Look A Bit Beyond WLAN RF

The RF part of wireless networking is often what keeps good IT folks from really getting proficient with WLAN, and many good WLAN types never look beyond the frequency ranges used in 802.11 technologies to see the bigger RF world that we live in. It's understandable, especially for those without some sort of professional or hobbyist background with signals. The world of WLAN spectrum can be hard enough to wrap your head around, but every now and then there is value in seeing the bigger "comms" picture. The more you understand about the way different frequencies behave in the most basic sense (and what services use those frequencies) the more comfortable you'll become with really understanding the more mysterious parts of both access-type WLAN and point-to-point bridging.

There are masters'-level classes on RF and radio technologies, tech training courses, and infinite online tutorials and calculators covering all the variety that falls under the broad heading of "learning about RF and RF systems". This is one of those areas that you never, ever stop learning about. And once the bug bites, it's not uncommon to become a radio-technology junkie who's interested in far more than just the goings on in the 2.4 and 5 GHz slices of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Let's look at just a bit of information on "commonly used" frequencies:

• How long are their wavelengths


• What are their natural "free space path loss" characteristics (how they "fade")


• At a common power and antenna config, how do they behave compared to each other?

Sounds like heady stuff, yes? It's really not that bad- so stay with me here.

The following frequencies have meaning to me, and certainly to many of you as well. I'll give you the wavelength of each, and tell you how much the signal fades after 1 km based on these values applied to each frequency:

• 100 mW (or 20 dBm) of power


• Simple 3 dB antenna at the transmitter and receiver

Whether the signal would be usable (any signal left after path loss)



(Table created by me, there is some minor rounding done)

Again, we see that with same power and antenna gain/sensitivity, the frequency in play makes a dramatic difference to what's available (or not) at the receiving end.

The frequency is a product of wavelength;  the lower the frequency gets, the longer the wavelength is. Lower frequencies also tend to require bigger antennas.

But this little exercise is of limited practical value, beyond helping to understand basic aspects of RF behavior at each of the frequencies I chose to show. High gain antennas, increased power levels (some technologies like Wi-Fi are limited to miniscule power levels while other technologies measure their outputs in Kilowatts), and environmental factors all influence the basic RF goings on at each frequency. Modulation types, quality of engineering, CPU and other silicon behind each given technology all also define performance of whatever technology is in play for a given spectrum. As I mentioned before, it does get complicated.

One of my favorite communications-oriented RF tutorial sites is at National Instruments. Although the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) is often thought of as a ham radio organization, they have a wealth of resources on all sorts of RF-related technologies and industry happenings.

If you've never built an antenna of some sort or another, you should. Whether it be a simple project for Over the Air TV or something weird for wireless penetration testing, its worth doing at least once. Research it, build it, improve upon it, and see how altering it changes the performance of whatever your application is (could be using a scanner to hear the local police comms or doing your own point to point wireless bridging), it's fascinating to design and build something RF-related, at least once. You'll find that seemingly unrelated wireless disciplines really do enhance the understanding of the actual wireless part of wireless networking.

Wireless Standards Just Aren't Enough

First the love:

Anyone in the wireless game, like really in it, knows that wireless networking is incredibly complicated under the hood. That the IEEE and the Wi-Fi Alliance could herd enough cats to get us to where we are today- enjoying our 11ac honeymoon- far from the days of early 802.11 is amazing.

Let's pause for a moment and think about how far we've really come, because it is impressive indeed. From a technology that was an expensive accessory at one point, with low data rates, high prices, and anemic security, to being the preferred method of access today for most of us, with rates and security features that are fitting for any environment (when installed right), wireless has grown up.  A huge thank you to everyone involved, as you've given me the best job in the world- that of a WLAN professional.

Now the lament:

As impressive as the modern WLAN is, somehow we ended up with some crazy market fragmentation and mindsets. Even though interoperability testing mostly keeps the wireless train on the rails, we still end up with enough in-place chaos to make life pretty miserable for wireless clients and support staff at times.

Maybe we try too hard for backwards compatibility. Perhaps device makers are lazy or out of touch, or could it be that the BYOD comet just hasn't caused enough pain to really get everyone's attention? For sure, the fuzzy, often-bludgeoned distinction between consumer and enterprise-grade components doesn't help matters.  Here's what I mean:

- In a world where we're talking about "Gigabit Wireless", we still have device and instrument manufacturers churning out chipsets that need 1 and 2 Mbps data rates to behave right. These devices are frequently intended for networks that aren't likely to have those rates enabled.

