Waves with Wireless Nerd
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Waves with Wireless Nerd
Wi-Fi's Next Evolution: NoCode Development with AI & How It Affects Networks, CBRS Innovation, and the Possibilities in a Connected World
Does your smartphone rely on Mobile Coverage or Wi-Fi for almost all of its data needs? Join me, Drew Lentz, the Wireless Nerd, on a journey through a week packed with family fun and cutting-edge tech insights. From DJing at a kids' party to crafting a homecoming float, my week was about more than just entertainment—it was also about bridging the gap between Wi-Fi and carrier networks with exciting innovations at SignalRoam. My visit to Corpus Christi wasn't just about work; it also brought a delightful culinary detour at a local Vietnamese eatery. Amid these adventures, I highlight the importance of early voting in Texas and the inspiring efforts of a local cybersecurity group in the Rio Grande Valley. Also, I talk about Wi-Fi! LOL.
As we look towards the future, AI is not just a buzzword; it's transforming programming and wireless networking as we know it. Wi-Fi 8 and private networks are leading to a new era of connectivity, potentially creating self-sustaining, efficient networks that will redefine our mobile infrastructure by 2030. The episode is a deep dive into how AI empowers professionals, paving the way for innovation through shared CBRS spectrum and revolutionizing our interaction with wireless systems.
From a significant rise in Wi-Fi data consumption to Google's bold move to retire its CBRS network planning tool, this episode is packed with insights and implications for major carriers and MVNOs. We also touch on the environmental concerns of LEO satellite launches and explore the intriguing possibilities of Li-Fi technology. Despite missing out on the recent WLPC event in Prague, I'm eagerly looking forward to the upcoming one in Phoenix. So, buckle up for a tech-filled adventure that navigates through the evolving landscape of communication networks, space technology challenges, and much more.
Good morning, good morning, good morning, good afternoon, wherever you are. Hope everybody's doing okay. I hope everybody's having a fantastic Friday. Hope you had a great week. Hope you had a great Halloween.
Speaker 1:It's me, drew Lentz, the Wireless Nerd, and this is Waves, on November 1st 2024. You know I skipped last week on the podcast. I had every intention of getting it done, but you know there was just a lot of family stuff going on and that's okay. It done. But you know there was just a lot of family stuff going on, and that's okay. It's okay. We had a float that we had to build for homecoming and I ended up DJing on that float with a bunch of second, third and fourth and fifth graders and we had just a bunch of family activities and it was okay. There's lots of fun stuff happening. It's been a tremendous week, such a good week of personal growth and such a good week of fun and excitement and family, and I hope y'all are having as much fun this week as I am. Let's get to some fun stuff. There's some interesting things that happened this week. I feel like I use the word interesting a lot, but it's been a really good week.
Speaker 1:I got to get hands-on with some customers. I got to get out and get in front of people and had a really good time doing that, especially with the SignalRome stuff. So SignalRome as you know, if you've listened to this, what we've done if you visit SignalRomecom, is we're working with a Passpoint as a service. We're acting as a Passpoint, as a service provider, so that we can connect Wi-Fi networks to carrier networks Right now, t-mobile and AT&T and all the MVNOs that work with them and basically you go and you make a 10, 15 minute configuration change on your wireless network and once you do that, it broadcasts a separate SSID and it ties it into the carriers and it's awesome and it's economical and it's really cool. And I got to spend some time in some old stomping grounds this week back up to Corpus Christi, had some fun with the crews over in Corpus, got to eat at an incredible Vietnamese restaurant called Vietnam Restaurant in downtown Corpus Christi. So if you find yourself in the home of Farrah Fawcett, corpus Christi, texas, and the home of Selena, make sure you stop by and eat at the Vietnam restaurant. It was incredible. Their fried rice was delightfully magnificent. Anyway, got to talk to them about Signal Roam, got to talk to them about Wi-Fi offloading and Passpoint and help a lot of these school districts in the state of Texas leverage this instead of having to spend a whole bunch of money on a DAS system. So it was really neat.
Speaker 1:What else is going on? Today is the last day of early voting in the state of Texas, so if you're in the United States and you're listening, don't forget to vote early and get everything done. We've got a pretty incredible election coming up, so make sure you get your voice heard and get that out there. I had a really good time with our local cybersecurity group down here in South Texas. The area that I live in is known as the Rio Grande Valley, the RGV, and in the RGV we have a cybersecurity group that popped up a couple of weeks ago I guess maybe now a couple of months ago and there's over 200 members subscribed on our Discord, which is really cool to see people coming together as a user group, and one of the things that we're working on is figuring out tasks that we can all do, where we can get together and help each other out and try and do things for the community, and I have a website that I've owned the domain for a really long time it's called Politiquera, p-o-l-i-t-i-q-u-e-r-a, politiqueracom, now Politiquera is like it's someone.
