Just a taste of the Wyebot UI Wireless network systems are expensive- like insanely expensive- and they are only one part of a given enterprise network environment. You can spend top dollar on market-leading WLAN hardware, switches, RADIUS servers, DNS and DHCP systems, Active Directory resources, security stuff and more You can have veteran IT craftspeople design, install and configure it all- and still have problems that are not only hard to solve but also hard to even start looking at when an end user tells you they aren’t happy. It is what it is, and many of the built-in tools that SHOULD ..read more

This is one of my rare non-technical blogs here at this site. I’ve always loved to simply write. To dream up stories, put them on paper and read them as if they are new to me. Actually, they are when they are done, at least as a finished product. Since the year 2000, I’ve had hundreds and hundreds of technical articles, blogs, and position papers published in a variety of outlets. Those opportunities were and continue to be appreciated. But now, I have given myself permission to try something new. Lee Badman’s The Whales of Yellowstone Its on Amazon, in Kindle or paperback format. This was edu ..read more

That’s right, I said MAX. A hip guy like me isn’t going to have something called MIN junking up my life. I’m top shelf all the way. The GoPro MAX is a fascinating action camera that does what other GoPro cameras like the Hero 10, 9, 8, 7… all can do (which is a lot) PLUS lets you get freaky, like so: You can do a heck of a lot more with a 360 camera- like Google street view kinda stuff. And… you can also control the camera via GoPro’s Quick app with a combination of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi (it’s also got GPS in there, and voice command capability. It just impresses the heck out of me, but each on ..read more

You are the reason I’ve been FortiWaiting for so long Some FortiThing holds the key And I’m FortiWasted And I can’t FortiFind my way home (Apologies to Steve Winwood there.) Having watched Fortinet do their thing at Mobility Field Day 6 as a delegate at the event, I was struck by a handful of realizations: Fortinet faithfully gets their message of security-at-every-level out with each presentation. On this point they are remarkably consistent and articulate. They have a product line that is expansive beyond what I tend to think I know of the company- from hardware, software, monitoring, and p ..read more

There’s a new Bert in town… forget about Reynolds*, Bacharach*, and that whiny neurotic muppet from Sesame Street. Them cats is yesterday. NetAlly has recently introduced LANBERT (at Mobility Field Day 6), and if you are in the business of network wiring then you should pay attention. This was easily one of the more thought provoking sessions of MFD6, says I. Let’s set the stage: you have an installed cable base, and are migrating access points to Wi-Fi 6 and 6E, and at long last we hopefully will see the massive throughputs that WLAN industry marketers have been telling us we should expect fo ..read more

Hello wireless friends, My name is VenVolt 2. I’m soon to be sent by the excellent folks at Ventev to assist you with your wireless site surveys in those situations where you need to power an access point. If you caught Mobility Field Day 6, then you saw Ventev Product Line Manager Chris Jufer introduce me… it’s a little daunting being shown off, but I can handle it. I was born for this role- some of you probably know my dad, VenVolt 1: VenVolt 1 The Old Man still has his own magic, and quite the following. But we all know the drill… everything changes. If you get lucky, the change is for the ..read more

Now the race is on And here comes pride up the backstretch Heartaches are goin’ to the inside My tears are holdin’ back They’re tryin’ not to fall My heart’s out of the runnin’ True love’s scratched for another’s sake The race is on and it looks like heartache And the winner loses all -Sang by George Jones Though events like Mobility Field Day 6 may not be typically thought of as being contests, I can only imagine that those participating from the vendor side feel the competitive heat. The spotlight is on, the dollars to participate have been spent, the camera is rolling, and there is a tight ..read more

I wanna be a dashboard ranger Live a life of guts and danger I better stop before this song gets stranger… Ah, dashboards. We got ’em these days, in quantity. We got so many freakin dashboards we need a dashboard to keep track of our dashboards when it comes to networking. But beyond dashboards, we got… AI. That’s right- we got Artificial Intelligence, baby. And it’s teamed up with Dashboards, Inc. to make sure we have ALL KINDS OF STUFF to worry about. And maybe, if we’re lucky, some time those alerts will actually be actionable… If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m dashboard-jaded. I’ve se ..read more

I was maybe living too fast, life was maybe too good, looking back. Just who the hell did I think I was with that fancy Apple pencil taking notes on a swanky iPad Pro in my own scribble? WHO DOES THAT? Ah, but it was intoxicating. I was living the high life with hundreds of pages of notes taken through the tip of that space-age wonder scribetool on virtual paper. Then, just last week, it all came to a screeching halt. Fate handed me a shit sandwich, and I realized I’d eaten half of it before realizing what was even going on. Perhaps I should back up a bit. For at least five years now, I’ve bec ..read more

Contemplations on Large-Scale Cloud Wi-Fi in Higher Education For so many years, the Wi-Fi story at most campuses has been pretty similar: hundreds or thousands of access points connect to some number of controllers, and it’s all managed by a network management system. Sounds simple enough, but this basic formula of WLAN building blocks has a number of implications that many of us who keep these networks up frequently get weary of. I recently took part in a panel discussion webinar where some notable wireless network managers and architects from the higher ed space discussed these implications ..read more