- Printer manufacturers have far deeper roots in the business environment than does wireless. Yet, we can't get printer makers to understand what their devices need to do for desired functionality on the "business WLAN".

- What we call BYOD is actually BYOD/T; that is bring your own device AND TOYS to the WLAN. If it works at home on the living room network, you know damn well people are going to want to use them at work. Like AppleTVs and Google Chromecasts. To the uninitiated, you look at the specs on the packaging and see "compatible with 802.11n/g" or whatever, and jump to the conclusion that it must work because that's the kind of network we're using. The  warning label that should say "check with your networking department before buying this for office use" never makes it to the packaging.

But... rather than having to explain to users why this gadget or that can't work on the WLAN, or killing ourselves to put in hyper-complex, house-of-cards-quality work-arounds, wouldn't it be nice if somehow the Community of Wireless Client Device Makers could get with the times and build compatibility for both consumer and enterprise networks in to begin with?

Just supporting enterprise security would help immensely, and likely add little to the device cost. (I'm astounded at how out of touch the business printer/projector makers seem to be). There are certainly other nuts to crack as well before everything is perfect between the WLAN and BYOD/T devices, and Apple could be an absolute leader here. Bonjour has long had it's day, as I've bitched to anyone who will listen.  "Apple TV is perfect for the boardroom" provided that you have one small flat network and one boardroom. But when you have hundreds of boardrooms/classrooms and complicated LAN topologies, devices like the Apple TV are a supreme pain in the assbone. If Apple could do right by the customers who continue to fatten the company's immense bottom line and give us something better than Bonjour for their devices in the workplace, maybe other device makers would follow suit. (Did you know that higher ed is begging Apple to provide relief from Bonjour headaches?)

Maybe we need tighter "categories" from the Wi-Fi Alliance- with devices that are labeled either "Enterprise Ready" or "Consumer Grade". This would give incentive for the lower-end stuff (including Apple's Bonjour-based devices) to step it up. It would also give a clean delineation for networkers to point to for device support. If done right, We could say "if it's got the Enterprise-ready label, we support it" and if not, don't bother bringing to us. Everyone would know where they stand, as the criteria that goes into an "Enterprise Ready" compatibility testing program would be based on far more than just whether radios can talk to each other. It's a nice thought anyways.

Ah well- end of rant. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go explain why Chromecast doesn't work on our 802.1x-based WLAN.

What Meru and Xirrus Need to Do

I'm not a big deal, but I know a guy who is. And- I have pulled off San Jose's most brazen balloon theft. These two facts combined qualify me to advise multi-national wireless networking companies on communications strategies. Here's my advice for Meru and Xirrus, after visiting with both companies for Wireless Field Day 5.

Both companies are headed by obviously intelligent technologists who are passionate about their product lines. Each has well-spoken customers willing to testify on the effectiveness of their gear. Both are still in business in a pretty competitive space, and hoping to grow their shares of the WLAN market. And both have unique technical stories that set them apart from their industry peers.

And here is the problem.

For years, I've listened to a number of briefings with Meru and Xirrus and always walked away with a nagging sense that each is actually a bit uncomfortable talking about their  "specialness" to any depth when dealing with Classically Trained WLAN Types. Xirrus does the array thing, and Meru rocks the single-channel architecture groove. Both companies want to talk about their bigger stories, but many of us don't feel satisfied with terse "trust us, it works" explanations on features that are radically different from industry norms. So... briefings grind to a halt because tech-analysts want to know why we should accept that these companies have actually found a different way to do things. But the companies' speakers obviously don't want to spend their camera time on these years-controversial details, and neither party quite feels great at the end of the experience.

And here's the fix.

There's certainly a fine line between disclosing intellectual property and being open with those asking pointed questions about your technology. But that line needs to be walked when you build product lines on unique technical approaches. Sam Clements and Keith Parsons are well within their professional purview to challenge Xirrus on how they can pack so many antennas into such a little box without them creaming each other, especially when other vendors sometimes bash Xirrus for their designs. And Chis Lyttle is proper in asking a few times for more info on Meru's "special sauce" even if it slows down Meru's onboarding demo. Tech people want to hear what tech people want to hear, and neither company tends to want to get into the nitty gritty that would get us all to shut up already and let them get our full attention on their latest announcements.