Speaker 1:A Politiquera or Politiquero is someone who will go out and get votes for people, who will encourage people to vote, who will encourage people to come show up to the polls and vote in the local elections. And then, of course, it gets a pretty bad name in South Texas, which is part of the reason I chose it. To be honest, it gets a bad name down here because it's associated with people who are not coercing, but trying alternative ways to get votes, and so there's been a lot of struggle with that down here in South Texas. It's a fun area, so I figured what better way to get attention than an inflammatory name for a website? And so what we did at politikeracom is we worked with the local elections departments, we gathered their information that's posted by Texas Election Code on their websites and includes all this information, and we decided that we were just going to start showing it off. We're going to start charting it, and the problem is that when you look at numbers, it doesn't really stand out in a way that people can make sense of it. So what I did was I decided to Let me see if I can show this. Let's see if I can share my screen here. Window capture. Give me just a second. Let me open up the right window. We decided to make a map out of it and I'll show it here, if you're watching live. This is not where I want to go. Give me a second here. If you're watching live, you'll see what we were able to do.
Speaker 1:It was actually really cool because we took all this information, we took all these numbers and we put it up on a website. Here we go. We put it up on a website to make it easily accessible for people so that they could see it. So here's the website. It's up on the screen right now and let me resize it and make sure it looks okay.
Speaker 1:But essentially, this is the website and I'm going to hit refresh and what it does is it takes voting data from voter rolls in the state of Texas and the United States. There's a lot of information that's made available when you vote, such as the address of whoever voted. Now, it doesn't tell you how they voted. It doesn't tell you you know which party or affiliation they voted for, but you can crunch data together and look at that. So what I did was I built this website and it's kind of neat. It shows any second. Now it's a database of over a hundred thousand entries that we were using just strict JSON for. Give me a second, let me try to restart the browser that we're just using strict JSON for and we're able to visualize the votes that are taking place in our county and in some of the sister counties that we have down here in the Rio Grande Valley, and you can zoom in on a neighborhood and you can see who's voted in that neighborhood. Now that's not the fun part to me.
Speaker 1:The fun part to me, while this loads way to go, drew, way to get a good demo going what we were able to do with it that was really neat is we didn't want to write any code and so we used an AI tool to do all of the code writing for us. So AppAnthropic has a program called Claude Claudeai and that's what we used, and we had it write all of the code for us. I'm sorry, not AppAnthropic, anthropic is the name of the company. So Anthropic has something called Claude anthropiccom it's like Claudeai, c-l-a-u-d-e, and we use it to write all of our code in Python. And it worked. Man, it was the first time that I've dug deep in having AI write a whole lot of code for me. If you listen to the pod, you know that in the past I've done some really fun projects where I use ChatGBT or I use some form of AI to write the code for me, and now Claude has shown that it's got a little bit better proficiency. I think it's got some really neat stuff there.
Speaker 1:But GitHub just introduced their new solution and there's a beta going on for it. There's an open wait list. It's called Spark, github Spark, and I've signed up for that. Hopefully I'll get that, because then it's all integrated. Because what we did is we took the code, we generated the code in Cloud, we dumped it into GitHub, we put it out under GPL3. So if you want access to it, let me know. I can share a link or I can send it to you if you want to see how we did what we did. Unfortunately, I think we might even be updating it right now.
Speaker 1:It's totally a work in progress. It's not working the way it's supposed to. But here you go, let me show it to you. There you go. So this is showing a heat map of where voters are in our specific area, and then we have voting locations. You can see where the voting location is, but if you zoom in, you can see specific neighborhoods. I'm just zooming, I'm not picking on any one in particular, I'm just zooming, but you can see. If you get in there, you can see all the different addresses and the street-level data of where people are voting and from a larger perspective, you can zoom out and you can say, hey, you know what this neighborhood's not doing as well as this neighborhood, and that might be a place where you encourage people to go get out to vote. And it's also been really fascinating because you get to look at by visualizing data. You get to see some pretty interesting stuff, like which areas of the city are showing up versus which other areas of the city, and it's pretty fascinating.
Speaker 1:But it doesn't have anything to do with wireless, but it does have everything to do with using AI to do tasks that may have seemed insurmountable or would have taken a lot longer to accomplish than before. And so now, if you're struggling with using Python for automation or you're struggling with any type of programming or trying to figure out how to make your network work better, dude, just turn to AI. I mean, honestly, it's a tool that's out there, that's meant to be used and it's phenomenal. And when you think about the impact that that's going to have on our industry and what we do on a day-to-day basis, you can look at groups like Meter and you can look at groups like anyone that's really leveraging AI. I know that at WLPC in Prague there was, I think, tani gave talk and they haven't been posted. The videos haven't been posted yet, but Tony gave a talk talking about AI and you know it's making its way in, not just with Cisco but, you know, obviously with Juniper Mist and into the HPE thing.
Speaker 1:There's a lot more conversation about AI and how AI is going to play a larger role, and I think that you have to think about two different sides of that coin right. One of it is using AI to automate all of the things and make our jobs easier by taking care of the little tasks that take up a whole lot of time or informing us. You know Mince and the team over at Cisco has done some incredible work on the Meraki side of being able to do, you know, like automated packet captures, bring that information in, do diagnosis, understand what's happening and then make recommendations that you can click on or even get to the point of self-driving that just fix themselves. That's really neat. But then there's also the support component of it, where handling support for networks and automating a lot of those support tasks can be key. So it's not just about network configuration and RM and identifying which channels, but understanding why things are happening when they're happening, what's happening in real time, and being able to solve those issues. That's where I'm excited with some of the AI stuff that's happening that we're seeing. We see it with Meter, we see it with Meraki, we see it with Juniper. Yeah, it's really cool and I think that there's a lot happening there that's going to make our lives easier. And I think that there's a lot happening there that's going to change the scope in which we do things.
