Here's the recording of the "7 Tricks Of Wi-Fi Professional" webinar I did Ekahau.
It's long. Grab some coffee. Hug a pillow.
Wi-Fi Webinar with Eddie Forero. See more Ekahau Wi-Fi webinars at http://www.ekahau.com/wifidesign/training-webinars#webinars
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes, 5 seconds. Contains 1218 words
I've made no secret of my apprehension at the HP/Aruba Networks acquisition talks. It was due mostly to the history of HP acquisitions over the last 10-15 years. I'm sure most people in networking are familiar so I won't list them. But, a simple Google search should give you all the info you need.
The news leaked the week before Aruba Networks' annual Airheads conference in Las Vegas called Atmosphere 2015. I was considering not coming and was vocal about it on Twitter. So, it was with only modest surprised when I arrived at the conference only to find that my reservation had been cancelled. I was pretty vocal about my distaste for the merger and as much so about the possibility of me not coming. So, I can't blame them for assuming that would be the case. I was straightened out rather quickly with little difficulty so it's really more of an amusing anecdote than anything else.
That said, I was not sure what to expect at this years Atmosphere. How would the announcement be made? Well, as it turned out, like this:
HP's Meg Whitman addressing this massive gathering of Aruba customers and partners in Vegas #ATM15 pic.twitter.com/KZnoTKuhwq
— Rohit Mehra (@rmehraIDC) March 3, 2015I have to admit that was NOT something I wanted to see. Very reminiscent of the Steve Jobs and Bill Gates version of this back in the 90s well Microsoft was investing millions in Apple. It certainly did not give me an warm fuzzies to see the Giant-Size "Big Brother" version of Meg Whitman over a teeny-tiny Orr.
But, despite that uncomfortable introduction to the HP acquisition I will say that Dominic did make me feel better. I trust him, but I'm concerned about the HP end of the equation, "He with the most gold rules." HPs got the gold. Of course, Aruba cannot disclose much about the deal. First, it has only just been announced and it will be months before it can close. Second, the deal has to pass regulatory mustard, there will be negotiations as to how the deal will be structured, and what Aruba's management role will be. There isn't much to glean from the statements made, but they did post an announcement on their Web site. The interesting bits to me are:
"Together, HP and Aruba will deliver converged wired and wireless solutions, leveraging the strong Aruba brand."
LOTS of speculation here. Does this mean that Aruba MAS switching line will remain, or that it's technology will be implemented into HPs existing products, or that HPs switching will now become Aruba's switching line?
I can see the benefit of bringing Aruba's technology to the wired edge. The MAS product line has not gotten a lot of traction in the market and adding that to the HP line may be seen as a good thing. But, Procurve has a solid brand already (especially in K-12), and they already have the no. 2 spot behind Cisco. So, this is going to be tricky if it happens at all.
"The new combined organization will be led by Aruba Networks CEO Dominic Orr and co-founder Keerti Melkote."
"After the transaction closes, Aruba will combine with the HP Networking business within HP’s Enterprise Group organization, led by Dominic Orr and Keerti Melkote."
So, is this actually saying that HPs networking business will be folded into a newly acquired Aruba? Will HP Networking's management be replaced by Aruba's management? I would love this to be true. I don't trust HP to manage this group into success, but I do trust Dominic and Keerti. If this actually happens - Aruba maintains their brand and will now be responsible for HPs networking division - then I have reason to hope.
Andrew Von Nagy made a good comment at Tech Field Day during the Aruba conference about Meg Whitman's (HP CEO) history with eBay/Paypal and her leaving each unit independent. So, will they really leverage Aruba's brand and expertise and let them run it as they see fit? That is the question at hand and it will take several years before we know the answer.
"HP will retain Aruba’s strong culture, including the Airheads Community, specialized sales focus on mobility solutions, and innovative development team."
To me, this is the biggest issue. Having the right technology is important, but having a team, and more importantly, a culture, that can execute the vision along with the technology is equally if not more important. HP does not inspire trust with their record of acquisitions in the 2000s. The HP "lifer" mentality is still alive and kicking and HP has not been known for real innovation in a while.
I don't know of an instance - other that Steve Jobs and NeXT - of an acquired company changing the culture of the larger company. They have the money, the actual numbers (300k, or so, at last count), and an entrenched culture of lifers that could make this difficult. The fact that they specifically mentioned Aruba's culture and community is cause for hope, but words are just words until it actually happens.
Aruba has also been an active participant and voice in the wireless community. They have non-Aruba bloggers post on their Airheads Community, and often reach across the aisle without hesitation. Will this also continue? Again, it will take a few years before we know the outcome.
"We will be able to significantly increase investments in demand generation across segments."