Each company should embrace the living hell out of their uniqueness. Lead with it, don't tap-dance around it. Stick it in our faces with good, digestible white papers and diagrams that clear up the mysteries once and for all without giving away IP. That way, when we all get together again, Xirrus and Meru can not only deliver the Message of the Day, but actually get us to listen to it instead of badgering them for information on the little things they do that many of us have been trying to comprehend for years.

We'd all be better for it, especially Meru and Xirrus.

Wireless Is So Not About Wireless Networking Anymore

Lee you fool, you've gone mad. How can wireless not be "about" wireless? 

Before you run off to another blog, let me clarify: today, as we stand in THIS SPOT in the wireless networking universe, never has the WLAN paradigm been so complicated. Yeah, we still need to get APs out there and provide access to wireless clients, but sitting through the sessions at Wireless Field Day 5 has me waxing philosophical. 

Like frogs in a pot, we've all been slowly boiling in increasingly complex waters over the last few wireless years, and it's easy to not notice that it's happening. Having sat through excellent sessions with WLAN vendors (Aerohive, AirTight, and Motorola- with Xirrus and Meru on deck) and toolmakers (Fluke Networks, MetaGeek, and WildPackets- with 7Signal later today), it's safe to say that to be in the wireless game today means being more diversified in skills and general IT sensibility than ever before. 

As the 11ac tide starts to rise, we're all faced with decisions:

• When do we start taking our own networks to 11ac?
• When do advise our customers to move to 11ac?
• Is moving to 11ac a given for everyone?
• Is 11ac the juncture where we consider changing WLAN vendors?
• Is 11ac the juncture where we look more at cloud-managed options?"

These are easy enough to grasp, and behind each of these questions there are other questions regarding the states of our installed network wiring, what generation switches we're running, what version of PoE we're on, etc. But these issues are rather pedestrian compared to what else is afoot right now under the umbrella heading of "wireless networking".

While marketing departments still like to lead with "we have the best APs! Look how freakin' fast we are!", there is a lot more to consider as our WLANs modernize.

Along with the radio technology and bandwidth sides of 11ac, we're facing an onslaught of factors to grapple with- like:

• a slew of analytical capabilities and ways to use that data
• device onboarding that can be as nuanced as your mind can dream up
• the ability to assign access privileges to device types, user types, application types, locations, times of day, and combinations of any and all of these
•  application visibility and taking action on what you see
• the system administration of complicated management systems that frequently fall on WLAN types (somebody has to keep them up)
• the increased number of bugs that come with the floodwaters of new features
• a procession of ancillary services and servers that don't directly have anything to do with client devices talking to APs, yet each is part of the bigger picture

You can make the point that none of these really have anything to do with 11ac per se and are better suited for policy and staffing discussions, but here are my counter points to that:

• To "go" to 11ac, you likely have to upgrade code on controllers, management systems, or whatever magic is afoot in cloudland
• When you upgrade, you get lots and lots of features that you didn't ask for- you're already buying them (unless they take stand-alone licensing, which is its own story in inconstancy across vendors)
• The more features you use, the more you have to troubloeshoot, debug, define policy for, educate users and support staff on, and watch over for issues
• The ancillary services in use for our WLANs frequently take more effort to keep on the rails than the wireless environment itself does
• Almost any part of the environment has the ability to convince users that the WLAN itself is borked, when the problem may actually be off in the hinterlands of the ecosystem 

Put it all another way- 11ac makes WLAN more complicated, but the accompanying backdrops and backstories of our networks are also getting dizzyingly busier. So busy in fact that they can make talking about 11ac itself seem like the easy part of the equation.

I'm not bitching, mind you- but just taking note. These are complicated times for wireless networkers, and sometimes "wireless" really has nothing to do with wireless.

 

Bluesocket Lives, Evolves Into Managed WLAN Services Offering Under ADTRAN

Back in the day, Bluesocket was THE commercial captive portal for wireless networks. As WLAN in general gained broader acceptance and the market widened, Bluesocket also started providing access points and morphed their captive portal appliance into a controller (like the WLAN big guns were starting to use with thin APs.) As this was playing out, Cisco, Aruba, and at the time Meru, were largely dominating the market and Bluesocket  didn't generate a lot of buzz anymore. But- nor were they "over".

My Own Bluesocket History

I have covered Bluesocket through the years for my column in Network Computing, like when the company introduced their initial controller offering, and then their virtual controller option. Network Computing also covered ADTRAN's acquisition of Bluesocket in a piece done by colleague Steve Wexler.

On the personal front, I helped pre-ADTRAN Bluesocket develop a new guest access feature set that perfectly fit the needs of my University when our native Cisco wireless guest option was anemic by comparison. To this day we still  use the Bluesocket portal for guests, and though it may be a bit dated, it still has amazing administrative flexibility and works great for letting guests self-sponsor or be sponsored based on cell phone number as user name. (I made more than one plea for both Bluesocket and ADTRAN to spin this off as a separate product but they didn't bite.)

Bluesocket also donated controllers that I took to Haiti on a humanitarian IT visit  that serve as the functional heart of two networks on University of Haiti campuses that me and my fellow volunteers created.

You could say I have a bit of a soft spot for Bluesocket given my history with the company and their products.  But after the ADTRAN acquisition, the already small player in the WLAN space seemed to get even quieter. But wait...

With their latest announcement, ADTRAN's Bluesocket may be on to bigger things.

Following similar recent announcements by Meraki and PowerCloud, Bluesocket is throwing their hat into into the cloud-managed hosted WLAN ring.

ADTRAN calls their new offering ProCloud, and it hopes to empower channel partners, integrators, and service providers with the ability to provide hosted enterprise-grade WLAN offerings to customers built on established the Bluesocket vWLAN magic-in-the middle.

Also announced are ProStart (installation, service, and training for customers that can't do their own wireless for whatever reason)  and ProCare (customer-selectable maintenance support options.)

See ADTRAN's page on ProCloud,     and Business Wire press release.

Wireless is certainly a competitive landscape to begin with, and the expanding managed WLAN pot is starting to simmer with interesting players jumping in.  Though I get that ADTRAN and competitors see the hosted WLAN thing as an easy service-add for partners that don't yet really offer wireless, I hope those who follow this path all don't lose site of the fact that "easy wireless" doesn't  automatically equal "good wireless" and that proper design and policy are still the cornerstones of successful WLAN.

I wish ADTRAN and my old Bluesocket friends best of luck in their new venture, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who will be following how managed wireless services will impact our industry.

Pondering WLAN Innovation

The modern wireless network, regardless of who creates the components, is certainly getting complicated. But is it innovative?

Asked another way- does sheer complexity equal innovation? And who decides what constitutes an innovative feature or component? Is it the vendor? The customer? A developer thousands of miles away from both?

Here's where I pause, and assure readers that what follows is not meant to bash any company, I'm simply pondering what innovation means to today's WLAN, and whether it couldn't perhaps be stewarded along a bit more collaboratively as the world gets increasingly more dependent on the fruits of our wireless labor and our systems get fatter with features.

There are a lot of definitions of Innovation, and some pretty fascinating reads on the topic. For the purpose of what's on my mind, I'll call innovation a good idea that serves customers well with some meaningful market duration while making the originator a profit. Simple enough. If I had to give innovation a formula, it might look like:

(Good Idea + Customer Acceptance) x (Time on Market + Affordability) =  Amount of Innovation
Or something like that.

Back to the question of who decides what constitutes innovation? If a new feature or product is marketed as "an innovative new offering", my first thought would be "how do you know it's innovative if it hasn't proven itself in the market yet?" Time judges innovation, not the person who came up with the idea. Sure, HP's TouchPad was an engineering accomplishment, but if it was really innovative, it wouldn't have tanked, would it have? Or maybe it's too harsh to say that "failed innovations weren't really innovative after all" (Perhaps some would-be innovations come along at the wrong time- again, I'm just pondering.)  Whatever- it's heady stuff to contemplate at the analytic level.

