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.

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?

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.

 

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.

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.

About Wirednot

Lee Badman (that's me) is a long-time wireless and networking professional. I also blog professionally for Network Computing Magazine, for whom I've written hundreds of short and feature-length articles through the years.

Not everything I'm interested in regarding wireless makes it to print in Network Computing, and so the Wirednot Blog provides me an alternative venue to cut loose a bit.

Follow me on Twitter @wirednot, and feel free to comment on anything you feel like here. I do the Linked In thing, but I don't take it real seriously.