Blog

• Tom Carpenter
• March 26, 2020
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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
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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

• 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.

• George Caspar
• March 13, 2020
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What Does Wi-Fi 6 Have in Store?

Wi-Fi 6 (also referred to as 802.11ax in the 802.11 standard) is the latest generation of Wi-Fi technology. The main benefit of Wi-Fi 6 is that it can increase the speed of data transmission and allow for more users or endpoints per access point. The roll-out of Wi-Fi 6 began in 2019 and continues to happen at the date of this blog post.

• George Caspar
• November 11, 2019
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Are Smart Devices Listening to My Conversations?

The widespread deployment of wi-fi has created a reality where smart devices are constantly listening to their user's conversations as well as to the discussions of other people speaking within the vicinity of the smart device. This reality is not immediately apparent to most users of smart devices or the other people in their vicinity. At the same time, there seems to be an implicit contract whereby users of smart devices agree to this monitoring in exchange for all the services that a smart device provides. However, the exact terms of this implicit contract have yet to be clearly defined.

• Craig Schnarrs
• October 30, 2019
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WLAN Pi v1.8.3

I'm always looking for ways to be more efficient in my job. One of my favorite low-cost tools is the WLAN Pi. This device was introduced to the community by Jerry Olla. It includes many tools for the wireless lan professional. It is a single board computer with a gigabit Ethernet interface that can push almost 900Mbps! This provides a great platform for testing throughput of both wired and wireless networks.

• Tom Carpenter
• October 18, 2019
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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.

• Craig Schnarrs
• October 14, 2019
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All the Same? (A Guest Blog by Craig Schnarrs)

Survey devices, those engineered specifically for performing wireless site surveys, often use higher quality chipsets than those in access devices (or simply different qualities). The result is varying receive sensitivities for different devices. This guest blog post provides an overview of how to deal with this issue from one wireless expert's perspective.

• George Caspar
• October 07, 2019
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BLOG: Wi-Fi in Space

The international space station finally received a Wi-Fi connection in 2010, however connection speeds are still slow due to the long-distance the data transmission has to travel. In order for communication between the ISS and Earth to exist, the data must go to a series of data relay satellites that are 22,000 miles away from Earth. How the ISS is able to communicate with Earth is the subject of the upcoming blog post.