Back to wireless networking. I look at some of the systems I use (both for client access and WLAN management) and see a mix of innovation and feature bloat. Sure, there are nice aspects that bring value to the typical customer, but also ill-conceived features that obviously were never presented to a WLAN Admin Focus Group. Because they are all packaged together, you have have to tolerate the non-innovative distracting stuff to get into the innovative features, It's just the nature of the beast. Maybe this overall affect could be improved. Maybe we should start hyping BYOI as much as we hype BYOD.

What's BYOI? It's Bring Your Own Innovation- and we need more portals for it between customers and WLAN makers.

Wireless network administrators know what they need. Arguably, they can be serve as the advisory panel for features likely to be good innovations, and also judges for when an innovation has "expired" and needs to be replaced (why I am thinking of Apple's Bonjour protocol?) Sure, vendors give us hyper-complicated systems bursting with graphics and endless menus, but that doesn't mean we've been given innovation. And innovations don't have to be crazy disruptive and life-altering for the entire WLAN space, they can just be simple little changes that we'd buy more of because they are needed.

Without a clearly defined method of getting feedback and feature requests to decision makers within WLAN companies, it is my conjecture that innovation suffers. Meraki came close to getting it right with their Make a Wish mechanism (i remember being thrilled when I asked for alerting on DHCP pool exhaustion and then it showed up shortly after), but even after I made my wish, there was no way of knowing whether it was heard. Or whether others had asked for it as well. For many big companies, the culture seems to be "you the customer can just wait for us to innovate on your behalf, and if you feel like getting frustrated feel free to talk to your SE who also has no clue what's coming". Again- no bashing; the WLAN industry is generally amazing. But some of us would like to influence the innovation we pay for and help the mothership to realize when they get it wrong in the name of innovation.

Wouldn't it be cool if each vendor (or the industry itself) had a portal for  "What Admins Love and What Admins Hate About The Current System"? Ideally, it would be visible to at least other customers of the same system so we could see what our peers are also thinking. And if once a year, the feedback was aggregated, sorted, and put in a Top 5 of Loves and Hates with vendor commitment to answer them in some meaningful way ("Yes, we see that 98% of you hate the new Flash Interface, we'll try to work on that by 12-months out", or "75% of you would like to see ______ but here's why that is technically impossible" kinda stuff). Or if not a feedback dashboard, some mechanism that accomplishes the same thing.

We The Wireless People would love to have more of a hand in innovation, for everyone's benefit. We're closest to our clients, we know what we need, and we know what we don't. And if it doesn't get used, it isn't innovative.

Could Cabling For 802.11ac Revolutionize The Low Voltage Industry?

Caution- at first read, the following may seem a bit nutty. I'm OK with that. Let it sink in...

As I wrap another interview with a major wireless vendor, once again I hear that 11ac access points will require two Gigabit uplinks bonded as an Ether Channel to handle all of that high-rate data traffic goodness that comes with the pending WLAN standard. Let's pause for a minute- think about the wiring now in place for your APs. Most of us have a single Gigabit (or Fast Ethernet) run to each of our APs. Which means 11ac is going to MINIMALLY force us to add another wiring run per location, or redesign the whole pricey cable thing from scratch (maybe not so big of a deal in small, modern spaces- but an absolute nightmare in large environments, historic buildings, etc.).

Bottom line- UTP (that's 4-pair network wiring for the uninitiated) will be added for 11ac. Yes, you will be runnin' some wire, Jack. Here's where I want you to wander into the Land of Imagination with me.

Why just run two wires to each AP? Why not run three? If you're running wire anyways, what the heck? I'll bet you're wondering what that third wire is for, huh? It's for emergency LED lighting. Or small Crystal Eye-style CCTV cameras. Or paging/muzak speakers. Or heat detectors. Or femtocells. Or a bunch of other distributed devices that are already part of the Low Voltage landscape- except in my vision, they are now somehow integrated into the access points that are all over the place. So when you device-out a new space, you have a common cable plant and decidedly less pathway and location complexity.

How does this get done, like from the component build perspective? I don't know- I'm not that kind of engineer, So it's easy for me to simply envision it and let someone else say the words that poo poo the notion. In my mind, I take my new 11ac AP out of the box, I attach one of a dozen different low-voltage device modules, connect three wires,and I hang it. Back in the closet, two wires go to my Ethernet switch, and one patches off to an emergency lighting system. Or the third wire also patches into the switch on another VLAN for CCTV. Or for the fire system. Or whatever.