Speaker 1:In the programming example, it wasn't necessarily about not having to write code. It was understanding the syntax, understanding the way that the code flows, understanding how to construct something, how to construct a program, but using it to do the lifting for us. Right, it wasn't a replacement. I'm not just going to jump in and say build me an app that does this. It's understanding how that app is built, understanding how that web application is built and understanding what needs to take place that provides that functionality and knowing how to talk to it. And this is that thing that everyone keeps saying, which is it's not AI that's going to take the jobs. It's people who know how to use AI that are going to take the jobs. So there's a lot happening in that space and I think it's fun and it's critical to watch.
Speaker 1:I'm really keen on understanding how this is going to play into Wi-Fi 8. You know, mlo is that introduction of multi-link optimization and aggregation, and that's really cool. You know Radio A communicating on the downlink, Radio B bonding channels, or you know, using a different uplink. There's a lot of really fun things that are happening there. Tarana is doing some really great stuff with bringing frequencies together, frequencies from different pieces of the spectrum together, and so understanding that component of it and how support plays into that, I think AI is going to be very helpful.
Speaker 1:But then moving into Wi-Fi 8, where you have multiple access points and you're receiving on one frequency from one AP and you're transmitting to another AP on two separately bonded frequencies, and how that coordination works and how to troubleshoot that it's getting to that point, I feel that we're going to need tools that understand everything that's happening and can break it down for us so that we can minimize the time that we spend doing the troubleshooting. Because to do that on multiple APs and multiple frequencies, multiple APs, multiple packet captures, bringing all those together in one area to understand what's happening there's a lot to doing that, and I know some of the smartest people in wireless and I love them. They're great people. But even that, you know, trying to get that data in a timely fashion so that you can solve problems even for some of the geniuses out there, like Peter McKenzie right, shout out to Peter, who's like the king of packet capture being able to do that quickly is going to be difficult. And that all leads into what I think is the bigger picture, which is a little bit of where meter's going, a little bit of where now is going, which is that whole idea, the concept that it's not even going to be so much about the troubleshooting. It's going to be about people who just want networks to work and to do what they're supposed to do and if something happens, inform me, but fix it. Let me know that. Oh hey, we found a problem. This is how we addressed it. We fixed the problem. If you don't like that, click here and we'll roll it back. Or alternatively, hey, we found a problem. Here's the problem. Here's what the fix is. Click here to make that change. If you don't click here, in 10 minutes we're going to click that for you. There's got to be some way to integrate self-driving networks in a way that makes it useful, so that we can start to get more and more hands-off with some of the smaller tasks that we have to do.
Speaker 1:Anyway, that's my rant. I'm having a really good time with AI, as you can tell, and I hope you are too. If you're not, you really should be. I mean, I try and integrate it into so many different places in my life, and specifically in wireless network, in building networks and in doing configuration and doing design and doing site design. There's a lot that can be done with the tool sets that are out there, and they're only going to get better. I mean, I love that idea that this is the worst that it's ever going to be anywhere with regards to AI, so I think that that's fascinating. So what else we got going on? There's a couple of other things that are happening right now.
Speaker 1:Let me change this window capture real quick and let's load up some of the news things and let me adjust my window here for just a second. I saw this article this morning and I thought it was pretty cool and it's talking about the private networks that are out there and what private networks, how many private networks are being deployed and where they're being deployed. And that's funny, there's an ad for Photoshop AI at the bottom of the screen. This from Fierce Networks, dan Jones our favorite Dan Jones at Fierce Networking, fierce Wireless, saying that there are more than 100 installations of neutral host private networks, cranking over the 100 mark more than 50 neutral host installations in the US alone. Sns, telcom and IT said the growth has been spurred by shared CBRS spectrum, which is great. I mean, that's the ticket right there. And the stat that by 2030, private networks could account for as many as one-fifth of all mobile network infrastructure. Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:I mean I'm a huge fan of neutral host offload. I'm a huge fan of these networks getting out there. I think it means so much to everyone who uses a mobile device because it's not just about the network, it's about what your connection to that network looks like and the more private networks and neutral host networks that are out there, the closer you're going to be to so many different radios and antenna right, and when you're closer, your experience is going to be better. So the more pervasive this becomes, whether it's using Wi-Fi offload you know, passpoint Wi-Fi offload or it's using private cellular, or it's using CBRS or it's using, you know, das. Whatever it is, as these grow it's going to make that experience for all of us so much better.
Speaker 1:You know there was a stat on LinkedIn. I want to see if I can bring it up right here. I was paying attention to my, to our old friend, let's see here not that he's old, but he is a friend. Klaus posted something about the amount of mobile traffic that was being delivered over Wi-Fi and it accounts for something like 90% of the traffic that's out there. So give me one second. Let me make sure that I don't blow it up. Here we go. Bombshell Report. We're gonna load this up on LinkedIn Punch in Klaus's name, right here. Bombshell Report. We're going to load this up on LinkedIn Punch in Klaus's name, right here. Bombshell Report Mobile data consumption over Wi-Fi closes in on 90% in the US.
Speaker 1:Open Signals Report just released confirms it. Look at this Wi-Fi's proportion of data traffic on smartphones is now closing in on a staggering 90% overall, exceeds, in nearly all cases, 80% away from home. So this report that was released by OpenSignal is showing that Wi-Fi sure I'll accept your cookies is showing that Wi-Fi is driving smartphone data consumption but depending on the operator it changes. And this is key to that neutral host conversation. In my opinion. It's showing that if you look at mobile Wi-Fi upload and download and the way that it compares on AT, look at mobile Wi-Fi upload and download and the way that compares on AT&T, t-mobile, verizon and some of the other groups that are out there Xfinity and Spectrum, which operate as MVNOs. Also, it shows you know, you look at this right here Wi-Fi download accounts for 71% on T-Mobile and 10% is Wi-Fi upload, 16% is mobile download not using Wi-Fi.
Speaker 1:And if you look at where neutral host is doing well right now in the neutral host space, it's no secret that Verizon isn't open to doing some of the neutral host stuff unless you go through them, unless you're using them as your provider. There's not many groups that have. I don't even know if there's any groups that have Verizon on contract to do neutral host. So it's no surprise to me to see the numbers where they are, especially that that you know between AT&T, t-mobile and Verizon. But I want to watch this because as Verizon then starts to adopt or move into neutral host, I wonder how that's going to change what it's looking at. But overall, this is showing a lot of.
Speaker 1:There's a clear sign here that a lot of people are using Wi-Fi on their mobile devices. As opposed to the carriers T-Mobile, verizon, at&t two MVNOs Spectrum and Xfinity users proportionally consume more data over Wi-Fi on the two MVNOs having the highest proportion of data consumption on Wi-Fi, at 89% of their total. Obviously, I mean, when you think about the size of the Xfinity network, you think about the size of the Charter network and the Spectrum network and how they're leveraging Passpoint specifically. Yeah, man, they make it easy to get on their networks and offload that data on Wi-Fi. I mean, shocker, not really. They've been in this game doing a really good job at it for a while. So I wonder how, now that more neutral host is coming on, especially with things like American bandwidth, things like SignalRome being able to do Passpoint offload, how that's going to change it Went away from home. T-mobile users proportionately consume more mobile data than any other major provider, mobile users proportionately consume more mobile data than any other major provider. Well, okay, they travel more. I don't know. I don't know how this breaks it down, but it's interesting to see this. So some fun statistics there. I'm glad Klaus had put that out there. It was fun to read that. Let's see what else we got going on in the news today. Speaking of, there was an announcement from here we're going to open it up in light reading and this one came up a couple days ago that Google is going to retire their CBRS network planning tool. Mike Dano, good old Mike. Hey Mike, what's up? Covering this article? Google plans to discontinue the CBRS network development tool. It's first launched in 2019.
Speaker 1:A lot of people have used this tool and you know the Google reader. I mean seriously like if they can get rid of that, they can get rid of anything. Unfortunately, that was one of my favorite Google tools ever, but everyone you know bemoaning its loss but say there are other options out there. The Google tool was always, I think, revered. Lots of people really loved it. It's been around for five years. It's going to be deprecating its 3.5 tool. What's happened now is I think there was an announcement a couple of weeks ago about Federated Wireless introducing a new tool. Still haven't heard from anybody on there. If you know someone at Federated, let me know. I want a demo of the tool and I want to bring it on the podcast to show what it looks like. I didn't know Google was going to deprecate their tool, but now that they have even more of a reason why Federated should be showing that thing off.
Speaker 1:A Rich Bernhardt SVP of Spectrum for WISPA said it's really a shame. It is is fast, accurate, easy to use, it's integrated with Google's geospatial data. And now it's a bummer. So Toronto explained a 25-page document detailing how fixed wireless operators can use the tool to deploy. Toronto recommends the use of Google Network Planner. Toronto does not have their own network planning tool. That goes into the detail. I don't think that Google has. So that's kind of a tough hit for them.
Speaker 1:Rich Bernhardt says that there's others that are out there doing it. You know. Indeed, federated Wireless just this month announced the general availability. Go figure, we covered that on the Waves Wireless Podcast. But there's other tools out there by Auvik and, of course, if you're looking for an incredible tool, you should check out Hamina's 3.65 tool. It is really, really cool.
Speaker 1:And the thing that I like about Hamina is that you can use 3.65 or you can use Wi-Fi in the same tool and I mean, if you go to I think it's Hamina Wireless or Haminacom, you can bring it up. Look, I'll just load it up. If you've never used the tool which I really hope you have, there's a free version of it that you can even do stuff with your house. Go pull up my house. You can go pull up a house and see what's going on, like. Here's me surveying restaurants. Here's me having some fun. You know, does anyone else like to go to random restaurants and go survey what their Wi-Fi looks like? Just out of curiosity I saw. You know there's some people I've seen in the industry like walk through airports and walk through different places. You know there's some people I've seen in the industry like walk through airports and walk through different places. You know, if you've got a tool on you, why not use it? That's what I'm saying. So you can do home Wi-Fi with this and then you can even do outdoor. If you haven't used Hamina, it's a really fun tool and they do operate in three. They do have something that operates for you in 365. No-transcript, but maybe that's a future video. Oh, what else is going on? Eero, speaking of outdoor Wi-Fi, eero introduced Wi-Fi 7. They say that they're bringing Outdoor 7. The Eero Outdoor 7 is bringing Wi-Fi to the backyard using Wi-Fi 7. Unveils a weatherproof Outdoor 7. Their commercial is pretty cool. This is the unit that they have and this. So this is of interest to me because Because, as we talk about what AI means for the future of networking and wireless networking, I like to think about where large pools of data about connections can be aggregated to make connections better.
Speaker 1:This goes back to when I was working at Comcast, when at Comcast, one of the things not on our team, not on the business team, but on the Xfinity side there was always this conversation about how do we make this the best home Wi-Fi, how do we figure out how to make the best home Wi-Fi? And Comcast was really cool because once a year, thanks to Daryl Deroja I'm not gonna lie, ddoggdmoney we would all get together, all the wireless teams in that whole organization. We'd get together at least once a year and just have a Wi-Fi summit and talk about Wi-Fi across everything that that organization does. Super cool when you think about the size of it. It's universal. It's Comcast, it's universal, it's Universal Studios, it's the Golf Channel, it's all these different entities that use Wi-Fi in different ways. And we'd all sit down in a room for a couple of days and talk about what we were doing with Wi-Fi and share ideas and concepts with each other.
Speaker 1:And when we would do that, we figured out how to leverage data from each other in order to make better experiences, because the whole name of the game, to me right, is quality of experience. How do you drive quality of experience? And when you think about the data that they have from Xfinity users and we're not talking any type of PII, no type of personal identifiable information, none of that we're talking about connection information like a device connected to a router. This is what the signal strength looks like and understanding what causes fluctuations, and so on and so forth when you have that amount of data, how can you leverage that data to make those connections better? So how do you take that data and integrate AI into it to create a way for a system to make better decisions for better quality connections? That's where my head's at right to set the premise. So then, if you think about Meter and Niall and these guys that are owning full stack and you think about Meraki, you think about what's happening with HP Juniper, you think about when you own the entire conversation, start to finish how you can take that data, use AI to absorb and inform back into the network. It's really cool.
Speaker 1:So when I see something like this and I see a company like Eero, which has I don't even know how many installations that are out there in home and in small businesses or wherever it is, I wonder if there's a. Maybe there's not a number on here, but when I think about this and I think about how they have access to this information, this is a solution that is cool looking, not just for the indoor component and now the outdoor component, but not just the residential space, but as we see things happening in the SMB space and people looking for things that just work. This piqued my interest, because now you have a lot of information that can be fed into a model and I can't say if they're doing it, don't know. If they're doing it. That'd be cool. If they are doing it, I would imagine that they are doing it. Don't know if they're doing it. But when you think about each one of the carriers that's out there and the amount of data that they have access to to make those decisions in residential areas. There's a differentiator between what's happening there and what's happening in small, medium-sized business. Mid-market enterprise Meraki's gathering this data, collecting this data and using it to make informed decisions about troubleshooting right and meters, using it to make decisions about engineering and quality. So why aren't those same decisions being made for something like this? So lots of gears turn in there.
Speaker 1:I think it's fascinating. I think it's great to see, it's great to see another entrant playing into the marketplace. What's really cool to see, right? Spoiler alert if you look at who the team is, who's building these products, it's actually pretty cool. You'll see some fancy names from days of old if you scroll through LinkedIn and you see people like Eric Johnson, who have the genetics of Aruba coming over and doing some stuff at Eero. Pretty cool to watch. So you know what I would say is, on that note, always look at LinkedIn. Right, don't look at LinkedIn just as a social media tool. Look at it as an investigative tool. Look at who is where, where they come from, where they're going and what they're doing, and it'll tell you a lot about companies. Just you know friendly word of advice there.
Speaker 1:It's pretty neat to watch what else is happening FCC allowing FirstNet to operate in 4.9. I don't know if any of you oh, there's a big face, hey, photo of Kenneth Corey, the Coalition for Emergency Response and Critical Infrastructure. I don't know if any of you ever operated in 4.9. And we had down here in South Texas, as soon as 4.9 was made available, the public safety frequency bands, 4.9, it's 50 megahertz of spectrum sitting in 4.9, 4,900 to 4,950. If I remember correctly, it was right below five gig, right above three gig. And there were some equipment manufacturers like Alverion good old Alverion that made equipment that operated in that space to be used specifically for public safety. So connecting police departments, connecting fire departments, connecting EMS, connecting critical infrastructure in areas. That was really neat and people. It was kind of cool.
Speaker 1:What they did is they made it so that it was available to everybody in public safety. But then each group in public safety had to designate a regional coordinator and I don't know how well that worked. To be honest. I know here in the county that I live in, the sheriff's department just kind of became the de facto coordinator for it. There was never really a vote where everyone was like, okay, we vote, you guys should take care of this frequency spectrum. But there was a coordinator whose job was supposed to be hey, we're operating on these channels, you shouldn't operate on them. Why don't you operate on these channels? But as everybody started deploying, no one really asked where the spectrum was, and there were so few tools back then to do really nice spectrum analysis, so it was a little difficult to monitor who was using what frequency and when. But now here we are. You know, a number of years later, october 22nd this is from last week 24th FCC unveils order allowing FirstNet to operate in 4.9 band. So now FirstNet can jump in and have access to the 4.9 gig band. The order will allow a band manager, once selected by the agency, to apply for a nationwide license and enter into a sharing agreement allowing FirstNet, the nationwide first responder network operated by AT&T, to operate in any unassigned portions of the band. Incumbent license holders would be able to enter similar arrangements with FirstNet if they choose.
Speaker 1:Opponents of the plan were not happy. Okay, look, jake Neenan over at Broadband Breakfast. Bro, jake, you're a cool dude. I've talked to Jake. He's a nice guy. That just kind of left me hanging there at the end, there, buddy, the last line here it says sorry, I thought I was sharing my screen. The last line of the article says opponents of the plan were not happy, as we say in South Texas, obiol, obiol, that's obvious. Were not happy, as we say in South Texas, obvio, obvio, that's obvious. Probably not happy. Let's see what else is happening.
Speaker 1:The Southern Ute Indian Tribe transforms reservation with open access fiber network. Love stories like this. This also from broadbandbreakfastcom. This is really neat because I love the idea of open access, building a network and letting everybody have some way to communicate on it, sharing that access with people. This is really neat. Among the burgeoning number of tribal networks being built across Indian country, a new fiber to the home network spanning the Southern Indian Reservation is unique. When service was lit up in Ignacio, colorado, in May, the network became the only open access network owned by tribal government, providing its residents with a choice between two different ISPs offering lightning-fast connection speeds. How cool is that? So, jessica, great job writing this article over on Broadband Breakfast October 23rd. This one was published five years in the making. The Southern Newt Network is not only the first tribally owned open access network, it's among the first of the new fiber projects funded by the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program offering services so cool, so a lesson to be learned here.
Speaker 1:I love the idea of using open access networks, whether it's on fiber or copper or freaking DSL, I don't know or even Wi-Fi. I love the idea that you could take a Wi-Fi network and broadcast, have a city or a municipality, build the infrastructure, provide the connectivity, provide the backhaul and then have multiple SSIDs being broadcast for multiple service providers with different plans that are associated with that. This is something. There was a guy named Kai Wolf who did a lot of really great projects with Google. Kai moved down to the Rio Grande Valley here in South Texas and brought a lot of great ideas with them. Unfortunately, he was involved in a terrible airplane accident. I believe it was a light airplane accident and we lost him and his thoughts, but it continued.
Speaker 1:His idea of open access was always this idea that it wasn't just about making choice available to people. It was about having organizations that could give back. And so if you think about broadcasting multiple SSIDs or, in this case, multiple providers running across the same fiber, making one plan may be free but advertisement supported, or making another one paid for, but it comes with a high level of support. Or making another one that for, but it comes with a high level of support. Or making another one that has a higher level of service with a lower level of support. And figuring out what's best for the community and giving people the opportunity to build internet service providers without having to provide the costly infrastructure to operate it.
Speaker 1:And when I think about doing that with Wi-Fi, I think it would be so cool. I mean City of McAllen. We built an incredible Wi-Fi network here and I would love for the day to come when there's multiple SSIDs being broadcast on that infrastructure. That's already there. It's already being taken care of by the city. It's costing them 150 grand a year or whatever it is that's costing them for maintenance. But I would love if that network were opened up where people could offer things. Maybe there's a very low-cost alternative for educators sponsored by I don't know Scholastic, I don't know whatever it is. But I love the idea that you can take a network and segment it up, and that goes into the whole micro-slicing thing with 5G and there's just a lot of different ways that you can slice networks and provide levels of service for different organizations or different people or different users, and open access is truly a very cool thing to see. So the fact that they're doing this on tribal properties is incredible. I mean that's really neat. What a great thing for everyone there that is going to have access to that. All right, what else are we talking about? Let me just see where I was playing tools done.
Speaker 1:Researchers are urging the FCC to stop low earth orbiting satellites. Here's another article coming in from Light Reading, nicole Ferraro, the editor and host of the Divide podcast. You know, I don't know the Divide podcast, just learned about a new podcast. Okay, nicole, I'm going to download yours and check it out. In a letter to the FCC, a group of researchers said that low-Earth orbit satellite launches should be paused until national and international environmental reviews can be completed. You know, right after I read this article and saw it pop up, I got the notification that Starlink was pushing 40 more birds into space. And it's like man in the middle of all this. Things are just going and going and going Over 100 researchers from universities across the US and the FCC to put a pause on LEO satellite launches. Warning the environmental harms of launching and burning up so many satellites aren't clear In a letter addressed to FCC Space Bureau Chief, julie Kearney.
Speaker 1:The researchers, who hail from universities including Harvard, princeton, yale, ut Austin and others, point out the number of large LEO satellites used for broadband delivery has increased 12 times in just five years, led by SpaceX Obviously led by SpaceX. The letter adds that SpaceX Starlink has launched more than 6,000 such satellites in the last five years, representing over 60% of all satellites. Wow, I didn't know that. And then estimated 58,000 satellites will be in orbit by 2030. Hundreds of thousands more expected, based on plans from SpaceX, project Kuiper, from Amazon as well as others. What's it going to do? I don't know, but I can't imagine that, like, if you stop and think about where we were supposed to be with space travel, like, imagine, you know space like a rocket ship trying to go up and dodge all those satellites. I don't know, not my area of expertise, y'all clearly, but whatever. Y'all clearly, but, but whatever. On the satellite tip, there's a startup called constellation. It's proposing 5g millimeter wave solutions from space light reading.
Speaker 1:Had this one also lots of, lots of stuff happening in that space race where these guys a mike dano again with the, with the scoop on the article, this is using 26.5 gigahertz to 40 gigahertz beaming down from space in the ka and ku spectrum bands, for there's 400 megahertz sitting in the 26 gigahertz band that's available to 5g operators all over the world. And if you follow what happened with t mobile last week or the last week of the week before, they were like they had all this millimeter wave spectrum and they're like nah, it sucks, fcc, you can have it back. It's not doing what we wanted it to do. We can't make it work. I think that's even covered somewhere here in this in this article. Yeah, indeed, t-mobile has given up huge chunks of its millimeter wave holdings because the propagation characteristics of spectrum only allow for stable communications over limited blah, blah, blah, blah. Basically, they said it sucks, you can have it back. And now they're figuring out different ways to do it. Space is a good alternative.
Speaker 1:Speaking of space and beaming stuff down from space Li-Fi Does anybody use Li-Fi? I've been talking to someone who does some Li-Fi stuff on LinkedIn and I'm generally fascinated with it. I think it's cool, but I don't know of any deployments where it's being used successfully. So if you know anyone who's using Li-Fi, it's where you use infrared signals and lights. You vary the amount I guess the blinkage Is that a word? You vary how much it blinks and the intensity of that to being data like fiber optics, but without the fiber. If anyone's using Li-Fi, let me know. Speaking of light reading, I'd be interested to see one of those deployments actually working up and running what else we got going on.
Speaker 1:So the one thing that we do have going on that I did not get a chance to attend this year was Prague. Wlpc Prague happened. It's over, it's done. It looked cool. I was hoping for tons of information coming online to see what the presentations were. There was some information that was posted. I can't wait to see those presentations. I can't wait for WLPC in Phoenix.
Speaker 1:Missing Prague made me want to go to Phoenix even more because I know it's coming, and I did miss the teams, the teams out there. Probably I missed everyone. I did, honestly. I had a conversation this morning with everyone's favorite wireless you know one of everyone's favorite wireless personalities, mr sean bender, and I said you know, sean, it wasn't even the presentations that I missed, or or the scenery, or being in prague, or Prague, or the romance that comes with Wi-Fi in Prague, it was the street meet bro. It was the three o'clock in the morning. Scooter rides to go get some shawarma. That is honestly what I missed the most this year. That was what gave me the FOMO, the presentations. I was like I'm sure we're going to see some of these in Phoenix.
Speaker 1:But dude, it was the shawarma on the streets of Prague at three o'clock in the morning that really had me down. Don't know if we're going to find shawarma on the streets of Phoenix at 3 am, but there is an incredible taqueria there called Taqueria El Rey or something. I can't remember what it was called. Anyway, they've got great tortas. Tortas El Rey, I think, is what it was called Anyway. So if you want to find a good torta in Phoenix, let me know. Also, start planning now to drink a lot of Purple Drink and a trip to our favorite fried chicken joint in Phoenix, lolo's Chicken and Waffles. Make your plans now to join us at WLPC Phoenix at Lolo's. It's become a tradition Anyway.
Speaker 1:So, that being said, there was some stuff that happened at WLPC Prague that I was really interested in specifically, and let me see if I can bring it up on LinkedIn where shout out to the team that used an old Cisco wireless access point and turned it into a spectrum analyzer, leveraging the Cognio chipset. I'm not even sure what happened here with this thing. Let me see if I can bring it up on LinkedIn. I'm not even sure how this worked or what it did, but it was like, wait a minute, you just took an old spectrum analyzer and leveraged the chip. Or you just took an old ap and used the chipset in there and I think, like jim florwick was just probably all smiles there.
Speaker 1:Where is it? Cadle, here, cadle tnh, digging into the key benefits of wi-fi spectrum analysis and analyzers the features he finds most useful in his daily work. Here I'm sharing my LinkedIn with y'all. Look, oh, this is the Nick Turner one, old Nick Turner. Okay, look see A secret project. Okay, it's Kettle and Nick Turner Secret project a 3702 in a 3D printed box, powered by a power bank, while wearing the Microsoft XP Bliss sweater and doing spectrum analysis. And there's the cameo on the screen of Mr Jim Florwick popped up there.
Speaker 1:Dude, I hope that this makes its way into WLPC Phoenix and I hope to see this soon, because that is pretty creative. Also, there's a cool box of Baofeng radios sitting right there. That is pretty creative, man, and I want to see what they did there, because radio is sitting right there. That is pretty creative, man, and I want to see what they did there because, god, was I a fan of cognio, jim? Uh, cognio was so cool. I mean, what a freaking. Those pcmsa cards were incredible, so I was. I was interested to see that. Also, dude hamina winning the winning the social media award for cranking out one new feature for every day that they were at wlp and some of the features were incredible and some of them were, you know, maybe not earth-shattering, but they were great. But the fact that they were putting out a new feature every day at WLPC was really cool. So I did miss the team at WLPC. I hope everyone had a tremendous time in Prague.
Speaker 1:Wispapalooza happened right before that. We're actually going to be talking to someone about Wispapalooza. I think Dimitri and I are going to jump on a podcast, maybe not today. It's kind of today might be gone, but next week I want to bring Dimitri over and talk about Wispapalooza, because Wispapalooza had some neat announcements this year and, more importantly, dimitri and I. He sends me a message. He goes hey, drew, do you remember 15 years ago or 25 years ago or whatever it was, when we went to the first Wispapalooza, we sat on the stage and was like, wow, this could actually become something soon. I want his insight. 10 years, how many? I guess it's been 10 years 2024?, yeah, 2014. I want his insight into what was happening at Wispapalooza because I think that there were some neat announcements there that play into the overall picture of everything that's going on. So, anyway, that's it, man. That's my week, my last two weeks. I apologize for not having that regular cadence last week of having the podcast.
Speaker 1:If you care, you might not care, but I appreciate everyone that's jumping in and subscribing and downloading videos and talking and chit-chatting with me. I made a really neat video about using Hamina in a home. A friend of mine is a home builder, so I went and I got her floor plans. I cranked out some Wi-Fi for her client. I thought that was pretty neat.
Speaker 1:So my advice to you wireless nerds that are listening if you have people that are struggling with in-home Wi-Fi, point them in Hamina. Open up an account for them. Set up an account for the free demo that has three access points and show them how important things are like secondary coverage. Use it as an opportunity to teach people about what we do in a way that makes sense to them at home. Right, and Hamina is just such a great player in the industry and such a strong advocate for wireless that making that version available and having people use it is really, really neat. And if you have the NetAlly tools, you can use the NetAlly tools with Hamina if you want to walk around and do that survey. If you don't have access to a Nomad, you can use your AirChecks. You can use your NXGs. You can use your air checks. You can use your NXGs, you can use your cyberscopes to do that. Bring some of that data in. It's a really cool way to show off what we do in a visual way to someone who might not understand it.
Speaker 1:I had a great week this week and all about that will come out soon, hopefully. I had a great week, and part of what I got to do this week is I got to be very retrospective in some of the projects that I worked on, and what I'll leave you with is one of the questions I was asked was how do you explain RF and propagation to someone who doesn't know anything about wireless and probably doesn't care, and so I'm going to go over that example real quick so I can edit it and use it as a little soundbite. But just in case you haven't heard it, you need a fun way to talk about it. The way that I explain RF propagation and the way that I explain to people where to place access points in their homes is I use the light bulb method and I say, okay, imagine you're sitting in your home, your apartment, your condo, your house, whatever it is, and all of the lights are off and I give you one light bulb and you have to place that light bulb in the exact spot that you think is going to provide as much light as possible to everybody that's using light inside your house.
Speaker 1:Where are you going to put it? Do you put it in the corner? Do you put it in the closet back behind the house? Do you put it next to the garage? Do you put it in the garage or do you stick it in the middle of the room, in your living room or in your bedroom or in your family room? Wherever it is? Do you put it in there? And if you put it in there, how far is that light going to go?
Speaker 1:But also something to think about is when you have that light bulb. If that light bulb is turned up to its complete brightness, setting the people that are close to that light bulb, it's going to be too bright for them to really see anything that's going on. The people on the end they'll see the bright light. But if you turn the power of that light down maybe 75%, maybe 50% you're still going to get light into the areas that you need light. But now it makes for everybody to have a better experience with that light bulb being, you know, shone in that light inside the room that you're in.
Speaker 1:And once you have one light then it's easy to identify where you need to put that other light bulb. Now do they cable themselves? Do you run a cable to that other light so you can plug it in, or can you use wireless mesh to connect those together? You know there's a lot of different options, but I like the idea of using light bulbs to explain where to place Wi-Fi access points in homes, and nothing shows that better than a modeling tool. So take advantage of Hamina's addition that you can use for home so you can show people that. But also put an emphasis on secondary coverage, because that's a good way to explain a little bit about what we do as wireless engineers.
Speaker 1:And when you talk about call handoff and call drop and being able to transition from one AP to another, if you think about light and you think about transition from one AP to another, if you think about light and you think about going from one lit area to another lit area, you never want to go to a place where it's dark, so use those as examples. I hope you enjoyed those. That being said, I hope everybody has a great week. Welcome to November. November 1st Waves podcast. Enjoy, like, subscribe, smash all the buttons, do all the clicks, whatever it is. If you have any questions or if you want to be a guest on the show or you want me to review a product or whatever, please reach out. I hope you guys have a wonderful week and I will talk to all of y' all soon, see ya.