And here is the biggest perceived benefit to Aruba to come out of the acquisition: money. Aruba is just about an $800 million dollar company, whereas HP is in the $20 billion dollar+ club. Those are some deep pockets that could potentially help Aruba compete head-on with Cisco - their largest rival and the current market leader.
This would allow Aruba to scale and invest in R&D, perhaps even going as far as allowing Aruba to design their own custom silicon as does Cisco. HPs presence in the enterprise is another opportunity for Aruba to increase their customer base and reach.
But, this could also be a drawback. The catch-22 of being a large company - it gives you deep pockets to take advantage of opportunities, but at the same time slows you down via the inevitable bureaucracy that is introduced. Only a good, strong, and focused management team can help alleviate that.
I am officially, completely, 100% "cautiously optimistic". I can't help, but be slightly apprehensive about HP buying Aruba. No one familiar with this space can honestly say that HP has not botched acquisition after acquisition in the last 15 years. For every successful one there are three, or four that were disastrous. The revolving door of CEOs also makes me question their ability to not interfere with Aruba's success, or simply lose interest.
That said, I trust Dominic and Keerti. I believe they only want Aruba to be the most successful company it can be. If HP can stay out of their way, and let them and their team manage the newly created division as they see fit, I believe we'll see great things in the coming years. If they squander this opportunity and try to change Aruba to do it the "HP way" then I have no hesitation in saying I think they're doomed.
I want these guys to win. I want to see an Aruba that is the leader in it's space and keeps innovating with their products.
I want to believe.
Don't screw this up HP.
I've been beta testing a new app called AirTool from developer Adrian Granados for a few days. It finally went live today, so here is an overview of the app .
What does it does:
Best of all the app is FREE!
Here is a link to make a donation via paypal. Let's help keep independent developers working!
Yours truly at WLPC (Wireless LAN Professionals Conference) this year in Dallas.
This talk was based on my "other" blog - Bad-Fi.com
Ericsson RBS 6402 Indoor Picocell
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 46 seconds. Contains 756 words
I’m trying to wrap my brain around LAA-LTE. I understand what it’s trying to do, but not why. I mean that makes sense to me. Users are already choosing Wi-Fi over LTE when it's available. LAA will be used for downlink data only and most study's show that Wi-Fi use is significantly greater than mobile data usage anyways. Also, the carriers OWN their own spectrum, and unlike 5GHz, they control it, and have the ability to manage it.
So, why encroach on unlicensed spectrum? They'll have to abide by the power constraints in 5GHz, so in-building, small-cell deployments seem to be the way to go. Does this mean lots of indoor carrier pico-cells right next to existing APs?
I wanted to learn a bit more about LAA and this is what I found so far...
What is LAA? It stands for “Licensed Assisted Access”. Basically, the carriers want to use 5GHz to supplement their “primary” LTE cells with a secondary cell in unlicensed 5GHz. This cell (in the initial stages of LAA-LTE at least) will be for downlink data transmission only. The “License Assisted” part means that the 5GHz cell is linked to the “Licensed” cell via “Carrier Aggregation” (think channel-bonding.. sort of). But, all control functions reside in the licensed spectrum cell and can even disable the 5GHz secondary channel if necessary. At issue here is not the use of 5GHz, which is unlicensed and so by definition anyone can use, but HOW it will be used.
In countries other than United States, China and South Korea, there is a regulatory requirement to “Listen-Before-talk”, or LBT. Since we have no requirement for that in the U.S. carrier manufactures are looking for other ways to place nice with Wi-Fi. The “how” is still up for debate. But, one thing seems clear, they won’t be using CSMA/CA. Qualcomm has a white-paper about this specific issue. Nokia has one to, but you have to buy it. No thanks, I'll just stick with Qualcomm's. Some of their proposed “Coexistence Mechanisms” are:
Channel Selection - attempts to pick the cleanest channel based on Wi-Fi and LTE measurements. Basically, it uses energy detection to see if how used the channel is.
Pretty straight forward, it scans the medium to find the channel that has the least usage. So, in small, to moderately-sized WLAN it should’t be a problem. Especially with DFS enabled.
Carrier-Sensing Adaptive Transmission (CSAT) - "...the cell senses the medium for a duration (around 10s of msec to 200msec) and according to the observed medium activities, the algorithm gates off LTE transmission proportionally."
This one is interesting. If the medium is found to be pretty saturated, and a “clean” channel is not available the cell will fall back to CSAT. LAA-LTE uses an “on-off” duty-cycle pattern. When the medium is heavily used, CSAT will change the duty-cycle timing it will use. It will still use the 5GHz spectrum, but settle on the "least harmful" time-cycle. It also uses only primary channels to mitigate inference with QoS traffic. However, this duty-cycle is directly proportional to the throughput of wi-fi client. In other words, throughout is reduced.
CableLabs.com has a nice piece on this and actually shows the correlation of the LAA-LTE duty-cycle on wireless clients.
Opportunistic SDL - “Since the anchor carrier in license band is always available, the SDL carrier in unlicensed band can be used on an opportunistic base.”
The Supplemental Downlink (SDL) can be enabled, or disabled, on-demand as necessary. In theory, if the primary LTE cell in the licensed spectrum can handle the traffic, the 5GHz secondary cell is turned off. Then if unlicensed offload is required the secondary cell can be turned on. So, LAA-LTE may not always be present. If the carrier's primary channel can handle the load 5GHz won't be used. Question is, will the carriers actually do that?
Qualcomm's white paper claims "due to the coexistence safeguards. In fact, the Wi-Fi performance improves by about 10%, since the neighboring LTE-U Picos can finish transmission faster and incur less interference instead". I don't know about that, and 10% over what?
I'm skeptical about the affect LAA will have on WLANs, but I'm willing to learn and be proven wrong. Also, this is just one more thing we as WLAN professionals have to account for in our wireless designs. 802.11 is already a pretty inefficient protocol and adding more overhead to 5GHz doesn't seem like it will improve anything except the carriers sense of well-being.
Qualcomm White paper:
LTE in Unlicensed Spectrum: Harmonious Coexistence with Wi-Fi
CableLab.com article:
Wi-Fi vs. Duty Cycled LTE: A Balancing Act
Video: 9 minutes
Walk-thru of the Xclaim Harmony iOS app for managing your Xclaim APs. I wasn't that impressed, but this is a 1.0.x.x version and I expect improvements to future versions.
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 41 seconds. Contains 538 words
The only light on the AP is the one you see. It's either green, or red, and doesn't flash. It's a lightweight, plastic AP, that does not have the "feel" of quality. Also, this is an 802.11ac access point that my 802.11ac device could only connect to on 2.4Ghz.
MY TAKE: In it's current state I can't recommend these APs. They are too limited in feature set (even compared to consumer products) and I'm not comfortable with the way ChannelFly makes channel decisions.
My initial thought was to buy the AP, play around with it a bit, and then install it at one of the local coffee shops I frequent. I won't be doing that. I wouldn't feel right installing this for someone. I do believe that with Ruckus behind this they can make a great product, but I think it was put out too soon and feels like a beta product. Their Web site says "Big Wi-Fi" for small business. I'm not sure they are there... yet.
That's an awfully bold claim to make. Right now the reality does not match the hype.
UPDATE: A fellow Tweep made an observation that I missed:
@HeyEddie Thanks for sharing. I was most surprised by the lake of WPA2-ent support. How can a @ruckuswireless launch a product without it?
— Steven Bos (@dot1X) January 27, 2015The only thing I can think of regarding this is that these APs are not intended for Enterprise use, but designed to cater to non-enterprise, and hotspot-based businesses. But, again, even consumer-grade WLAN routers support 802.1X.
Just a guess.
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes, 44 seconds. Contains 1348 words
What does one do when presented with a highly questionable request from a customer? Nothing immoral here, just when a potential customer is asking you to do something you know won’t work. I had this exact scenario happen this Summer with a resort that wanted to do a wi-fi refresh.
Originally, the customer just wanted to do a rip-n-replace - swap out their existing 7-year old, 2.4GHz APs - with new APs. After some discussion we convinced them that a simple swap out was not the best solution. We agreed to do a predictive design using data collected from Our site visit.
One of the caveats was that the APs could not be in the rooms. For aesthetic reasons, and others, management wanted no APs in rooms. We knew this would not be an ideal solution, and we let this be known on several occasions. After explaining our reasoning, IT was in agreement with us on this matter. However, the management was not convinced and decided to take a chance on the hallway “design”.
We did our best in collecting data on-site and used that data in our predictive model. In the end the initial deployment was a hallway placement. We adjusted some AP locations and added some, but I knew this solution would not yield the desired results. Directional antennas brought the budget to more than they wanted, so those were not an option. They also wanted this in on a tight time-line. I had made my concerns know at multiple occasions, but there was no budging from management.
So, I could choose not to do this project and walk away, or sell a solution in which I was not confidant. Well, I have a business to run, bills to pay, and employees to… employ. I chose to “design” a solution within the constraints - both AP placement and budgetary. With this in mind I drafted the cover letter below for the design I presented to the customer:
Thank for this opportunity to allow us to present you with a wireless access solution for your wonderful property. Before you proceed to the information in the document please indulge us and read this overview in its entirety. It will clarify the purpose and scope of this document.
This report is a “Predictive Survey”. The term “predictive” is used deliberately to denote the fact that the process used in the creation of this report is a best guess and will most likely not be 100% accurate. In a structurally complicated deployment such as yours we can probably assume a 75-80% accuracy rate.
Predictive surveys are a very useful tool for the Wireless LAN Professional when a full, cost-prohibitive survey is unavailable. There are two methods to perform a predictive survey:
OPTION 1. Using only the floor plans and a questionnaire we can use the survey software to automatically place the APs and then manually adjust to our specifications. We can alternatively manual add the APs to specification. This type of survey is best for traditional, modern open-floor plan office environment where the loss and performance characteristics are well known. This is also the most cost-affective (up font) solution and very commonly used. In the end you get the best data out when you put the best data in so this option should be used sparingly and mainly for budgetary purposes.
OPTION 2. Perform a physical site survey to become aware of the building materials in use, current AP locations and limitations, physical build of the rooms and furniture materials and locations, etc. Also, using the same APs and antennas that are being proposed take as many readings as possible to determine the true signal loss at varying distances from the AP. We also are able to look at various types of RF interference that may be present, and possibly mitigate that interference before the deployment begins. This allows us to use that data to better build our predictive model. This is less cost effective than option 1, but more cost-effective than a full site survey, and allows the model to go in with the best possible data that the circumstances allow.
Option 2 is what we have done. We spent time on site taking readings, and noting material types as we could. Obviously, in an environment as busy as yours it was not possible to have access to every location so we did the best we could taking readings in multiple rooms and room types and through the various material types at your location. This is not perfect, nor definitive, but it will at least give us valuable information to use when making our predictive model.
We would also like to take this moment to also state that locating all the APs in the hallways is the least effective model in a multi-room, multi-tenant environment such as yours. The best-case scenario here is allowing the APs to be located with-in the rooms. This allows us to use the structure of the building itself to allow for separation between the APs and help mitigate interference as well as getting the RF signal closer to the clients. We understand that this is not always possible for a variety of reasons, but we felt the need to make you - the customer - aware of the limitations to which this design has been restricted.
In conclusion, we ask that you look at the following report with the information in this overview in mind and with the understanding that after deployment we highly recommend that we (or a 3rd party) perform a validation survey to confirm where the predictive model falls short. Upon the results of this verification there may be several things that need to be done. It may be adding, relocating, or even removing some APs, or we may simply need to disable certain AP radios to reduce co-channel interference. Either way the design is not complete in our view if it has not been validated after implementation.
With this in mind please proceed to review the report. Thank you.
Eddie Forero, Principal CommunicaONE Inc.
The report essentially showed what we had been saying - that APs in the hallways would not provide the in-room coverage they desired. We also provided an alternative design with APs in room. In the end the management went ahead with the hallway solution despite ITs misgivings.
The end result was not much better than what they had. I fully expected to bear the wrath of the customer. I was not happy that I installed a solution I didn’t believe in. And I was not expecting what happened next.
The Director of IT flew out the the head office to present the results of our post-installation validation survey. He showed that hallway APs were providing great “coverage” in the hallways, but not in the guest rooms. He explained how we had predicted that this design would not give them the results they were after and the gamble did not pay off.
Because we had been very clear about our concerns, and because we had clearly stated, then validated those concerns, the management decided to foot the bill for a complete in-room redesign (using different APs). And not only that, but also light up another property next door!
Maybe we should have walked away. But, instead, I stated clearly why the solution would not work and made sure they were aware of a drawbacks. I’m don’t know if I would do this again, but I will definitely make even more of an effort in the future to have the customer deploy the right solution the first time around. It’s more cost effective and less stressful.
I don’t know if this is helpful to anyone, but I figured I’m not the only one who has had projects where your hands were tied. The moral of this story is - stand your ground. In this case it worked out because the customer realized the error and stepped up to do it right. But, make sure you fully layout the issues. Be respectful of the customer, but respect your skills and knowledge as well.
Quicksilver Remote Host Plugin from Eddie Forero (@HeyEddie) on Vimeo.
One of all-time favorite apps is Quicksilver on Mac. It’s a fantastic tool for quickly launching apps, searching for files, etc. But, it’s soooo much more. With the additional plug-ins you have the powerhouse Swiss Army Utility Knife of OS X.
Here is one of my favorite plug-ins that I use EVERY DAY.
The Remote Host Plug-in. This plugin lets you easily SSH, RDP, VNC, etc. into any accessible device.
Recently Aruba Networks hosted a webinar presented by Keith Parsons. I love how Keith breaks down the technical details for his audience.
I also really appreciate Aruba hosting this webinar. There’s been much discussion about vendors falling back on the “1 AP per classroom” “design” without appreciating that starting with that premise often results in a poor designed and functioning WLAN.
Aruba is selling responsibly. 1 AP per may sell more APs for Aruba, but this just shows they’re looking out for the needs of the customer. Good on ya, Aruba!