Yes, WLAN makers would have to get cozy with folks in other industries pretty darn quick to come up with this sort of model as 11ac rolls out and we all start planning for the new wiring runs needed for it. Heck, I'll even give 'em until Wave 2 to get it done.

If I'm paying through the nose for new access points AND new wiring, why not get something truly practical, innovative, and cool out of it? Architects/space designers would love it- they tend to hate all of the devices that are mandatory on the walls and ceilings of business environments.

OK, maybe it is a bit nutty. At the same time... maybe there's something to this idea.

Is It Time For A New Licensing Paradigm For WLAN Features?

Not all wireless networks serve the same types of clients, or have the same operational goals in mind. So why do WLAN vendors see all customers as the same when it comes to licensing?

I know that we all have the freedom to negotiate the deepest discounts that we can with our WLAN vendors, and in this regard large customers tend to get better discounts because they buy more stuff. But whether you are talking large or smaller customers, even "within tier" there are significant differences among environments that perhaps ought to bear on licensing costs and strategies offered by vendors for advanced features.

Here's what I mean- if I have an environment of hundreds or thousands of APs and want to do something like advanced location analytics to "monetize" my WLAN or gain workflow efficiencies to increase profits, I would expect to pay a premium for the magic that that makes that happen in the form of hardware and features from my WLAN vendor.  After all, that's an obvious investment. But if I'm a hospital or not-for-profit, or even a University or college, and my use for that same magic is more altruistic and not attached to obvious profit, should my costs for the magic be the same? Asked another way, is it reasonable to want the WLAN vendor to charge a fraction of the cost of the same magic if all I want to use it for is simple handicap-routing and no-profit mapping just to help visitors get around?

Can licensing ever be based on "what are you actually gonna do with that magic?" I know that I priced up a big, fancy locations-based analytic service for my own environment with the intention of providing it essentially for the public good- not for turning a profit off of it. But my costs come in in the hundreds of thousands of dollars- just the same way it would if I was going to make lots of money on those same services.

I know the notion of use case-based licensing is a bit weird and complicates life for the vendors, but from the customer perspective it is an idea with appeal.

Off the WLAN Beaten Path- Edgewater Wireless and TP-Link

The US wireless networking industry generates a lot of media buzz- usually centered around industry leaders and second-tier vendors hoping to catch up. But there is WLAN life beyond the Magic Quadrant, and the mainstream media isn't the end of the story when it comes to who'd doing what in wireless.  Here's a quick look at two "other" wireless players; Edgewater Wireless and TP-Link.

Based in Ottawa, Edgewater Wireless has a product set based on what they call WiFi3 (it's actually WiFI "cubed") technology, that by their press releases, should compete nicely with mainstream wireless vendors. Edgewater has offerings for pretty much all customer niches, including:

• Enterprise


• Wireless ISPs


• Muni WiFI


• Stadiums


• Service Providers

Outside of Canada, Edgewater does well in Mexico, Latin America, South America, and Africa. I find them interesting because they appear to have a proven, mature product set with lots of customers, yet we in the US seldom hear about them. News releases here.
___________

From California's City of Industry, TP-Link's US division provides a domestic presence for the global WLAN market leader of 2012, according to TP-Link's own press. But who is TP-Link, and what do they do?

Yes, TP-Link pushes out a lot of WLAN products- in the home and SMB spaces. Under their wireless product line, you'll find everything from consumer-grade APs and routers to outside wireless products and high-gain antennas to CPE equipment used by wireless ISPs. There is a big story here, based on volume of units moved alone.

Beyond wireless, TP-Link also has these product lines:

• 3G/4G Routers


• ADSL gear (I had to learn quick how to configure TP-Link ADSL gear at a location I support in London)


• Switches


• Powerline Ethernet


• IP Print Servers


• IP Cameras

And more... It's also pretty obvious as you run through TP-Link's offerings that much of what they produce is re-badged by other SOHO vendors, which contributes to their claims of wireless world domination.

Should you get bored following the goings on of the wireless big guys, have a look at Edgewater and TP-Link. Both companies are moving and shaking, just not at the dances that most of us usually go to.

