CWNP Blog

CWNP
June 20, 2011

Why My WLAN Hates Your PAN

The 2.4 GHz unlicensed spectrum is anarchy. This “open” band is a magnet for any and all wireless consumer technologies, attracting everyone like FREE BEER at a frat house. With a big push in spectrum analysis lately, we’ve all been focused on non-Wi-Fi interferers like wireless video cameras, microwaves, motion sensors, and the like, for ruining our unlicensed frequency. But, with so many competing use cases for the technology and an open policy on spectrum use, Wi-Fi devices are perfectly capable of ruining the uncontrolled—I mean unlicensed—spectrum on their own. And they often do.

CWNP
June 01, 2011

Aerohive Updates for HiveOS 4.0

In a conversation last week, I was asked about hot topics in Wi-Fi. My list went something like this: • Mobile, mobile, and more mobile device management and control • Simple guest access and provisioning • Spectrum analysis • Architecture

CWNP
May 23, 2011

Metageek: Company and Product Review

Recent months have heightened my respect for Metageek. The company story, the people, and their products are all incredible. I’ll talk about each, in turn, in this article.

CWNP
May 02, 2011

Wi-Fi Overhead, Part 2: Solutions to Overhead

This is the second article in a two-part discussion about WLAN overhead. Part 1 (Sources of Overhead) demonstrated that there are too many sources of overhead on W-Fi networks. Much of the overhead is required for successful protocol operation, but that reality doesn’t make it suck less. In fact, protocol overhead usually causes at least a 50% decrease in actual network throughput when compared with theoretical signaling rates. Ouch.

CWNP
April 27, 2011

Wi-Fi Overhead, Part 1: Sources of Overhead

Radio communication requires overhead. Network protocols require overhead. Unfortunately, wireless network protocols, like Wi-Fi, are loaded with overhead. Some amount of overhead is necessary for effective communications and interoperability; however, there are also times when overhead is unnecessary. Proper network design and deployment can minimize this overhead and improve network performance. This article kicks off a two-part post that will identify the sources of overhead (part 1) on WLANs and then provide some recommendations for reducing it (part 2).

CWNP
April 05, 2011

Three Spatial Streams: The Good, Bad, and Ugly

To date, three enterprise vendors (Aruba, HP, Meraki) have announced new three spatial stream APs (3x3:3), and others will follow. The progress of three spatial streams looks really good on paper, where our maximum throughput increases by 50%. It’s a marketing dream come true. But, what’s the reality? What are the real-world gains, and how important is the third spatial stream?

CWNP
March 16, 2011

Wireless Tech Field Day

The wireless industry is a great “place” to work. It’s a super competitive field to be sure, but the community is amazing. I’m in San Jose for the rest of this week for Wireless Tech Field Day, an event organized by GestaltIT. I’m spending some time with many of the active members of the Wi-Fi community, learning that they are real people and not just 16-bit avatars.

CWNP
March 15, 2011

Aruba's MOVE Architecture

Aruba announced new stuff today…a lot of new stuff. New software, new hardware, a new perspective on the architecture debate, new market entry, new solutions to consumer device proliferation problems, and the list goes on. I’ll tackle most of them in turn.

CWNP
March 01, 2011

Site Survey Rigs

I’ve been traveling to customer locations to perform wireless site survey work for over four years now, and I can assure you traveling with survey gear can be somewhat tricky, especially if you’re like me and want to avoid checking your bags at the airport. I’ve seen many a survey kit arrive in pieces as a result of the thorough TSA checked baggage ‘screening’. As a result, I’ve come up with some fool proof ways of flying with survey gear stored in my carry-on luggage, while doings so in a way that I’m not holding up the TSA security checkpoint line.

CWNP
February 23, 2011

More Features and Products from Meraki

Meraki is at that weird stage in a tech start-up’s life where it becomes hugely critical to grow sales, differentiate the products, and gain greater industry recognition. They seem to be meeting that challenge in stride with what seems like an unending series of new hardware and software product announcements. To quote Mr. Vanilla Ice, “Will they ever stop? Yo, I don’t know.” I bet their engineers are tired, though (rhyming unintentional).

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