CWNP Blog

Tom Carpenter
May 12, 2020

Are You At A Loss When Trying To Understand Return Loss?

Voltage Standing Wave Ratio (VSWR) is taught lightly in our CWNA course and the course hints at return loss, but some students have faced challenges in grasping the concepts. The problem stems from the fact that a significant amount of physics and mathematics supports the concepts and we do not teach that level of detail. In this article, I will explain the concepts for you, in a five- to ten-minute read, that should allow you to gain some control over your thinking about return loss.

Tom Carpenter
May 10, 2020

Foggy about The Fog?

This brief article is intended to bring clarity to the concept of fog computing as it relates to IoT and other networking functions and services. For many, the fog is a mystical thing and I hope to clear up any confusion in this article.

Tom Carpenter
March 26, 2020

MQTT Version 5.0 - What's New?

The MQ Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol was updated with a new version on March 7, 2019. This version replaces or supercedes version 3.1.1 from October 29, 2014. In this brief post, I'll explain some of the new features introduced in the latest version.

Tom Carpenter
March 24, 2020

Devices Lurking in the Shadows

The phrases shadow devices, shadow IoT, shadow nodes, and shadow clients all refer to the same concept: many devices connected to your network are not organization-owned devices. These devices can introduce serious security concerns and should become a known element in your processes.

Tom Carpenter
March 24, 2020

Droning On about Signal Strength and Antenna Location

Those who've worked in the Wi-Fi world already know that antenna location (or device location for those with internal-only antennas) is key to signal propagation and, therefore, received signal strength. What if you could dynamically move the antenna so that the link is best when transmission is required? What if you only required data transfers to occur at infrequent times? Could drones be the answer in some situations?

Tom Carpenter
March 24, 2020

Speeds Like the 1990s in Wireless and We Love It

Faster is not always better and, with modern IoT, slower and slower is often the name of the game. Just how slow can you go? Think modem speeds from the 90s.

Tom Carpenter
October 18, 2019

Wi-Fi Trek 2019 Technical Recap Webinar Slides

As promised, here are the webinar slides from the October 18, 2019 webinar with brief notes on each presentation and links to view the presentation on CWNPTV on YouTube.