Waves with Wireless Nerd
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Waves with Wireless Nerd
Merry Christmas! Unwrapping Wireless Potential: Wi-Fi's Role in Community Safety, Cybersecurity Challenges & the Future of IoT with HaLow Innovations
Is the future of wireless technology at risk of over-the-air hackers, or are we on the brink of a revolution that will outsmart them? Join us as we uncover how Wi-Fi is transforming communities, with a firsthand account of deploying network solutions in Occidental, California, to boost connectivity for first responders. As we look towards CES and NRF, explore how these innovations are setting the stage for a safer, more connected world. Plus, an upcoming project has us buzzing with excitement as we prepare to reconnect with our listeners and colleagues at WLPC in Phoenix.
In an era where home Wi-Fi security is more critical than ever, what measures are you taking to protect your network? We dissect the latest reports on cybersecurity threats from Russian hackers, sharing insights into defending against rogue access points and unauthorized network breaches. Highlighting the impressive capabilities of Aronia's spectrum analyzer, we stress the importance of monitoring your airspace amidst an evolving landscape of wireless security challenges. This episode unpacks how consumer electronics and proactive measures are key to safeguarding your digital domain.
Discover why Wi-Fi HaLow is being hailed as a game-changer for IoT, with its potential to connect thousands of devices over vast distances. We share our enthusiasm for testing this long-range, low-power technology, and its implications for industries like oil and gas. Alongside this, we explore the promising partnership between Nextivity and LG, offering a cost-effective Distributed Antenna System (DAS) solution that merges LG's private 5G devices with Nextivity's innovative CellFi technology. As we dissect recent tech trends, from the 5G boom to Wi-Fi-based IoT advancements, this episode is packed with insights that are shaping the future of wireless technology.
Oh, it's a day before Christmas 2024. Drew Lynch, the wireless nerd. It's been a couple of weeks since I've done a podcast and let me tell you. First of all, there's been a whole lot of stuff going on which is insane in and of itself. Second of all, I've been so busy, having such just an incredible time. I posted a video from a project that I was doing out in California and I know that I you know sad excuse for a podcast, if you will, but I posted that one because I thought that that'd be pretty cool to see one of the projects that I get to work on. I'm having a pretty tremendous time doing stuff with Euro. It is, it's man, I'm having a blast.
Speaker 1:So it's been a minute, not for any reason other than I just haven't had a minute, but it's been a minute not for any reason other than I just haven't had a minute. But that's okay. Sometimes life gets in the way. But I do want to make sure that I start to schedule this a little bit better and be more diligent about making sure that everything gets recorded, because I've had people ask me Drew, where are you, what are you doing, what are you up to? So here I am everybody. Let me make sure that I am broadcasting this. Oh, it looks like we're live on x. That's fantastic. Let me make sure that, uh, that the fun audience all y'all over at linkedin. Let me make sure linkedin's doing well, I got a little break here after some shopping. Just had to make one last little target run, got that knocked out and now I am. Oh, it looks like I am live on the internet, so that's fantastic, all right. So golly, I don't even know where to start. First of all, happy holidays to everybody. I hope you're doing well. I hope everybody is having a fantastic holiday time, getting to spend some time with the family, getting this wrap-up projects, get ready for the new year. This is that dead zone right between, like thanksgiving and then stretching all the way out until January 22nd. It feels like I don't know why it's always like the 22nd. That's the date that people seem to come back to life after the holiday break. So let's see what happens. Let's see if any work gets done.
Speaker 1:This is also a really good time for lots of announcements that come about. I know that CES is coming up and NRF is coming up as well. Those are two of my favorite shows to be at and I will be at both of them. Give me one second, let me check my audio here and make sure that that works. Yeah, sweet. So I will be at both of those. I'll be at CES the first week in January. I'll be at NRF the second week in January and then I've got a break for about a week and then I am going on an incredible journey to do some awesome outdoor wireless that I am not going to talk about yet but, true to the name of the show, waves, there will be some waves involved in one way, shape or form. So I'm very, very excited about what's happening at the end of January, a project that I get to be a part of and yeah, I know I mentioned the project I did this past week.
