Waves with Wireless Nerd
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Waves with Wireless Nerd
Will AI Replace Your Networking Job, or Just Make You Better At It?
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The future of networking isn't about whether AI will transform our industry—it's about how quickly professionals will adapt to these inevitable changes. In this candid discussion, Drew Lentz unpacks the major developments from recent industry events, particularly Cisco Live, where AI dominated conversations across the vendor landscape.
AI Canvas, Cisco's entry into agentic AI, signals a pivotal shift in how networks will be managed going forward. But rather than viewing these advancements as threats to job security, Drew frames them as powerful amplifiers of human capability. As he reflects on Andy Jassy's comments about AI adaptation, the message becomes clear: those who embrace AI as a collaborative tool will thrive, while those who resist may find themselves left behind on the platform as the train departs.
The podcast showcases remarkable innovations happening throughout the wireless ecosystem. Hamina's newly released AI features can automatically generate walls from Google Images floor plans, saving engineers countless hours of manual work. The strengthening partnerships between vendors like NetAlly, Ekahau, and Sidos demonstrate how collaboration is accelerating tool capabilities beyond what any single company could achieve.
Drew also shares a thought-provoking analogy comparing private 5G to cell phone holsters—technically perfect solutions that somehow missed the mark on mass adoption. This refreshing perspective challenges us to look beyond technical specifications to consider real-world implementation challenges.
Looking ahead, Drew reveals his plans to use Alethea testing equipment to benchmark access point performance under heavy client loads, offering to test specific APs the community is curious about. This hands-on approach reflects his commitment to bringing practical insights that go beyond marketing claims.
Connect with Drew to share your thoughts on which wireless technologies deserve deeper testing, or join the conversation about how AI is reshaping your day-to-day networking experience. The industry is evolving rapidly—are you evolving with it?
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Stream Start and Introduction
Speaker 1All right , let's just go ahead and punch that stream button and see what happens . I think I might be coming in a little bit hot here . Let's see if we can turn this down . Check , check one , two , whoa oh , it's coming in over there . So , oh boy , let's see if we can switch this microphone . Wow , well , that's the only way to do it . Let's make this microphone work and that'll be a little bit more fun .
Speaker 1I don't even remember how this thing is all connected . You know , you go to town for one minute and the next thing , you know , your mics are all messed up . All right , I'm going to deactivate this . It's doing it live . You know , like we normally do , do , do , do , do , do . This thing should be working , but of course it's not . Whoa , cool , ah , well , you can hear me on this camera , which is kind of weird , but not too weird . Good morning , good afternoon , super hot . Hmm , there we go . Check that box , turn this thing up . There we go . That sounds a little bit better . Let's go ahead and mute that other one so I don't come in too hot . Oh , what's up everybody , how's it going ? Know , I figured I would just go live instead of making an announcement or whatever . It's five o'clock , it's June 20 something , june 25th . Hope everybody's having a wonderful day .
Speaker 1It has been a crazy last couple of weeks . Let me tell you . It's been really hectic . Lots of travel , lots of back and forth trying to figure out where I've been , where I'm going and what's happening . I've had the opportunity to support some really , really great stuff , which has been really cool . Um , but now I'm finally back sitting in my office ready
Recent Industry Events Overview
Speaker 1to rock and roll . Yeah , buddy , you know I always got to check this real quick and make sure that I can , uh , wait and see what's going on . Let's see if we're live . We're live , we are alive . Look at that sweet . That one says event ended . Oh , there we go . This one says we're live . Cool , I am live . Well , howdy , you know , I got a lot going on and instead of just opening everything up , I just figured I would jump on and start riffing a little bit and see if there was anyone out there who wanted to have a conversation . I'm pretty sure Mark Houts is going to be joining anytime to give us a hard time . But either way , what's up everybody . I'm Drew Lentz , I'm the Wireless Nerd and this is the Waves Podcast . It's June 25th , june 25th and , like I said , it's been a crazy couple of weeks and I hope that everyone's settling back down . Cisco Live just happened a couple of weeks back and you know there was Cisco Live and there was some time that we had at home and HP Discover is going on right now , so that's happening .
Speaker 1I heard Antonio make mention of the acquisition . I was wondering if this was buzzword bingo . I was wondering if we were going to hear him mention juniper in the keynote address at uh , hp discover , and he did . He said you know , uh , with the future of ai and what they're doing . He he did bring up the name , but you know he didn't give any detail , which doesn't leave anybody better off than where we were before with regards to information . But that's okay because , you know , maybe , maybe that's just the way it's supposed to be .
Speaker 1Let's see . Whoa looks like . My restream says I'm unstable . That's kind of cool . It knows me better than I know myself , apparently . Anyway , all right , let's see . So I'm going to open up my show notes here and we're going to see what's going on . Let me pop open a new tab .
Speaker 1Um , I'm curious what everybody's been up to . Summertime is a little bit different . You know , there's always something going on and I know kids are out of school , which makes it that much more exciting , you know , as if we didn't have enough time when the kids were in school . Not , the kids are out . It's finding stuff for them to do and figure out what to do with ourselves during that time . So I fully anticipate any minute now one of the little ones is going to walk in and say , dad , I need to go to Target or something similar . I've already had that happen once today . So let's go ahead and close out some of these windows and I will open up the topics of the day .
Speaker 1You know , but sometimes I like to just think about what's happening in the industry overall , without looking at the topics , just following the news day to day . There's a lot happening politically that I think has dominated some of the news cycles , and that's okay . But from a tech perspective , if I think about highlights that have happened in the last couple of weeks Cisco Live , right . So Cisco Live happened and there were some announcements with Cisco Live and them talking about hey , gibby , how's it going About Cisco introducing Canvas , ai , ai Canvas and what that means to agentic AI and operations and AI operations overall , with how they're running and managing their networks , with how they're running and managing their networks and it's , it's cool . I mean it's one of those things . We saw it coming .
Speaker 1But then watching the internet talk about that a little bit afterwards and seeing posts like the one from Eva that she put up on LinkedIn about the the Cisco is Asian of Meraki and how it's slowly fit , how the green is slowly fading away and now how you know slowly , how the green is slowly fading away and now how you know it makes me wonder is the same thing happening from an operation side ? Or the CCIE is slowly fading into the background ? I don't know . You know Cisco's always been big on education and this isn't something that they discussed , but it's something that is an elephant in the room when you start to talk about it and regardless of how many people sit there and say no , no , no , ai is not going to take your job .
Speaker 1When you look at in , you know , announcements like like andy jassy from amazon , causing a ruckus with what he said . You know in full disclosure . If you don't know , I do work for an amazon company and this opinion is my own opinion , so whatever , but I actually like what andy said . I think that it's . You know , he basically said that AI is coming in and it is doing a lot of the work and it's helping us strive to be better . This obviously not direct quotes , but there are some quotes that he put out there that I think are really important , and one of those is basically , you know , to
AI in Networking: Transformation & Jobs
Speaker 1paraphrase , it's learn how to use AI , and the people that learn how to use AI and learn how to do that correctly are going to be the people that they're going to contribute in the future , moving forward , and it's not about saying we're never going to adopt it or adapt to it .
Speaker 1I think the whole premise overall is you know AI is coming and there is something that's going on with it , and if you're not using it on a day-to-day basis , if you're not figuring out how to integrate it into your workflows , then you're like you're missing . The people are telling you the train is coming and you're on the loading platform waiting to get on the train . It's only a matter of time before that train is gone . You know what I mean . And people I feel like you're giving lots of heads up and they're being real careful not to , you know , piss off the the way that it that it goes typically .
Speaker 1But when you walk around Cisco live and you see everyone talking about AI and agentic , ai and agentic , agentic , agentic what a word Um and all the things that that's happening in that space , you're a fool to think that this isn't going to replace your workflows , right ? Like ? Not maybe not your job , but definitely some of the stuff that you do on a day-to-day basis . If you're not thinking about that that maybe there's , maybe you're in the wrong industry . But when you look at what they're doing and right on the heels of them announcing that meter announces 170 million dollar raise on their you know series c , it's like if the writing isn't on the wall already about what ai is doing , the networking maybe you need to look at the wall , or maybe you need to look at a wall . Maybe you need to look at a different wall , because you're not looking at the wall that a lot of other people are looking at .
Speaker 1And I think Keith Parsons said it best . I love Keith and Keith , if you're listening , hi but he said it best where we talked about how this is like having that mentor standing over your shoulder as you're writing , as you're typing in code or as you're working on a CLI , having someone that you can just ask questions to , like , hey , what's the command for you know BGP neighbor , you know , show BGP neighbors , you know . Or what's the command for route tables ? Or what's the command to you know , show your you know ARP table , you know ? Instead of you having to remember it , you have someone that's always there to help you . And taking that a step forward with AI , where it's going to be able to do a lot of that for you and focus on you being able to do what you're good at .
Speaker 1That's the buzz . That's the buzz . It's not . Is AI the big , powerful thing that's gonna take over the world ? It's not that it's . How is AI going to help you do what you're already good at ? And if you're already good at it , how can it make you that much better ? And if you're that much better at it , how can you spend your time doing more incredible things to turn this into an amplifier or a superpower ? And so , for the people that are scared that this is going to take their job , if you're scared that AI is going to take your job , you should be scared because you're not in the right mindset . Your mindset needs to shift into a place where people look at this and go . How can I leverage this ? That's just my opinion .
Speaker 1So I told you one of my kids was going to come in live on my podcast right now . My daughter's walking in . Oh , that's great . Say hi , say , happy summer , happy summer , that's great . Hold on . Here's what I said earlier . What do you want , young lady ? Tell me ? Tell me , say it loud enough . This is great . Is it time for dinner ? Yet is it time for dinner ? I thought we were going to go to target . That's what I thought it was . Oh yeah , and target yeah . Okay , bye , it's my daughter . I figured that was going to happen . Welcome to summer , everybody . Anyway , is it time for dinner ? Yet in a little bit , honey . So can't make that up . Drew , ai is going to take my job .
Speaker 1Ai is not going to replace wi-Fi people . Ai is going to replace the Wi-Fi people that don't know how to use it . That's what Frenet says . Frenet , I think you're spot on . Man , there's so much more that it can do . Man and vibe coding . I'm such a huge fan of vibe coding . I love what it does . I love the superpower that it gives me to wake up of the night with an idea for an app or a program or a way to leverage APIs and I can sit down and just tell Claude AI hey , do this for me , or I can go and chat GPT and say , do this , or I can use any of the billions of tools that are now becoming available to help leverage that . It's such a cool time that we live in and , from a network management perspective , being able to grab all of the data that's out there and this is the whole agentic AI thing , right , being able to grab all the data about what's happening on a network , what's happening with Wi-Fi packets , what's happening with spectral analysis , crunch all of that together in ways that we haven't even thought of yet to present solutions to us , so that , instead of our dashboard telling us that something is wrong , our dashboard is telling us here's the action to take to fix it or just automate that . That's the whole agentic process .
Speaker 1I think that that's really great and I'm glad to see Cisco getting on that page . I guess , because so many people use it , it feels like they're a little late to the race , you know , and that's okay . You know , I think there's companies out there that have that have been leaders for a long time and that stagnation that's happening with the Juniper HPE thing . Man , like that sucks for both companies , right , they're just sitting there and it's like who's going to move forward ? Is it going to be these guys ? These guys , like what's going to happen ? That's just such a bummer man for anyone that that is a customer of HP or Juniper miss . It's like their heels are cooling a little bit and and I wish that would just hurry up , like just just hurry up and get going . I know I'm not the only one who feels that way .
Speaker 1Um , I got to go to the Juniper day , um , the , the AI awesome day , whatever it was , where they had the dude . Listen , let me . