Waves with Wireless Nerd
Join me for a weekly look into what's making waves in tech and the wireless industry! What's new? What's now? What's next?
Waves with Wireless Nerd
Networking in the Wild: Outdoor Wireless Feasibility: A Peak at My Essential Tools, and Industry Trends with The Wireless Nerd
Ever wondered how to set up a wireless network outdoors? Join me, Drew Lentz, the Wireless Nerd, as I recount my thrilling 10-day journey from Texas to California, up to Alaska, and back, where I conducted an RF survey and feasibility study for a wireless network deployment. Learn about the critical role of understanding various wireless technologies, from 4G to 5G to Wi-Fi and beyond, to provide an optimal user experience. We'll also explore the essential tools in my go kit that help me achieve accurate field surveys, and ponder whether the surge in wireless events enriches or fragments our industry.
Got a passion for tech gadgets and Wi-Fi analysis? This episode is packed with insights into the tools that make data collection efficient and effective. I'll share my experiences using the Flipper Zero, Baofeng K5 Plus, WLAN Pi Pro, Kismet, tools from Hamina, Oscium, Ekahau and Sidos among others, at n transient environments. Discover how these tools help in analyzing network loads and client device behaviors, ensuring precise Wi-Fi network planning. We’ll also discuss the HackRF and NetAlly Cyberscope, and rave about the impressive dashboards of Link Live by NetAlly and Epiq Prism's capabilities in scanning LTE and 5G networks.
Stay updated with the latest trends in the wireless and IoT sectors, from Juniper’s progress post-HPE acquisition to the highlights of the Wi-Fi Now Worldwide Congress. This episode covers exciting topics like Wi-Fi offload, private 5G, and the new pro gateway for LoRa devices by the Things Network. We also emphasize the importance of supporting those affected by recent hurricanes, highlighting efforts from ITDRC and Cisco. As we wrap up, I share personal anecdotes and invite you to join me on YouTube for interactive Q&A and equipment demos, ensuring a comprehensive and engaging experience.
Drew Lentz, the Wireless Nerd. Today is September 27th 2024. I just got back from a 10-day adventure from Texas to California, to Alaska and back, and had a tremendous time doing some great stuff, got a whole lot of questions because of some things that I posted online some pictures of my survey kit and so what I wanted to do today is not just cover what's new, what's now, what's next. There's some interesting things that are happening in the news some big pushes on 5G, lots of talk about 5G slicing. I do want to talk about I saw a whole bunch of wireless events. So this week we had the Things Conference, but there was another event that I can't properly pronounce because it's in German, sorry, timo. So Timo is doing that event. And then we've got Ycode and we've got WLPC. All these things are happening, and so I'm wondering if now there's all of these events when there only used to be a couple, and what that's going to do. Does that fragment at all our industry, or are they covering different things? I'm curious. I'm also curious about feedback, so I'll try my best to keep up with everything. Probably the best way if you do want to ask questions is jump on YouTube, youtubecom, slash at wireless nerd, if you get on there. We crossed our 1,000 user mark. We're at about 1,500 subscribers now, which is fantastic. So jump on the YouTube. I'll try and field the questions for there, but I do want to show. Let's see. Where is it. Is it there? Oh, here we go.
Speaker 1:So this is what I want to talk about today, because I got a lot of questions about specifically what this is and what's inside there. This is my go kit. This is the kit that I take with me when I go to different sites to go do a survey, to go grab information, to go grab data, to go look at a site. This is one of the things that I carry Now. I always carry my Wi-Fi survey kit if I'm doing an active survey. So in there I've got. You know, if you go to wifisurveykitcom, you can see all the information about that.
Speaker 1:Obviously, we built that for the industry, by the industry, a whole bunch of years back. We wanted, you know, a cost, a cost capable piece of equipment that wireless engineer could grab and take with them, and so we built that thing and that's got the tripod and it's got the wifi stand and it's got the laser range finder and the batteries and the flashlight and all the goodies that go in there. But this is all this one over here. This is where it's at, so let me try and make sure this popped up here. Are you seeing it? Yes, you're seeing it. Oh, very good. Very good, we can take a look at what's inside here and a little bit of background on what it is.
Speaker 1:First and foremost is, as I mentioned, I had a project that I was working on that I went out of town for, and the project was to complete a RF survey and a feasibility study for deploying a wireless network, wireless communications. I'm going to leave some of the names out of it, but it was great, it was beautiful. It was up in Alaska, which was my first time up there. It was incredible. And they said, hey look, we need good wireless communications, but we don't know what we need and we don't know how much of it we need. And we don't know what we need and we don't know how much of it we need and we don't know what we have. So I said, perfect.
Speaker 1:So inside my little magical box, I took every tool that I could think of to go measure everything that was out there. But I also wanted to get hands-on with a lot of the tools and really in the field, not in an indoor environment. This is specifically in an outdoor environment and I wanted to look at what would be best. Would it be two gig, five gig, six gig, 60 gig, 24 gig, 11, 18? What was I looking at? What type of communications did they need in order to solve the problem that they had?