Speaker 1:I was up in San Francisco, flew out, got to go up to a city called Occidental California, which is a tiny little town I think it's population 900, something like that. It's up in Western Sonoma County and I got to go up there and deploy Wi-Fi using the Eero product for outdoor coverage of a downtown area, for first responders and security, emergency response, and also for the community, for people to use it, for students to use it when they're sitting in a restaurant, for visitors to use it or tourists to use it. It's a really cool little project and I got to get out there and get hands-on with everything, which was really really neat, and if you know me, you know I like that stuff. So it was great to be a part of that project and I hope to get involved in more projects like that, which I think I will. But there has been some stuff happening.
Speaker 1:Hey, it's fernet. Como estas amigo? Good to see you too. It's good to see you too, fernet, and I know that I will be seeing you soon. We're gonna be at wlpc in phoenix, coming right around the corner. Y' mean, this is if you're looking for a birthday gift or, I'm sorry, for a Christmas gift to give somebody. You know WLPC is a good thing to give somebody. I don't even know if you can register anymore. There's so few slots that are left, but I'm really looking forward to seeing everybody in February in Phoenix. We're just gonna have a slamming good time out there.
Speaker 1:There is a golf event taking place on monday, february 17th, that the team at echohaus put together. So if you want to join us, reach out to matt or mac or reach out to myself or any of us that are going. I think we're all going to be playing around the golf early on monday morning. So if you're there on the 17th, please come out and join us right after right after valentine's day. We're gonna be having some fun. Can't't wait. I know, frenay, it's going to be so great.
Speaker 1:Man, I missed you guys in Prague so much and there's just so much happening right now and I feel real bad about not doing the podcast, because there was all this news and then a week went by and then there was all this more news and then a week went by and now it's like, oh my God, everybody's getting ready for the holidays. Where to next? So right now I want to talk about some of the things. Now I have these flagged from a week, two weeks ago, seven days ago, whatever it is. So I'm going to go through the things that I've been highlighting just because I'm interested to see where they are now. But there's been so much more. So I apologize if this isn't the most comprehensive podcast for what's new and now and what's next, but let's see what I have flagged over the last couple of days and weeks and see if it brings anything up, I'd flag the link. That's now dead. So that's fantastic. We won't be clicking on that one.
Speaker 1:Let's see what about this one? Oh, the Plume CEO? Yeah, yeah, yeah, fari Diner. Diner I don't know how to pronounce his last name. Fari Diner, one of Plume's founders, is no longer leading the Wi-Fi tech specialist. So Plume if you're aware of Plume, they've got some really good relationships and a lot of people use Plume inside their homes and so there's something going on over there. I got to interface with them a little bit when we were doing the open Wi-Fi project and they have so many deployments that I'm wondering what that shift is going to be over there. I think that's why I flagged it, because it's just curious that something's happening. Adam Hotchkiss is now serving as the acting CEO, but he was one of the founders, so I guess they're still in good hands over there. So it'll be interesting to see what happens with that. No word on what was happening or why he left, but general manager of the company's business and business unit, product sales and engineering roles, fry will no longer be leading the business. We're grateful for his contributions, so that's interesting. Let's see what happens to Plume over the next year.
Speaker 1:What a space. I mean a little close to home. Right Now that I'm in this consumer electronics space where people's home Wi-Fi Now that I'm in this consumer electronics space where people's home Wi-Fi that one stands out to me. So that's definitely going to put a twist on what I'm looking at at CES this year, because now I'm going from where people are working and using the product to now how it's affecting their home lives, and so CES is going to be a little bit different for me. It should be pretty neat. I still like to see all the toys and stuff that are out there, so we'll see what that brings up. Let's see what's the next one. Right, let's just open up Russian hackers using game-changing Wi-Fi hacking technique to breach US networks All right, so we've talked about this. Man, if you have followed this show, you know that we've talked about these things.
Speaker 1:So this is from the Kyiv Post. This is talking about the ability for someone to break into a network across the street from the target and leverage that network to do all the hacking for it. This is pump up the volume. The movie with Christian Slater from the 80s which made me really want to do pirate radio, aside from wireless and all the other stuff. This is it man. This is taking something, finding a vulnerability, doing a scan using the tools that are available on the internet, finding an open network or an open device at one location that's across the street from something, and then using that as a jump point to attack the network over Wi-Fi. So it says Department 28 has developed a bold new Wi-Fi attack. It's not bold and it's not new. I mean, this is from December 3rd, right, but this is stuff we've been talking about for a couple of years and there hasn't been a lot of tool sets that have been introduced in the industry to identify over-the-air attacks and what's happening Now.
