackets, and FlukeNetworks are all fairly significant players in my wireless world for tools. I’ve been a MetGeek fan from the days of the original WiSpy, and also frequently use EyePA and InSSIDer for Office (best blog on this one from another fellow delegate, Sam Clements). I’m looking forward to hearing any new announcements from the tools folks (gotta be something in this mix about 11ac) and maybe picking up a tip or two about how to better use the products I already have.
• Finally, Motorola always stokes my interest because they usually have a somewhat unique story and understated approach versus the “aggressive” marketing of other industry players. I’m a fan of many Moto business units (as a radio and Android guy, that’s a given), and caught up with the WLAN folks at Interop in Vegas just a couple of months ago to hear their opening 11ac story. I gotta feeling they’ll have something new for us.

It’ll be a busy week at Wireless Field Day, and my eyes and ears will be open. Standby for updates.