3 Things I Would Like From WLAN Makers

Wireless networking is amazing stuff. When you first learn the nitty-gritty of how clients access the medium and the orchestrated nuances of timing, modulation, and propagation, it can make your head spin. Add to it a rapid evolution where each improvement on the original 802.11 standard brings an order of magnitude more benefit (and complexity) and you really have to appreciate the incredible engineering minds that come up with this stuff.

Sure, it's easy for the rest of us to "arm-chair quarterback" all of the things that we think our wireless networks should do. And that brings us to here and now. I would love to see the WLAN industry embrace the following three suggestions (and will even waive my name being in the credits at the end of the movie if wireless makers follow through and give me what I want):

1. Every WLAN maker should provide a single-gang, flush-mount AP so we can leverage the huge and frequently unused already-installed premise wiring infrastructure. I understand lofty topics like heat generation, space constraints on high-performance dual-band 11n radio assemblies and all that. But I'd even be happy with single-band, low power "micro cell" kinda things that, in the right situation, negated the need to run new wiring and allowed me to make use of some the thousands of unused UTP runs I have installed as ever more users ditch the Ethernet cable and go with wireless. Such an access point would open up huge possibilities. (A couple of vendors already do this, but I want ALL WLAN makers to do it, as there is no interoperability between vendors.)

2. Give us a "virtual client" troubleshooting utility. I want to be able to turn an in-place AP into a client device, and remotely use it to exercise every SSID, DHCP pool, RADIUS server, and path from the wireless environment to the rest of the network whenever I feel like it. This would let me "be" anywhere I want to test critical network functions without leaving the comfort of my office. As a bonus, I would be able to schedule the functionality. The key here is that I don't want to pay for a pricey overlay to get the described functionality- I want it from my already-purchased pricey WLAN.

3. Finally, with every major code upgrade, I don't just want release notes in a cold PDF that I have to wade through to glean what I'm getting into. I'd love an accompanying podcast or video in plain English that gets to the meat of what's important. Something like Blake Krone and Andrew vonNagy interviewing Cisco For "No Strings Attached"  when the 3600 AP was released would be the proverbial cat's ass. Having the truly important parts of the new feature set introduced along with the potential gotchas in podcast or video form and without the taint of marketingspeak before the upgrade would rock.

And there you have my wish list for today.

If the WLAN industry gets ambitious and meets my demands quickly and then wants something else to do, please get with the printer industry and teach them what it takes to make wireless printers actually function on secure business WLANs.

Twitter is Killing The Helpdesk

OK- so it's not just Twitter, and the Helpdesk isn't quite dead. But you fell for the hook, so keep reading as social media is definitely reshaping the network support environment.

In a perfect world, a wireless network trouble ticket would minimally include:

- Client device MAC address
- User name, if an authenticated network is in play
- Where the trouble happened (room number, space description)
- When problem happened
- Details on what the issue "felt" like
- Whether trouble moves as the user device does
- Information on whether other users are feeling similar pain
- Device type
- Operating system and version

Obviously, in some environments this may be hard to gather. But you gotta have some meaningful data point to begin with for solving network issues. Depending on the answers to the above, many problems can be dealt with over the phone, without dispatching. Given that on a healthy network, the overwhelming percentage of issues are single-client problems, getting client information is important, as is making sure clients understand hours and methods of formal support.

We usually do well knowing that our important building blocks are down, if we have set up system management and monitoring properly. Most (but certainly not all) system issues that will impact multiple users should be identified through alarms. The individual cries for help are the ones we're talking about here.

Enter Social Media.

What's easier- filling out a form with all of the above information and then dealing with follow-up calls/email until someone can finally identify why your device is wierding out, or simply Tweeting that "the network sucks!"?

Tweeting (or grousing on Facebook) provides instant gratification. I complained! I stuck it to the man! I said nasty things about this crappy network! Woo Woo! And all behind a fake name!

But what was accomplished? And what is the expected response?

It's a fact of life that "living room" wireless networks are exponentially more simple than business wireless networks. Where a single access point is in use, just a few client devices are on, and there is no enterprise-grade security in play things like client stickyness and driver issues are a lot less likely manifest themselves in ways that feel like problems. But in this BYOD world, those same devices that seemed just peachy at home can be problematic when taken to a dense multi-cell wireless network environment that services hundreds or thousands of clients and uses complex security protocols.