Speaker 1:Rogue APs is one thing, right, being able to identify rogue APs on your network. But being able to identify devices that have vulnerabilities and are being used to launch attacks at your network and how they're associating is important. So, like, if a printer is associating to your network but it identifies on your network as a user, there's probably something wrong there. So, being able to understand what devices are connecting to your network as a user, there's probably something wrong there. So, being able to understand what devices are connecting to your network, where they're connecting from being able to block out any devices over a certain RSSI threshold or over an SNR threshold, or trying to make sure that your Wi-Fi doesn't bleed out too far into your parking lots or across the streets. These are things that are gonna start to be more commonplace when it comes to Wi-Fi security, because no one's watching the airspace.
Speaker 1:God, I do this. Every single time I start talking about this company man, I forget their name and I feel so bad every single time I do it. But what a great reason for you to go visit my LinkedIn page and you'll see that I'll post some comments from them there. But if you think about what this gives them the ability to do, what gives nefarious characters or bad actors the ability to do this is using your Wi-Fi against you. And now it's no longer just about securing your network and providing the appropriate security mechanisms on your operational network, but also making sure your signal doesn't go too far out, making sure you're not available so that someone across the street can jump on your signal and get into your network. So, while the Kyiv Post says that this is a bold technique, it's actually I mean, it's pretty intelligent. It's using Wi-Fi to break into Wi-Fi and it's. I mean, it's only a matter of time, right? We need to be watching our airspace much, much better.
Speaker 1:This is where, if Aronia was a sponsor, I could talk about their amazing spectrum analyzer and how cool it is, and then I could show you one. But I don't have one and they're really expensive. So if you're listening, aronia, I would love one. If you want to send me one, I want to play with it. If you haven't seen what I'm talking about, make your way out to WLPC or look up Aronia.
Speaker 1:A-a-r I think it's A-A-R-O-N-I-A these guys have a pretty awesome spectrum analyzer. Here we go. This thing is dope man. And they showed up at WLPC in Prague and they didn't have a spot or speaking deal. They just showed up as one of the people to see what we were doing. And then they took over this. They commandeered this little table and popped this equipment up, and all of us were just immediately enamored with it. And Keith said hey, we're going to make 10 minutes available. I need you to go on stage and show everybody what you're doing. So they have these little site survey kits and these little bundles are put together.
Speaker 1:Again, we're talking in the $6,000 range 5,000 euros, it looks like here and they have some new products that are coming out. The Spectrum V6, I mean, this thing is so awesome and they can do everything from full-spectrum analysis to generating signals, to knocking drones out of the air. This little guy over here is cool and this is the one I want. Look at all these little products, man. Anyway, the V6, I think this is it 10 megahertz to 8 gigahertz there you go. 9 kilohertz to 18 gigahertz Pretty dope, man. 250 megahertz up to 53 gig Okay, that's one. If I had to pick one of these, oh, no way, I'm going to go with the V6 Explorer. There you go. 9 kilohertz to 110 gigahertz. What an awesome freaking device, man.
Speaker 1:But I would encourage you if you're in the wireless world. Oh, man, yeah, of course I want one. I find the one that's $50,000, right, $60,000, whatever it is. Anyway, maybe they won't send me one, but if you're in the wireless space, it's no longer just good enough to look at whatever security applications or threat techniques you have on your wireless access points. It's time to start to look at the airspace for more bold, if you will, attacks that are coming over the air. So if you haven't invested in a high-quality spectrum analyzer. Maybe 2025 is your year to start looking at that. It's great products that are out there, and it's time to really start looking at that airspace and taking it seriously, not just from a coverage perspective, but also from the perspective of absolute security. It's important to understand what's going on there.
Speaker 1:All right, let's see what else is happening. Macbooks with 5G cellular might actually happen. All right, this piggybacks on another article that I was reading about, and it's talking about Apple and the new chipsets that they are going to be introducing and what they're doing with that, and so there's speculation. I guess, if you will, that Apple is building their own wireless chipsets to go into their devices, whether it's the MacBook or the iPhone, whatever it is, and they've got some longstanding ties with some of the other chip manufacturers that are out there. But when they start to bring all of it in-house, then it becomes what advantages does that give the iOS devices? What advantages does that give an iPad or an iPhone, whatever it is?
Speaker 1:And from a technology perspective, granted this one's mentioning 5G. We've already seen Wi-Fi 7 availability, which is fantastic, but what is this going to mean as it moves into Wi-Fi 8 and everything else? Now, also, when you look at the other chipset I think it's the U2, is what they're on the UWB chipset. If you start to look at Apple controlling all their own silicon when it comes to wireless whether it's ultra-wideband or it's 5G or it's traditional wireless communications or Wi-Fi now you start to look at what they're doing, and they've also made mention of some of the things that they're going to do in home. There's some new home products that they're talking about coming out with, some stuff that goes on your wall, some stuff to control your internet, a new home kit adaptations, things like that. So Apple's really moving into the. They're really, it seems like, embracing wireless all of a sudden. I'm sure that there's a lot more to the story than that, but here it is right. Here they're continuing to using Qualcomm because it's been more difficult than Apple executives had anticipated to make their own silicon. Yeah, no kidding, but we'll see where that goes. And, like I said, this piggybacks.
Speaker 1:I think the next article is about Apple's devices. They're more Macs headsets with built-in cellular data. The company is prepping the three-year rollout to replace Qualcomm. So three years. Sorry, I'm not a Bloomberg subscriber, but hey, Bloomberg, if you're listening, you should give me a subscription. That's kind of cool. But no, maybe that'll work, maybe it won't work. Anyway, they're talking about again making their own silicone and doing a lot more with their products. So Apple's making some moves. We'll see what they do coming into 2025 and beyond into 2025 and beyond. They don't have a presence at CES, so I'm not expecting any hoopla from them there, but it'll be interesting to see what devices are going to start to interface with that.
Speaker 1:One of the things I haven't messed with on the Eero product and hey, look at that, hold on, this is hilarious. It's like it's listening to me. Look, there's some advertisements by the marketing team for Eero on the side. I totally sound like a shill, not a shill. I'm curious. I wasn't going to talk about the Wi-Fi. I was going to talk about what they're doing with Matter and with Thread on the devices. I haven't even had a chance to play with that yet. I haven't used that whole integrated functionality. I don't know if anyone has Mark, maybe you or Fernay. I don't know if either one of you has talked about this stuff or have used those all-in-one things and specifically what you're using Thread for and how that all culminates, but I've never used that all-in-one device functionality and so Eero's got it built in. So I'm looking forward to trying that out.
Speaker 1:The Charter CEO says we need to break through against fixed wireless access. Charter CEO Chris Winfrey says his industry needs to do more to tell customers a cable delivers better performance and reliability than fixed wireless access and that cable providers provides a better broadband and mobile bundle. I mean, listen, if you can run a wire, run a wire. I mean, I think everyone in the wireless industry will tell you that If you can run a wire, run a wire. But this isn't a battle. You know this isn't like. Well, I guess for them it is right because you've got t-mobile, verizon, att now pushing the 5g stuff and I guess that looks like it might be starting to impact some of them. I don't know that that's mentioned anywhere. I'm sure it is that they're having these. You know impacts from fixed wireless.
Speaker 1:But I mean I think I guess I take it for granted we're all nerds that if you're listening to this you're probably a nerd that cable does provide great, reliable access, but that's not always true, man. I mean I'm not going to lie. I live in a neighborhood and we're served by my local cable provider and most of the time it works pretty well, but for the time that it doesn't work well, I've got a satellite disconnected Starlink on my roof, and when that doesn't work well, I've got a Verizon card that I can tether onto as well. So it's fascinating. I don't think the solution is ever one over the other. I think it's always gonna be a combination of multiples. I think if using the internet to do your business or to work or to create content or whatever it is, is your job, then back it up, man. Make sure you've got multiple WAN ports, make sure you have some way to fail over from one to the other to the other. So I wouldn't rely on any single thing if I didn't have to and in environments where I do, I don't like to I always like to make sure that I've got some type of backup ready. Mark, speaking of kudos to you for using the wireless backup stuff, that oh, it wasn't even you, mark, it was freaking Ali, sorry, that was using the wireless backup for the lab. That was pretty cool, man, that was fun to read about.
Speaker 1:Speaking of wireless, oh, check this out. Look, it's pretty neat. A new Wi-Fi Halo developer kit will accelerate Wi-Fi-based IoT, says Morse Micro. Okay, I'm very excited about this because Morse Micro is going to be at CES and they've talked about things that they're going to be presenting there and opening up for the first time.
