CWNP Blog

CWNP
January 11, 2012

New Podcast: No Strings Attached Show

Come one, come all. There’s a new bi-weekly WLAN podcast/website called the No Strings Attached Show. The website just launched and the first podcast was posted last week. Consider the show a distributed effort with contributions from these fine individuals.

CWNP
January 10, 2012

Hotspot 2.0 and the Next Generation Hotspot

Hotspot 2.0 and the Next Generation Hotspot initiatives are possibly the most exciting areas of wireless progress occurring in 2012. For starters, these developments have a worldwide scope of influence. The technologies that come to market as a result of these programs will directly affect a large portion of the world’s population. If brought to market with extensibility, they could revolutionize the hotspot ease-of-use and security landscapes. These programs deserve the spotlight.

CWNP
January 03, 2012

WLAN Controllers and Fast Secure Roaming

The title is deceptive. Now that I have you thinking about WLAN controllers and fast secure roaming, my goal in this short post is to point out why WLAN controllers do not sufficiently address fast secure roaming. Why must I write such an article? Because in the past six months, I’ve read article after article claiming that the cure to fast secure roaming problems is a WLAN controller. IT IS NOT! I have nothing against controllers per se; I just want to set the record straight. My point is actually twofold. Continue reading...

CWNP
December 29, 2011

DHCP for Wireless LAN Clients

For us wireless folks that aren’t stellar routing and switching guys, one of the most daunting network tasks is integrating our WLAN infrastructure with the existing wired infrastructure and its services. Understanding wired design topics is pretty fundamental to installing or managing any network, so it really should be on our priority list to spruce up those skills. To give you a nudge on your journey, let’s talk about Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) for wireless clients.

CWNP
December 13, 2011

Device Identification with a Spectrum Analyzer

Detecting and identifying radio transmitters in the Wi-Fi bands is an art. Gaining skill at this art requires knowledge and practice. Thankfully, there are tools that help us along the way by providing automated device identification, and those tools are becoming more sophisticated. But, there are different ways to skin the proverbial cat, and as new methods and features for device identification come to market, understanding how they work is the first step in determining their value. Let's take a quick look at the different ways to identify and classify RF transmitters with a spectrum analyzer.

CWNP
December 05, 2011

HT Duplicate (MCS 32) and non-HT Duplicate

Just when you think you pretty much understand 802.11n, you turn the corner and realize there’s more to learn. This time, the topic was non-HT duplicate and HT duplicate. I’d read before about the non-HT Duplicate format, but I had never realized that there is also an HT Duplicate format, which is the use of MCS 32. I'd like to document how they work and what they're for, even if I'm the only one who cares.

CWNP
November 23, 2011

802.11n and MIMO Are Not Synonymous

One of the most commonly confused concepts in 802.11n is the use of multiple input, multiple output (MIMO). There’s a ton of technical detail to understand in 802.11n, and for everyday network management, most of it is beyond the realm of necessary information. For us non-degreed engineers (what I call a pseudo-engineer), it’s easy to get lost in the numbers, formulas, and diversity schemes of 802.11n, but MIMO is a basic concept that networking folks should understand well.

CWNP
November 17, 2011

Aerohive, Big on Distinction (BoD)

…or is it Branch on Demand (BoD)? Either way, Aerohive announced the birth of a new child in their product family: the branch router, or AP, or router, or AP router. It’s the offspring of their cloud management offering, their distributed wireless architecture, and their Pareto acquisition in early 2011. Call it a branch in a box, or something like that.

CWNP
November 03, 2011

802.11s Whitepaper with Jerome Henry

A good friend of mine and real-deal wireless expert, Jerome Henry, just completed a new whitepaper on 802.11s. 802.11s covers mesh networking protocols within the 802.11 wireless standard. You should read this paper.

CWNP
November 01, 2011

Benefits of Newer WLAN Products (Other than Speed)

Because wireless networking speeds are usually lame when compared with wired networking speeds, we often celebrate and focus primarily on speed enhancements when new Wi-Fi products and standards hit the market. 802.11g is 5x faster than 802.11b. The 802.11n spec offers more than 10x the data rate of 802.11a/g. But, if we’re too narrow, we miss a number of other important features that come with hardware upgrades.

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