When trouble hits, most people in the WLAN support game WANT to help. We take pride in our networks, and know how important they are because we use them too. But we need more than "C'mon network, get your shit together. I hate you" from a funny Twitter handle at 3:17 AM when you are somewhere in a sea of buildings and amongst dozens, hundreds, or thousands of access points.

Please, wireless clients, pause for a minute before jumping right into Complain Gear. No client network device is perfect or flawless, and they all act up sooner or later. Think of any connection problem you've ever had, and Google it- you'll find your are in good company with others that have also experienced the same, on networks small and big, all around the world.

Sometimes a driver update is needed. Or a setting like IPv6 needs to be tweaked. Or the software update you just got from the mothership hosed something in the wireless network settings.

And sometimes, it might actually be a network issue.

The unwritten Social Contract of Networking between clients and those who provide them with services says "bring me a problem, and I'll solve it". But solving your problem requires providing good helpdesk-level details- not just a rant on Twitter.

PS- yes I know, Social Media is becoming integrated with helpdesk functions in many environments. It's a natural evolution. But if anyone thinks a short wise-ass comment via social media takes the place of giving real information, you're just ripping yourself off.

When Good Wireless Feels Bad

If my client device doesn't connect to your WLAN, your network must have a problem.

My iPad keeps getting dropped by your network.

I keep losing my Internet, your network sucks.

Ever hear anything along these lines? Sure, sometimes wireless networks do have problems. Access points crap out. Controllers fail. A switch glitches, and PoE isn't sent to an AP. But on enterprise-grade hardware running proper code, these sorts of issues should be the exception. At the same time, even when "the problem" lives on the client device itself, it still feels like a network issue to the user.


With a daily load on my own WLAN that peaks around 16K, I see every kind of client device under the sun. Thankfully, we have a generally very healthy environment despite the relative complexity that comes with supporting any and every device type in a multi-SSID/security type environment. But trouble does hit the individual user on occasion; hence the purpose of this blog.

Even when the WLAN is running perfectly at each cell and all the way through the network's important parts (DHCP, DNS, RADIUS, credential store, routing, etc), these are among the many factors can still make the wireless network "feel" crappy to individual clients:

• OS upgrade causes trouble in wireless adapter


• Wireless driver dated, needs update


• Windows wireless driver not best fit for client, need Intel/Broadcom latest version


• IPv6 getting in the way of IPv4


• Client "sticks" to APs that common sense says it shouldn't


• On dual-mode devices (cellular data and Wi-Fi), each side of device occasionally causes trouble for the other


• Client device requires legacy data rates not supported by WLAN


• Client supplicant for 802.1x network gets corrupted, mis-configured


• Local interference (usually in 2.4 GHz) causes issues


• Client device clings to weak/poor 5 GHz connection when solid 2.4 GHz available


• Client device has static IP address set from previous network use


• User changes network password but doesn't update supplicant config


• Too small of an Internet pipe for user load


• Trouble on the Internet, out in ISP land, impacting specific destinations


• Client device is laden with malware that gets in the way of Internet access

You get the picture... there are many conditions that can impact the individual client, or a specific group of like client devices, and what worked yesterday may have been changed today by an OS update or patch.

Thankfully, when critical network building blocks do fail, we can either rely on our good instrumentation (you have that, right?) to tell us we lost a switch, or controller, or AP, etc. Or we can correlate based on good trouble report gathering (always happens, yes?) that there is something similar among users having issues- maybe a common AD grouping that RADIUS services are  borking on or the like. Good logs help, too.

Regardless of what is causing the pain, many clients instantly blame the network. Some can't fathom that their shiny, expensive device could be imperfect in any way or that the mothership would ever send them a patch that wasn't properly QA'd. It can be frustrating, but is also just part of the wireless support experience.

Things get easier if you have the rare environment where client types are tightly controlled and the BYOD water has yet to spill over the dam. For the rest of us, being aware of not only the health of the network but also of the various ills that can hit the client end of wireless (and what to do and how to communicate about them) is an absolute must. 

At the recent Wireless Field Day 4, I discussed this topic with my fellow delegates in a conference room in Building 4 of the Cisco Campus in San Jose.

Here's a bit more on specific frustrations with the WLAN, from factors that are largely out of the admin's hands.