Speaker 1:Okay, while I'm talking about that, let me show you something. Dude, I have not had a chance to play with this yet and I'm bummed about that because this is so freaking cool. This is an Edgecore EAP112. They sent me these engineering units to play with and if you look right on the front, right there, man, I don't know if you can see it. Look at this, ready. I don't know if you can see it right there. No, it's not zooming the way it's supposed to. Oh, look, there it goes. There it goes, there it goes. It says Halo, halo to you too. Oh man, I am stoked about this. I am also way out of focus. I'm very excited about Wi-Fi Halo. I'm super excited about Wi-Fi Halo, and let me tell you why.
Speaker 1:Because back in the day when I started doing internet service provider stuff and this is timely, because the guy who I started doing this with um teen years ago I just ran into him in a parking lot. No, no, he called. I ran into him in traffic. Then he called me and we originally were going after oil and gas. I mean, that was a whole thing. It was like we can go out in oil fields in rural texas and we can shoot internet to their pumps so that we can collect and aggregate data and then send that data back to whatever control board they have. And this is like all RS-232 over wireless and it was like, oh my God, what do you mean? We don't have to send someone out in a truck to go check all the well sites as they move around the area.
Speaker 1:And it was huge and that 900 megahertz stuff, that spectrum was so great and it was not general dynamics, ge, ge, mds, the mds radios, man, those 900 megahertz radios were incredible and there were a couple people that came in that space to try to compete in that space. Man, I remember motorola canopy used to make a 900 megahertz subscriber module and that thing had like this ridiculous antenna on it but people loved it because they didn't care. It solved the problem that they had and that low throughput, long range thing has been. People have been trying to figure out the best way to do that for a long time. So inner Wi-Fi, halo, right.
Speaker 1:What Wi-Fi Halo does is it operates in that space, that 900 megahertz space, and it gives you this distance. That is just insane. I mean, it gives you huge, huge distances and at those distances, before you had to rely on whatever the proprietary protocol was or whatever the proprietary equipment manufacturer was, and one wouldn't work with the other, so on and so forth. Well, with Halo it's Wi-Fi. It's Wi-Fi, but it's over 900 megahertz. So it's all the same stuff. As long as the equipment can transmit and receive in that spectrum, you're good to go. And it's not as low throughput as it used to be, I think. I think it is 36 megabit per second. I want to say wi-fi.
Speaker 1:Halo 80 to 11 ah uses sub gigahertz spectrum frequencies in the global ism band between 850 and 950 megahertz. It offers advantages, blah, blah, blah, blah, 10 times advantage. Hold on. There's. There is something in here where it talks about the throughput and I want to say it's, it's 36 megabit per second. And it's something like I think there's 5, 10, 15, 20, 40 megahertz channels, I don't know.
Speaker 1:Mark's on here, mark house is on here and he's he's messed with this stuff too. So, mark, well, okay, from 1 to eight megahertz in width, 60 megahertz channels are also specified. And look at this here. Let's share the screen out right here. This is from advertise, advertise microwave. Let's see, here we go.
Speaker 1:Wi-fi 6, wi-fi Halo one kilometer average, 8,000 devices. Okay, that's I'm sure. Yeah, wi-fi 6, 2000 devices on an ap yeah, okay, next slide. This just lost all credibility. Real quick, low power consumption. So it's got the target wait time stuff, which is really neat. Yeah, one, two, four, six, eighteen and sixteen. I thought there was a higher one in there, but this is showing 86.7 megabit per second in a 16 megahertz channel, or 347 megabit per second while doing my 4x4 and using 16 megahertz channels.
Speaker 1:I don't know what the morse micro stuff is out there that they've worked with and I don't know what this eep 11. Let's look it up real quick. The eep 11 to the one. One, two this is the edge core one that I just got. I got a box of these dude. They sent me four of them, so I get to, I get to actually mesh stuff together. I'm totally stoked. They even sent me a camera that I could use to connect to it, because what's so dope about this is it's not only long range at low throughput, it's long range good enough to connect a camera into. So there's a YouTuber that did this deal where he walked around and he walked down to the end of his block to see how far Halo would reach and it was really, really neat.
Speaker 1:So Mark is saying on the chat if you can't see the chat, mark is saying 900 megahertz has a high noise floor. Mostly I would agree with that in rural areas or in city areas or in populous areas, but out in the middle of nowhere I wonder what 900 still looks like. I've only found the four megahertz wide channels gear, but I've tested more Morse micro stuff yet. Hey, I will bring this stuff to WLPC. I think we should have some fun with it and I don't think the guys from Edgecore are going to care. Mark, it's on, let's have some fun man. Let's test this out there. Let's come up with some creative way that we can put this in a real world lab at WLPC.
Speaker 1:I'm going to be pretty swamped between now and then. So I apologize to Edgecore. I know you sent me this stuff. I know you're dying to hear a great review of it, but I haven't had a chance to plug it in yet. But what I will do is I'll take it to some of the bigger nerds out there and we'll have a blast with it. So WLPC, let's do it. We're going to have a good time.
Speaker 1:Mark says on the salt flats. It was still pretty high, so the salt flats out in utah, it looks like there was still some high noise floor that was out there. So I'm I'm stoked. If you can't tell, let's start talking faster. I love it. I'm really.
Speaker 1:I'm really excited about wi-fi halo and what that means from a connectivity perspective. Also, from a mesh perspective. You can mesh halo together, which is pretty cool too, so you can jump from one to the other to the other, which means these low power devices you can power solar or wind or whatever it is, and you can feed that data back. So Wi-Fi Halo definitely something that's really cool. Troy Martin did a really cool presentation about Wi-Fi Halo, I think, last year at WLPC, so this year we will have some fun. I need to get my WLAN pie working with Halo. Yeah, dude, I'm bringing the devices. So if you're interested in this stuff, we. So if you're interested in this stuff, we're going to have some fun at WLPC. I have a feeling we're going to be breaking things and I'm totally cool with that. I think I actually am going to bring more than just the Wi-Fi Halo stuff, and we'll see if we can have a good time with it.
Speaker 1:All right, nextivity and LG combine on private 5G DAS devices and services. This stood out to me because Nextivity, you know, when I think about DAS, I think about traditional DAS. Nextivity kind of popped up and started doing things that other people weren't doing. They made a low-cost adaptation of DAS and it got a lot of really good reviews. Nextivity has been deployed all over the place and it's simple, right, it's super simple. And now they're partnering up with LG.
Speaker 1:There's so much stuff happening in the DAS space and I think that it's one of those moments where DAS has realized that people need it, but they don't want to spend the money or they can't spend the money, they just don't have the budget for it. So the LG's so-called private 5G ultra slim solution to Nextivity's DAS infrastructure and 5G IoT apps apparently these two can come together now and it's a little bit more cost-sensitive for people who don't have the budgets they used to have. The purpose, he says, is to check interoperability of LG's enterprise 5G devices with NextGV's CellFi. Their CellFi has worked really well, man, I mean, it's got a really good name to it. So they're working on combining their stuff together for digital signage, point of sale, so forth.
Speaker 1:This is just another mover in the 5g space. Man, there's so much happening in private 5g and 5g offload, you know, I think there's. There may be a mention here of the iot stuff. The integrate offering is part of nextivity's iot ai family of solutions. Not even that, but like the, the narrowband iot there's I mean there's the 5g spectrum and 5g services are really starting to do some some, some crazy things now that people are are finally adopting them right and they're finding use cases for them. A lot of times it just seemed like that was the the nail looking for the hammer, but I think now people are starting to realize what the capability of some of this equipment is, and so we're starting to see more and more movement.
Speaker 1:I still think you know, if the problem is cell coverage, I still like the DAS solution. I like YDAS. I'm a big fan of American Bandwidth and Signal Room. I love that stuff. I think it works really well using Passpoint for neutral host offload. I'm a huge fan of that. If you don't have the budgets to do it, then I mean that's one way to skin a cat. That's like from texas. So I make no apologies, I'm just gonna let you google that one.
Speaker 1:On to bigger and better news. Royal caribbean is banning travel routers from their boats, man from their ships. Royal caribbean bans cruise travel hackies by thousands to get around crazy wi-Fi fees Crazy. He says that is a very bad attempt at Homestar Runner and StrongBad. Just in case a little StrongBad throwback there for you.
Speaker 1:The travel hack was used by people, so basically what they're doing is they're showing how you can take dude one of my favorite devices ever that I think it's still in my backpack, the GLI net. Man, look here. Oh yeah, I got the whole internet in front of me. Look at this. These little guys make the coolest little travel routers and, okay, that's a big one. They have these tiny little things, man, that are so great. If you've never used the GLI net like, look at this mini router, this one right here. This thing right here has saved my butt in so many different places. I've lit up entire trade show booths with this deal where I tether my phone to it and it uses DHCP on there and then I pump it out the ethernet port. These little things are so awesome. I know it's too late to order, but if you're looking for an after Christmas present, $27.90. Let's go. 30 bucks, man. These things are incredible. If you've never used one, I'm a huge, huge fan.
Speaker 1:Going back to talking about the whole, two is one. One is none when it comes to connectivity. If you need a simple solution to get you out in a pinch where you need to get something out using connecting to someone else's Wi-Fi or connecting to a hotspot Wi-Fi or connecting, you know, via USB tethering to your phone, dude, this is the bomb right here. I love these. I don't. I love these. These are the best Like. They're so, so good. Everybody should have one with every. Any nerd who does connectivity should travel with one of these, because they will save your butt in a pinch. But that being said, let me go back through all my tabs I have open over here. Where was it, man? Oh, here it is.
Speaker 1:So what was happening is someone told the cruise industry that they may I guess they made like some YouTubes or whatever and said, hey, a way to get around it is use this so that you connect your travel router to the Wi-Fi and then, on the back end, you can connect all your devices to a travel router so that you're only using a single MAC address that you pay for, instead of 15 different MAC addresses for you and your kids, and your phone and your watch and the tablets and the switches and all the other stuff. And so now Royal Caribbean's cracking down on this. They say they are off limits, with reports of the item in question being confiscated in recent weeks. Everyone loves the holiday hack, but now it's gonna cost you. It banned this, quoting cyber security and deliberate electronic crime.
Speaker 1:Reasoning, man, whatever, I've never gone on a cruise. I can't, like, I don't, I don't know, man, and I would imagine, if I'm out on a cruise, I probably just want to chill, unless it's like one of the fun ones with Disney or whatever, and the kids get to run off and do Disney stuff. But they're saying that. Now this is one article $12 for three hours of coverage at two megabit per second. And then I saw another article where they're cranking the coverage up even more and it's like hey, hey, one of these cruise ship operators, man, like, get your shit together. That's not cool, man. Everybody relies on this stuff and you don't like that's not cool, that's just not cool, that's all. That's all I have to say about that true's opinion.
Speaker 1:You know what really grinds my gears? Oh man, what's this thing? Innophase iot mines, wi-fi for lossless audio? Oh yeah, so somewhere hiding behind this ridiculous advertisement, there's an article about lossless audio using Wi-Fi for lossless audio. And it's not using the Wi-Fi protocol, it's using the space. I believe it's using the spectrum.
Speaker 1:So CES in Vegas 120 worker teams prepping a shelf, several product demonstrations. I want to go by and see this. It says that they have demos of the Venetian suite 29-221, january 7th through 10th by appointment. Oh yeah, let's see if I can fill that out live on the podcast, man. Anyway, I want to see what this means and I want to see whoa. Alright, I want to see what this is going to do to spectrum dude, I need to roll in there with a spectrum analyzer and be like go ahead, bro, and then turn it on and see what happens when that's going off.
Speaker 1:New ui ap lineup, not lineup lineup. I know, look at this dude. Ubiquity launched. They launched some new stuff. Look, they launched some new access points. Man, so, so stoked for these guys. When they did Mobility Field, they talked about 11 new SKUs or 12 new SKUs.
Speaker 1:So I also want someone to explain the Prism chipset. So if you work at Ubiquiti and you see this dude hit me up, I want to know what does the Prism chipset do that makes it so much different? Look, because it's at the heart of every commercial. What does it do that's so much different than anything else, and why is it better? Okay, so there's two ethernet ports on there. You can have those run to two different switches. I think you could lag them to the last. The last conversation we had with the team over there at mobility field day, what I will say is that I hope, I really hope, you can turn off that big, bright blue light behind the ap, because that right friend, no dice, I turn off every light that I can. They've got some new APs that are coming out.
Speaker 1:This thing holy moly that's. I mean Wi-Fi at massive scale Maybe that's the one that they're talking about that has 2,000 subs per unit. I don't know, I've never deployed this stuff. If you want to talk to someone who's deployed this stuff and you haven't been to the Unify shows, go talk to my homeboy, daryl DeRogia. Everybody loves Daryl DeRogia. Daryl is the Kevin Bacon of the Wi-Fi industry. As I referred to him a couple of weeks ago, daryl is a phenomenal individual who runs the network at the FedEx Forum, where the Memphis Grizzlies play, and he will be at WLPC, and if you really want to know how this stuff works, I'm not the expert on it, but he is maybe not the expert on it, but he's probably one of the biggest power users of ubiquity in the world. So I would definitely say look, there's this fedex form right there, go talk to him about it.
Speaker 1:The new stuff that they have, I mean great videos, great product video, okay, very good. Look, there's someone on stage showing that there's wi-fi for crowds. This is good. The, the U7 Pro Max Tri-Radio 2, 4, 5 gig and 6 gig, eight spatial streams on this one, 10 spatial streams on the U6. That's pretty cool that one's running Wi-Fi 6E and then Wi-Fi 7 over here. So they have some new APs that are out there in the marketplace. Very cool, very happy for them.
Speaker 1:This was an interesting article as well. A new open source radio telescope can see Wi-Fi signals through walls. So I read this whole article and then I went back and watched this whole YouTube video and, spoiler alert, it doesn't work the way that they want it to. So don't waste your time reading that article. If they do something neat within the future, it will be awesome. Check this out From the IEEE Spectrum.
Speaker 1:Shapeshifting antenna takes cue from the expanse. Inspired sci-fi show shows. The device morphs to suit its signal. Yeah, there's no video of this though, is there? So an antenna shape determines what kind of signals it can work with. So if you can change the way that the antenna, the shape of the antenna, then it can work with more signals in different areas ranging here it is right here frequencies ranging from 4 to 11 gigahertz pretty cool. Oh, look, now I'm getting advertisements for glinet. So interesting.
Speaker 1:I haven't read this whole article. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna try and talk about it since I've read it. There's that man. There's like oh, look at this. Spacex eyes, two gigabit per second shooting down from space. Man, what a time we live in. We got 2 gig internet coming down from space. We've got wi-fi halo that can expand using 900 megahertz all over the place. We've got 5g dropping costs finally finding use cases. We've got wi-fi. That is, that is, you know, doing incredible things inside people's homes, but it also can be attacked from outside of a network. There's so much stuff to do, so much stuff to talk about.
Speaker 1:It's a good time and I hope that the season was good to you. I'm going to cut it short. For today it's been 30 minutes. You know I try and keep these 30 minutes and that'd be nice. Mark, I appreciate you hanging out the whole time. It's always awesome to know that I have at least one person in the audience listening. But if you're listening to this, please try and make your way to WLPC in Phoenix. We will all be there. Come by, say hi, give me a high five. We'll be doing a podcast from out there. I'll probably go live. I really liked what I did in Prague two years ago, when we sat down at the bar and we just turned on the camera and started chit-chatting with people. That was really fun. So I might do that again this year, and January is going to be nuts.
Speaker 1:If you're out at CES, please, please, holler at me and let's go look at some of this tech together. I love other people's perspective and opinions. If you're at the NRF show, which is National Retail Federation in New York City, that show talks about everything and all the technology for retail and restaurants and things like that, and it is such a great show because there's innovation that happens there that's going to affect your day-to-day lives. It your day-to-day lives. It's going to affect the way that you interact with the world. It's going to affect the way that people expect wireless to work. I think that's why I go to CES every year. Ces sets the expectation of how Wi-Fi should work and it doesn't dig into why it should work the way it does. It just says, hey, here's the brand new TV that streams 8K. It's the size of a wall and your Wi-Fi should support it. Have a nice day. So that's that side of the industry, and for us people who have to figure out how to make all of it come together, that's why I like to go to the show. So please feel free to reach out to me if you're going to be there. If not, I really, really hope to see you at WLPC in February. Again, february 17th is a Monday, that's when we're playing golf, and then the show starts on the 18th and then the boot camps start before that. So if you want some more information, just Google the WLPC in Phoenix.
Speaker 1:Merry Christmas, happy holidays. Sorry, I'm two weeks late on this thing, but I hope you understand and if you get a chance to listen to this on an airplane or whatever, have a good time and shout out to American Airlines. My kid loves the little Biscoff cookies and they gave me a whole pack of cookies to bring home for the kiddo to say Merry Christmas from American Airlines. So Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah and all of the other holidays that you celebrate around this time. I hope you have some great time with your family, enjoy it, and I will be talking to you soon from some really interesting and fun locations. Until then, I will, let's see. Next week is New Year's, y'all. I can't make any promises. There's also not a lot happening, so I don't know if we're going to have a podcast next week. I will probably jump on and just say hello to everyone, but then that first week in January is when we're going to be at CES, so I'll go live from there. We'll have a good time. Anyway, until then, if you need anything, no-transcript.