Speaker 1:You have an area where a lot of people show up for a specific amount of time and then they leave, and when they show up, they need to make sure that they've got good, easy communication. It has to just work the way that they expect it to work. It has to provide an insanely good quality of experience for the people that are there and with all these things that are out there. You know private 5G and private 4G and Wi-Fi, and you know Halo and IoT. You know what can we do to leverage that. So that's the premise of what I was trying to do, and so, if you're listening on the podcast, I'm going to try and walk you through some of what I have, but I encourage you to jump on YouTube and watch the video afterwards if you want to see what some of these tools look like.
Speaker 1:So, that being said, let me dig into this just a little bit here. Let me switch this back over to this mode. Okay, so now on the camera, you can see this is my case. This is the same case that I use for the wireless site survey kit and the Wi-Fi survey kit. This is a Nanik 936, you know 935. Sorry, this case has just been tremendous in the field.
Speaker 1:It's a little, you know. Honestly, I'm six. You guys know me, or, if you do know me, if you don't know me, I'm 6' five. So it makes it a little bit difficult sometimes to carry around because the handle doesn't go as high up as I would like it to go. So I think I'm going to 3d print like a little handle extension on there. But it's a great case. It's super durable. I've dropped it in water, I've dragged it through airports, I've stuffed it in overhead bins and I've obviously covered it with lots and lots of stickers from some of my favorite peeps that are out there. So if you want me to stick a sticker on the case, feel free to give me one the next time you see me.
Speaker 1:But that's not where the goods are. Let's open it up and see what's inside. So what I have here is the one that I'm using specifically for this has the dividers, it has the padded dividers and the padded insert in it and I wanted to make sure I had that, because I'm carrying around a significant amount of equipment in here and I didn't want it to break. It's moved around a little bit, but that's okay. So if you just take a look off the top, there's a couple things that are in here.
Speaker 1:I used it to store my battery charger for my camera, so I always take a no matter no matter where I go. I was trying to take my big camera with me so I can get good shots. There's an extra charger there with the USB-C cable. This is actually the USB-C cable from my Steam Deck so that I could charge it and also use my Steam Deck. I try and pack independently of every device, so I don't say, okay, well, you know what, I can use this cable for this and this and this. I don't ever try and do that. I try and just keep one for one. I figured that it's better to do that because inevitably someone will be missing a cable, or I'll be missing a cable and I'll have to use one from somewhere else. So I know if I make a diligent effort to go one for one, I'll be safe.
Speaker 1:The first thing that you see sitting on the top of this is the Sidekick 2. So always, always, good to have. You know you can't go wrong with an Ekahau Sidekick 2. I won this and it was not rigged, which was fantastic. I won this at WLPC this year, so so great. So obviously you know you see this sitting in there. It's the go-to right. I mean, it's the product that I've probably had the most experience with out of everything in the bag. Maybe, yeah, that's probably a fair statement. So I know that if I need it, I can use it.
Speaker 1:But I also wanted to compare some of the results that I saw with different tools with the Sidekick 2. Where am I going to? I'm going to stack all this stuff up as I go through it. So give me a second here. Let me make some room on the desk. So the Sidekick 2 is in there Underneath that. You start to see some cool stuff. I'm going to take the charger out for my Surface. I always carry a Windows Surface as well as a MacBook. I carry both because you never know. You never know what you're going to run into, and the Surface Pro is one of my favorite pieces of equipment for Windows users Inside there.
Speaker 1:Let's go for some of the small stuff first. Everybody knows what this guy has got my flipper zero in there, that's if I just I wanted to use this specifically with the Wi Fi module. Again, this is something that I got at WPC last year when I took the flipper course. So if you're signing up for WPC and they're doing flipper again, this I got from the flipper course and it was great lesson learned a lot about how to use it, uh, from Bashar and the rest of the team that was out there. It was really, really cool to see. But I wanted to see what type of tools I could leverage on the flipper to count the number of devices and to see what was out there. Um, and so I use some of the tools the spectrum analyzer and stuff I use that I look for some BLE information. I didn't do anything nefarious with it. What I did specifically was try and use it as a data collection device, which was fun. Didn't really yield any crazy results. There were better ways to do it, but I figured what the hell I was there. Why not try it Underneath there? Let's go over here. I like this guy.
Speaker 1:This is the new Baofeng radio. This is like the little $20 one with the big old crazy knob on top. I forgot the model number of this, but I am a ham operator, I'm a licensed operator and so I always carry a radio with me wherever I go, even if it's this cheap one. This is the K5 Plus from Baofeng. Now what I like about this one and the reason I started making this my quote unquote everyday carry is because it's got a really cool large color display. That's in there, which is kind of neat. It's got a knobbier knob, if you will, but the cool part is right there. It's right there USB-C charging. So I don't have to carry that ridiculous Baofeng charger with me everywhere I go. That and you can still on the side, where the speaker and the mic port are. If I can open it, you can still program it using the same cable. So I carry my Baofeng cable with me also. So there you go here. Ah, it's where the headset goes, or the charging cable right there on the side. So I carry this with me also. That way I can charge it Inside there's my rubber ducky antenna is in there somewhere.
Speaker 1:This is the USB-C charger from Oseum for the Hamina Nomad. Usb-c charger from Oseum for the Hamina Nomad. I love this charger. This is probably one of the coolest things.
Speaker 1:This is in my review for Hamina. This is so dope. A 65-watt charger. Look at the bottom. It's got the little. It's got. What is it? I don't even know what it says on there beside it QCS3 and PO3. So it's got the ability to power a whole bunch of stuff usbc or usb a coming off it, which is awesome. So kudos, kudos on the charging there, ocm, and good job packaging that one.
Speaker 1:Uh, then this is I man. I forget the names. This is the m. I think it's the m or the r, I don't know, don't kill me. Uh, w lamp I team I. There's no label on it, so I don't remember what it is, but it served exactly the purpose that I wanted it to serve.
Speaker 1:So what I did with this is it's got the 802.11n antenna on the side or the Wi-Fi adapter on the side of it, and I used it as well as the good old, reliable WLampi Pro. I used both of those to run Kismet, and so I ran Kismet capturing stations and devices. I wasn't really looking for packets or anything. I was just looking for client counts, how many devices were out there. I used both of those and I have a video. I'll show you all the video a little bit later. I'm going to upload it. Where I needed to client devices in specific areas and so I took it. And you know, shout out to my buddies at active expert and wifi trainingcom.
Speaker 1:I took, I took the WLAN pie and I threw it in here with a battery and a cable, and then I went to a local business and I said hey, do you mind if I just stick this behind your door real quick? I need to collect some data. And they didn't have any problem with it. And I used a. I actually used the case from from the Nomad. I put the WLAN Pi Pro inside the Nomad case and I did the same thing. I just stashed it so I could. So I could collect data without having to be there.
Speaker 1:And on that note, one of the things I did that that I thought was interesting, and I'll just share this real quick is Kismet's a great tool, right, and all I'm looking for is I'm just looking for information about how many devices I could see when I could see them, over what time I could see them, how long they stayed, if they returned, and unique device counts. This is part of my survey experiment. Right Is understanding the environment not just from a physical side and from a people side, but from a device side. So if I'm going to build a Wi-Fi network for you, I need to be able to load it properly, and the only way to do that is to look at what that load is actually going to be. And in a place where the nature of the visitors is very transient, you want to make sure that you capture data of maximum tonnage, if you will, of how many people or how many devices are going to be there, not necessarily what they're doing with it. At this point, at this point, I just wanted to see how many of them. So I used Kismet for that. It ended up being a great tool. I actually used the NetAlly Cyberscope, which is in the box also. I'll talk about that in a little bit.
Speaker 1:But with Kismet I got it and I got home I was like okay, great, Let me just parse this data dude. No, how like? First of all, the. The wlan pi pro doesn't have the installed part of kismet that allows you to export the kismet file to anything other than regular kismet, unless there's one for wiggle that's in there. But I couldn't get out to csv and I was like damn. And so then I was like, all right, I break out the python. And so I started to write some code in python on the wlan pi natively to see how I could, how I could parse that file, and I was like this is dumb.
Speaker 1:And so then I loaded up, uh, whatever the wls or wls or whatever it's called, on the windows, on the windows. Uh, deal, is it wls? Where you can, where you're running, you're basically running ubuntu on top of your windows installation, wsl, um, and so I tried to run on there. It didn't work very well. And I said, man, and I tried to run on my, where you're basically running Ubuntu on top of your Windows installation, wsl, and so I tried to run on there and it didn't work very well. And I said, man, and I tried to run it on my Mac and it didn't run well. I was like, ah, so I was getting super frustrated.
Speaker 1:And then I thought to myself, well, how am I going to parse a Kismet file? So this is information for you that you may or may not need but be happy to share. So instead of trying to figure it out and sound dumb and ask my friends which I probably should have done I got on the Discord for Kismet which is great, by the way, they have an incredible community and I said, hey, how do I open this? How can I convert this? Is there a freely available tool? And they're like, dude, it's SQLite. I said, well, what it's SQLite? And man did that bring back some memories of looking through the original files of the iPhone.
Speaker 1:There is a free-for-use browser called DB Browser for SQLite that you can download. And if you download DB Browser for SQLite, let me Hold on. Give me a second. Let me wrestle with sharing my screen, hey y'all. So I experienced a little bit of a technical issue right here where I switched to screen sharing and it cut my audio off. Now I talk about it here in just a second what I was doing, but essentially I was looking at downloading the Kismet log files and then figuring out a way to open them up, and I did that using the SQLite program, db Browser. So DB Browser opens up SQLite files. It's free, it's available online DB Browser. So DB Browser opens up SQLite files. It's free, it's available online and that's what I did. So sorry, I apologize. There's about five minutes where you can't hear me, so I thought I would just pop in here.
Speaker 1:Now back to your regularly scheduled programming. Trying to figure out whoopsie, trying to figure out what I was doing, I just opened it up in in db browser. So, um, the soundbite here is if you want to open up a kismet file, there's a very easy way to do it without having to export it. You just download db browser. It's a free for use browser for sqlite, because kismet dot, kismet files are sqlite and you can open it up. You have access to all the and from there you can export it however you wish. So very cool trick that I learned this week.
Speaker 1:Now, once I did that, once I did that, I said, okay, well, how am I going to graph it? So I was like man, I got a Tableau. I love Tableau, you know like let's use a 500 pound hammer for a roofing nail. So I opened up Tableau and, dude, I can remember how to use Tableau. So I get on chat, gpt, and I'm like how do I do this and how do I do that. And, man, all of a sudden it occurred to me that I'm a moron and that I can just take the export CSV from DB browser of the Kismet file and I can just dump it directly into chat GPT and then have chat GPT do all of the things that I want to do. And so I was like, well, okay, so I dumped it in there and I said I typed in I think, show me a graph of every 10 minutes aggregate devices over the course of when you first saw the first device and you last saw the last device, broken down into 10 minute increments, and graph what that looks like. Dude, two seconds later, there's my graph. So the lesson that I learned is work smarter, not harder. Sqlite for Kismet and then dump that CSV file directly into ChatGPT and let ChatGPT do all the data parsing for you. So I did that and it was great.
Speaker 1:What a cool use of the WLAN Pi, one of my favorite tools that's out there, an easy way to collect stuff. And I'll tell you that what I really liked is the ability to natively not on this little guy, unless I didn't follow the menu structure correctly but on the pro um, going in there and natively launching it just on the touchscreen. I didn't have to connect a computer or do anything. I just got on the WLAN Pi Pro and went to applications. I went to Kismet start Kismet. I ran it. I came back, I picked it up, I hit stop, I hit shutdown, I brought it home, I moved the files over and that's it. So WLAN Pi Pro, once again proving to be one of the most important tools in this entire tool bag. This is why it was built. Y'all. I mean, that's fantastic. Okay, so we keep moving on.
Speaker 1:Let's see what is inside here the Hack 5 case. I love this little case. I didn't bring a pineapple, but I could have brought a pineapple. What I'll do is I'll unzip this and show it. Of course, my hack RF is inside there and I had this idea that I was going to use the, that I was going to use a hack RF to start to do cell snooping and to look at how many devices I could get on there, and I didn't really want to blur the line with how illegal that could possibly be if someone were to connect to my device. So I left that alone. Instead, I used it as an SDR and I listened to some radio chatter that was out there. You know, a win in Rome, right? So the HackRF proved to not be as useful as I thought it was going to be at all, because it would blur the lines with legality. So I left the HackRF alone, except running the SDR components on there, and that's all that's in there. There's a cord, I think, and some rubber ducky antennas. All right, let's see what else we got in here.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about this guy, the Cyberscope. Now, in retrospect, I should have brought the AirCheck G3 with me, except I don't have an AirCheck G3. I have a G2, but I should have brought the G2. But then I thought you know, this basically does a lot of the same stuff that the other one does. So I took this guy out there and I ran it again and I was using this is the 500-pound hammer for a roofing nail and I was like, what can I do with it? I just want to know what I'm seeing out there. And I ran it just in scanner mode and I just watched everything that came across, thinking okay, let's see what kind of information it gives me. And I looked at it and all of a sudden it stopped at 2,500. And I was like, oh man.
Speaker 1:So I talked to Julio and Dan and you know, and it's there's, there's very good reasons for all of that. I was using it for something that wasn't necessarily being able to be or not. I was using it for something that it wasn't built to be used for. But it does have a $2,500 device limit on here and that's APs and clients. So again Kismet. Then you know, kismet's just going to run until it runs you out of space on your memory card.
Speaker 1:So Kismet proved a little bit stronger there than tool, because I was doing something super, you know, remedial with it. But but, dude, link live, if you haven't logged into link live lately on net ally, holy moly, I hit the button Cause you know, with with any of the, with the net ally devices, the coolest thing is you can press a button and you can have an automatically uploaded link live. So I did that. I log into link live and, dude, the dashboards are so sick, they're so well done that it gave me such an incredible breakdown that that it encouraged, that's what encouraged me to go back and ask you chat gpt to start running all the things in. You know the breakdown of what was happening in kismet because it's just so clean and so beautiful, and Link Live is such a cool tool. So kudos to the NetAlly team for having that tool. You know that they make all that available. It's just really neat. But again, I was using a Cyberscope to do client device counts, so probably not recommended from the manufacturer.
Speaker 1:Then we get down into the fun stuff. So let's get rid of some of these power cables. Again, I take a power cable or USB cable for everything you know, I take its own individual one, but right underneath there is this guy. So this is the Epic Prism. So this in combination with this, there we go. There's the tablet and with the Epic Prism on there, this is the Epic solution.
Speaker 1:From well, it's Epic solution, but it's what IB Wave uses also, and I use this to scan LTE and 5G, and I use this to go out and understand how many carriers, how many channels, how many providers were out there on the 4G and 5G space, which was crazy, because the place I was at didn't have any 5G at all, which was weird. So I didn't really get to see that. It scanned all the channels but didn't find anything. And then I thought, well, maybe it doesn't work, so I had to go on OpenSignal. If you're not familiar with OpenSignal, if you go to OpenSignalcom or if you download the app, you can look on there and it shows you a lot was fast, it was efficient, it was great at scanning channels, it worked really well. It gave me a lot of really good data that I could pull out and I could look at specifically with what it was happening in the 4G and 5G space, and so this is such a cool tool.
Speaker 1:It's very, very simple, it's very easy to use and you can use this in conjunction with IB Wave. So I've got a product review using IB Wave with this coming up later, but I do want to talk about it. You know from that aspect that it was very simple, very easy to use. It runs browser-based and it just initiates a scan. It runs through five cycles of the scan scan like 11,000 channels or something like that. It does a really really good job. So that's what I use to do my my 4g, 5g scanning um on the right hand side, then inside here.
Speaker 1:Y'all have seen this. This, this is such a cool tool. Um, this is what uh, what humming is using to do on-site surveys and to do data collection and the nomad, if you haven't seen it, this is what it looks like. Um, it's got the usb port on the sides and it's got one over on this side, right there, and it's very lightweight compared to the echo house sidekick and one of the things that blew my mind when I saw it you see that little button right there.
Speaker 1:It's compatible with peak design. So a lot of us and I think, uh, I think keith parsons was to blame or hollingsworth I'm pretty sure it was keith, because keith always goes and gets. I don't know where keith, I don't know where you find this stuff. He goes out and gets the stuff. He comes back with all this gear from peak design. He's like man, this is my new backpack. I'm going to try it out. Well then, every one of us who does photography which there's a lot of nerds that do photography, by the way every one of us that does photography started looking at the Peak stuff going wait a minute, I can use that for my IT stuff. So when they included the Peak compatibility on here so that you can use you can hang it from your backpack or you can hang it from your belt loop or whatever it is using Peak, this is such a big deal. It's simple and it's easy and it's awesome because this is what some of my camera straps look like, this is what my backpack looks like, this is what there's a lot of stuff out there. So the compatibility with Peak was really really neat to see Kudos to the. I don't know who put those on there, I don't know if it was OCM or if it was Humina, but put those on there. I don't know if it was OCM or if it was Humina, but whoever did that awesome.
Speaker 1:So this is the spectrum analyzer. It ties in with Humina so that you can use it to do your site surveys, to collect the data. So we did data collection with this. Well, we tried to do data collection with this until I realized I wasn't licensed to be using this. So I'm going to have to do another review where I'm actually licensed to use this. But it's okay. I have a very cool one coming up, but I did have a license for this guy, the CEDOS and I went out and used the CEDOS Wave and I collected some data here. And if you haven't used this product, it is such a simple, ridiculously simple interface here and they keep making all of these software updates on their website. So if you haven't checked them out, check out the CETOS Wave Go, look at what they're doing. They post a lot of really good content on LinkedIn and you can see what they're scanning out there. So I use this to do my Wi-Fi scans, to understand what was happening in the Wi-Fi environment when people were there and when people weren't there. I have individual reviews for each one of these so I won't drill into them too much, but that's the bulk of what's in the case.
Speaker 1:Now, up at the top is all the accoutrements, the fixins, as we say in the South. I've got USB chargers, I've got antennas. I've got oh, look at this here. There you go Y-Spy DBX. I've got the Y-Spy in there. I've got the Y spy in there. I've got the net ally version of it. I've got, uh it's. It's honestly just a whole bunch of cables and connectors and things like that.
Speaker 1:But this case, when you put everything in there together, I mean I've got 4g and 5g covered, covered, right there. I've got my radio that I can use, sitting right there on the side. I've got the Epic sitting beside the tablet that it comes in. Then I can take my Oseum device. I can load the uh, the, the Nomad in there. Close this thing up, all right, stick that over there. Then I've got my HackRF, because, dude, you should always carry a HackRF with you. You should always carry a software-defined radio. A little power cord action, cyberscope, cyberscope, wlampi Pro, baby WLampi, flipper, what else? This awesome, awesome power adapter Over there. I've got my power cords, I've got my sidekick. Throw that thing in there, seal it up, call it a day. That is the quick tour, 30 minutes later, of what my case looks like.
Speaker 1:Now I'm going to use this as a second to go over and see if anybody's making. You had no audio while looking at the db light. Oh man, I wonder what happened to my audio. Whoa interesting, I don't know. Is there audio now? Let me turn it up. Can I hear? Can I hear myself? That would be a total bummer if I didn't have any audio this whole time. No, no, I have audio. Okay, cool. Well, that's the top chat of the day, anyway. So that's what I got going on with with those things. I'll be sharing some of the results of what I did there.
Speaker 1:I came back in and I modeled. I'm doing some modeling of the RF environment using two different tool sets right now. One is I'm using Hamina to do the Wi-Fi and the CBRS stuff, so just always looking at CBRS. And then I'm using Cambium's Link Planner to model out some of the 60 gig stuff. I haven't started that project yet, but I've got it open and I need to start adding sites to it. So I'm looking at a combination of 60 gigahertz for back, all the TerraGraph stuff. I'm looking at Wi-Fi, I'm looking at CBRS, I'm looking at private cellular. There's a lot of things that can go into this and use case may vary depending on what you're trying to do with it.
Speaker 1:The tools that you use and how you use them are totally up to you. What I would recommend is let me stop and think just off the cuff, any lessons learned from the last from this survey that I did, because it's been a while since I've been out in the field with all the tools and you always forget stuff. You know, I would say the biggest problem that I had was parsing the Kismet log files until I got smart and remembered that I could do that with Chat, gpt, uh. So there's that um, oh, let towers. That says I'm taking all those tools to Prague. Oh, sweet man. So if you're at WLPC in Prague. You can see all of this stuff. They all independently work great and when you combine all the data it's phenomenal.
Speaker 1:I didn't have any major issues. I'll tell you that, god, I, you know, I, I love the vendors that play in the space and I will say that the two big standouts I would say the three big standouts from what I was doing NetAlly, I mean just God, it just works so well all the time. It's just so good. And Link Live is so good. And then the Epic Prism was my first time using it out in the field like this, collecting data and finding out how simple it was to use and run, was tremendous. My camera I use my iPhone for a lot of stuff but dude, that WLAN Pi coming in clutch clutch for what I was doing with it. I was doing device counts, I wasn't doing propagation, I wasn't doing RF surveys, I was just doing device counts. But the WLAN Pi running Kismet was absolutely clutch in that.
Speaker 1:Now, if I'm doing Wi-Fi and I'm surveying an area, we surveyed parts of the area and in surveying, all the tools work pretty similarly. I will say that independently. There are some pros and cons to each one of them. Sidekick 2 is a little bit heavier. Sidekick 2 also requires a lot of software load in order to do the propagation stuff. But it runs awesome on the app and when you do the JustGo survey it works tremendously well.
Speaker 1:The CETO stuff worked really, really well. I will say my only problem with the CETO is carrying it is actually having to hold it without, because I feel bad if I stick it in my pocket or if I hang it on my side, just because if you haven't been to a WLPC then you haven't heard about the attenuation that your body causes when you hang these things on the side of your body and I. There's gotta be a better way for us to do surveys. And I keep going back to the stupid thing that Jim Florwick and I talked about. That seems so meaningful and I know some of the other people in the industry have talked about it. But I think Jim and I started talking about it like jokingly and then we started to design it and then that's where it got scary. We just need to build a hat with antenna elements in it and it sounds so dumb. But we need a better way to do site surveys because the CETOS thing is so quick and so fast, but it gets really. It's not heavy until you're, you know, 2,000 steps in and then it gets heavy and you're like, ah, what do I do with this thing? 2,000 steps in, and then it gets heavy and you're like, ah, what do I do with this thing? You know where do I put it in order to get it. So I would say that's the only thing there.
Speaker 1:The Hamina tool, especially working with Oseum Oseum has always produced incredible products and, knowing that those two are coupled together, to me there's such a better story there. It's not about the Nomad and how well it works, and it's not about Hamina and how well that works. It. It's not about Hamina and how well that works. It's about these are two vendors that are getting together to do something. And God, I just hope for the day that I can grab the data from my NetAlly scope or my G3 or the AirCheck or whatever and dump it into Hamina and take Hamina and export it to Link Live or some of that back and forth. I love that there's already some convergence of that happening with OCM and Hamina, so I can't wait to see where that goes in the future.
Speaker 1:And then you know, I will say, the downside is only having one tool to do 4G, 5g. I only had one. You know, there was only one thing that I could get out there I want an Aronia spectrum analyzer. I think every nerd that has seen one wants one. But the problem is, dude, there's six grand, like that's. So there's that, you know. But I guess it's a tool of the trade and if this is what you're doing day to day, then you can afford to do that. I do like the.
Speaker 1:The recommendation of a wifi sombrero. I will take it all day and night. On that note, if you, if you have anything from a, if you're any fan of South Texas or anything of Hispanic culture like where I live, you'll be happy to know that. I went on a hunt this morning and I don't know if you can see this or not. I'm just going to hold it up.
Speaker 1:There is a Nestle Abuelita Coffee Mate creamer for your coffee. So La Abuelita has a coffee creamer. I bought two. Utah, give me two. I bought two of them this morning at our local HEB. So if you need one, let me know and I'll ship you one, but I will eat that chocolate anyway.
Speaker 1:So Wi-Fi sombrero, let's go. W Lampi with cellular. Yeah, totally agree, I just need a good. I need a good dongle, I need a good. I'm now seeing that my video didn't come out of me holding the coffee mate creamer up to the camera, but whatever, yeah, wlm, pyrocellular, I mean, where there's a will, there's a way, right, we just need the correct thing to do that.
Speaker 1:But other than that, no man, it was really fun to be out in the field. It was really fun to be out collecting data and talking to people, and I don't know how many of y'all do this. I stop and talk to a lot of people. I talk to shop owners. I talk to people walking down the street. I talk to people walking their dog.
Speaker 1:I went to a bar and drink a shot and talk to a guy who deploys fortinet. Shout out to the, to the homeboy in nebraska deploying fortinet, wearing the fortinet beanie in alaska, high-fiving that dude uh, devin aiken, by the wayvin's name. I'm sitting at a bar in Alaska. Not only was it weird to have a dude sitting beside me wearing a Fortinet beanie, but then he goes. Yeah, we do some wifi stuff. We've got this guy. He's going to come out and do some wifi training for us. You know, in a couple of weeks and he says I think his name is, uh, his name is Devin Aiken. And I about spit my whiskey across the bar, devin, and I said, make sure you like to hug, anyway, the brother from another wireless mother. Mr Devin Aiken, you would be happy to know that your name came up sitting in a bar in Alaska. It's just so. I mean, this is the wireless industry, y'all you can't go too far.
Speaker 1:Speaking of the wireless industry, let me dig into a uh, uh something real quick. I don't want to. I don't want to. You know there's not. I don't want to say that there's not a lot of news. I'm sure a lot of stuff happened, but I've literally had my head in the clouds for the last 10 days. Uh, juniper mist introduced their wifi seven access point. Totally cool to see, very excited, um, I believe. Um, let me see, I don't remember the specs on it. I'm not even going to try and look it up. You guys can look it up. Go check out the new Juniper Mist Wi-Fi 7 access point. So happy for them, especially moving into Wi-Fi 7.
Speaker 1:A lot of people were skeptical about what's happening with Juniper, with the whole HP acquisition, but glad to see that everything is pushing forward the way that it's supposed to. Wwc Worldwide Congress in Geneva the the Wi-Fi Now Worldwide Congress in Geneva just happened. Great to see some postings coming out of there. I didn't get to catch up on all the news. It was neat to see people talking about Wi-Fi offload, passpoint offload, private 5G things that are bigger than just the Wi-Fi world, what's happening in wireless and, speaking of that, the Things Conference was this past week and a lot of news to digest from there. Um, the things, the things network introduced their own pro gateway to connect to laura devices, so a lot of news that was happening there.
Speaker 1:I didn't see a lot of pop-ups about halo. I was interested in seeing if wi-fi halo was going to make a big impression at the things conferences here, but again, I haven't had a chance to dig into it. So if you know anything, please drop me a line. I was. I was keen to see that because it's always traditionally been laura, lore, wham ble, some of the iot stuff, but wi-fi halo man, I mean there's some. There's some good stuff happening there. You know, edge core has their, their new device that supports halo meshing and when they hit production I've already been told they're going to send me some so I get to play with wi-Fi Halo, totally stoked about that.
Speaker 1:Next week, meter is doing their Meter Up conference, so you're going to find a lot of the people that you probably follow and a few of you that probably listen to this podcast. I will see you all next week in San Francisco. That's going to be really fun and we're going to go over all things Meter. So I don't know if they're going to be making any big announcements while we're out there. I know that they're doing some incredible stuff and their command product is absolutely game-changing. So I'm so excited to see people that I know and that I respect sitting beside me seeing this hands-on for the first time. I think I'm just going to be looking around watching people make faces in awe, realizing what this means for the industry 5G slicing versus private cellular networks so this is getting a lot of coverage.
Speaker 1:I saw in a couple different news sources that the conversation started to come up about 5G slicing, which is something that's now being introduced in the United States. Apparently, it's big in India and China already. And what's better? Is it better to have your own private cellular network or is it better to slice pieces off of a public cellular network Verizon, t-mobile, et cetera, and along those lines. T-mobile is now offering something to compete with FirstNet where they are offering up a public safety slice, starting in New York City, where they can serve public safety just on a 5G network slice of that network. So interested to see how that's going to start changing the industry. It's not even a mobile virtual network operator. This is like this is your own private slice of the carrier network. I mean that's awesome, and is it better than having private cellular network? I don't think. I think it depends on use case. I don't think it's going to work for everyone, but I don't think the other one's gonna work for everyone.
Speaker 1:Um, and erickson straight up saying that they have a daz killer. The daz killer, the erickson daz killer, the Daz killer, the Ericsson Daz killer and their Daz killer, you might imagine, is some crazy piece of equipment that's going to take down distributed antenna systems. Dude, they're talking about CBRS. They're talking about neutral host CBRS. Daz killer yeah, it sounds way better when they say it. Ericsson's Manish Tiwari, who'd been head of private cellular at Swedish Fender Cradle Points Unit. This is one advantage of being in Ericsson. We've got great relationships with the service providers. So what they're saying is they're saying we can do CBRS and we can do neutral host CBRS, and the reason why is because they have great relationships and that's what makes them the Daz killer. Have great relationships and that's what makes them the DAS killer.
Speaker 1:Distributed antenna systems have been used for years to ensure cell phone signaling around campuses, earning reputations being expensive to install for 4G and 5G, but now, using CBRS, ericsson says they have a DAS killer. Hello and welcome to a long time ago. I think anyone who's been doing CBRS can tell you yeah, uh, that's good that you're playing catch up all of a sudden. And as far as neutral host man, the team over at Solona I mean it's great that Erickson's saying it Solona's been doing this for a minute. Solona's got a lot of stuff doing. Solona just launched in China, so take a look at what is happening in that space. Neutral host private cellular networks are really, really cool, especially when you enable BAM 48 on LTE using some of this stuff.
Speaker 1:So, dan Jones, thanks for the article, and fierce as usual, and I think that's about that's all I'm going to talk about for the what's new, what's now, what's next? I do. I do want to bring up something that I thought was that I've seen more of right, and it's not a bad thing. And I had this chat with Peter McKenzie, who's you know who's spearheading the WICO project. We've got WLPC, which has always been the group that we always go to, and the Wireless LAN Professional Conference is where we all get together, we all hang out, we all see each other. But there have been other things that have spawned off of that, and that's not a bad thing, I think it's a very good thing. So WICO was one of them. Timo had another one that just went down in Germany, and then you've got Wi-Fi.
Speaker 1:Now World Congress that's happening, and I want to make sure that the content at these is different, and I don't have any say in any of them, except for WLPC, where we're given the ability to choose what we want to hear. So to me, that one still stands head and shoulders above everything, because the industry submits what they want to talk about, and by the industry I mean you. I don't mean, yeah, sir cisco gets in there, and and yeah, you know whoever gets in there. And we always you know, even when I worked at a vendor we never try, we don't go in as cisco, we go in as, you know, drew, or we don't go in as cradle point, we go in as ian. You know what I mean. So so you, you get that choice and I think that that's great and that's always been the staple of WLPC. But if that's the place that we get the choice, then all the other ones I get it that they're smaller and they're more directed at specific areas, and the people that can't make it out to the big conference totally understand that.
Speaker 1:I just don't want to see regurgitation of information starting to happen, Because when that happens I feel like we get inside of a bubble, we get inside of an echo chamber, and if we get inside of an echo chamber and we start thinking, you know, if we start believing our own bullshit, then that is where our industry is going to start to get hurt. If you just hear the same people talking about the same thing over and, over and over again and we just all start barbing our heads saying yes, then that becomes a little bit of an issue, and that's my concern. With all of these things branching out, I would love to see different things, specifically to industry or to market, and I know that this is still early and I'm not trying to be critical of it. I think that it's great. I really think it's great. Nothing ever comes down to South Texas, so if something was here, I would think it would be tremendous. I just don't want us to get stuck in a loop where we're saying the same thing over and over and over again and no one is offering any counterpoint to it. So that was my thing. I just see so many of them and I'm so excited to see so many people doing conferences and all these places that people can go. I don't think it's going to dilute the space at all. I just want to make sure that we don't introduce our own feedback issues. So that's my two cents.
Speaker 1:Anyway, it's been 45 minutes and this has gone longer than it normally goes. I appreciate you listening and hanging out. Let me check the YouTube channel one more time to see who's complaining about stuff. See you at meet up at meter up. Yes, yes, I'm excited. I'm guys, I'm very excited. Or, as they say, as the kids say yo chat, I'm very excited. They're going to show off some Sigma equipment. It's going to not be skibbity at all. Anyway, it's going to be really cool. Man, I'm totally stoked and it's gonna be great to see some familiar faces out there, so, looking forward to that.
Speaker 1:I don't know if I'm going to do a podcast from there. I moved this podcast to a Friday from Tuesday because Tuesday was acting kind of weird and I, you know, I want to make sure that I could at least get some content out. But if you have any questions, if you want to join us, let me know. Also, a big shout out to our buddy, alexis just land just announced that she is going. She got a job. She joined the team over at a place that I have never heard of. So I would like it someday if she she was actually going to try and join us this week, but she didn't. Because I do want to talk to her about getting a job in this space right now with the current condition of what it is. Because she was.
Speaker 1:She was released from Cisco and I was laid off from Cisco and what I have seen in the last year has been uh, in the last six months even has been crazy. You get a job, she's at megaport I was gonna say matterport and totally screwed up, but she's at megaport. I have no idea what megaport does so I'm excited to learn from our friend alexis what they do. Um, anyway, it's. It's tough, and if you've been laid off, I'm sorry that sucks, but use your personal connections is going to be my only piece of advice, because I have found all these cool things. I'm like, oh man, that'd be great.
Speaker 1:I sent an application to the FIFA communications team two days ago. I was like hell, yeah, I'll help FIFA. I'm looking at this as an opportunistic way, but, dude, I will tell you that the responses are few and far between. It's like people are just hoarding information and I say that having heard that from a lot of people, and then when I started to put some out there experiencing that, it's like, dude, if you say you've got a job opening, the least you could do is respond every once in a while, so anyway. So I want to talk to Alexis about that and why she ended up over at Megaport.
Speaker 1:The last thing that I will say is I know that there's a lot of people who live in the Gulf Coast. We just spent time in Sarasota for Wi-Fi Now World Congress earlier this year, and Tampa and Sarasota got absolutely nailed with the hurricane. If you have any friends that live in the area between you know, from South Florida all the way up through Atlanta and now into South Carolina. Reach out to them, make sure they're okay. If there's anything you know that can be done, let them know. Itdrc has already sent out activation alerts.
Speaker 1:If you're not part of ITDRC, please sign up for ITDRC. If you have the means and the ability to do it, you can go volunteer and help out. I know Cisco's probably rolling their trucks out there as well, but there's a lot that can be done to help people because they absolutely got devastated with the storm in Tampa, sarasota and then up into Tallahassee. So please reach out to your friends and let them know that you're thinking about them and let them know if there's anything that you can do to help them. I say that as a kid from the Gulf Coast. Even a simple text message goes a really long way. So that's it for the week. Next week, like I said, we'll be at Meter Up, we'll be in San Fran, so maybe I'll do the podcast from there. Get a couple, two, three special guests, have some fun. Hopefully not get my car broken into and my podcast equipment stolen. Again, that sucked, but I hope you all have a tremendous.
