Bummers in WLAN Land

None of the following gripes are the industry's biggest problems. At the same time, they are nuisances and occasionally rise to the level of major headache. Some of these apply to WLANs of all sizes, others are far more applicable to bigger wireless environments. The remainder? They're just goofy. If any one of these were to be corrected or adjusted a bit, the wireless world we live in would be a little sunnier. In time, each and every one of these will "age out" and cease to irritate, but for now they are fair game to call out into the light  of day. I got me a license to bitch, and here it comes, in no specific order:

• Why are those cheap bastards at the laptop factory still putting out 2.4 GHz-only capable computers? It can't cost more than a couple bucks to provide a dual-band adapter in even the cheesiest laptop during manufacturing. Yet you have to look fairly hard, and often get into some serious upgrade dollars, to find a consumer-grade laptop (beyond Macbooks that come with dual-band 11n in all cases) that features both bands. It's almost unheard of in the "Sunday Specials" that feature prominently in the BYOD demographic. We all suffer for the side effects, and it's about time Acer, ASUS, Lenovo, and the other economy-class PC makers stepped up and became better citizens of the WLAN community.


• What's Up With Gartner's Quadrant When It Comes to Wireless Vendors? Gartner has always been a bit polarizing in their analysis of various technology sectors, but they flat out blew it with eliminating the WLAN-specific quadrant in favor of including only "unified" vendors.  It boils down to these:
  
  
  
  • Sure, some vendors make Ethernet switches and wireless APs. But in many environments, switches do little more than provide PoE for APs. Big flippin' deal.
  
  
  • When a company as radio and antenna savvy as Ruckus can't make it into The Quadrant because they don't have switches, there's something seriously wrong.
  
  
  • A Unified Quadrant isn't bad, but it's incomplete and therefor a disservice to the industry. It's time to bring back a WLAN only Quadrant, and a switching-only view IN ADDITION TO the unified Quadrant.
  
  
  
  


• Apple really missed the boat by not including 11ac in their very expensive new iPhones. The Big A should be a better steward of the client device space's future. If Samsung can do it, so can the Gods of Cupertino's Mountain of Cash. Instead of breathing life and craze into early 11ac adoption, Apple cheaped out and disappointed the fans (and wireless admins) that were hoping for more out of Apple's phone, especially for the money.


• Apple's Bonjour. Enough already. Fix it, and do your part to provide some pain relief to the wireless shepherds of the BYOD fields where your gadgets roam free.


• Cisco's Wireless Management System. It's WCS! It's NCS! It's NCS Prime! It's Prime Infrastructure! Whatever it's called this week, it's still buggy, slow, frustrating, and demanding of it's own FTE staff just to keep it breathing at times. To think about putting switches into this same management framework as wireless on very large networks as "unified" gets deeper into the management paradigm is the stuff of horror- unless we see a major overhaul soon. Too much of the WLAN market relies on this sometime-train wreck to not improve it.


• The Fallacy of Interoperability and Standards in the WLAN Space. Sure, we check our wireless devices for the famous Wi-Fi Alliance seal of approval that should mean all is well when devices need to talk with other devices, but there's a lot more to the equation. Consumer-grade stuff often doesn't play well in the Enterprise but nothing on the packaging explains the delineation. And... I can't mix and match enterprise WLAN hardware or features like I can Ethernet switches. This is arguably the way it has to be, but its also a royal pain in the butt at times. Vendor lock is real, for better or worse.

We've all got things that steam our clams when it comes to wireless networking. These are on my short list this week. The world certainly doesn't have to change on my say so, but at the same time time I can squawk about it, by golly.

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.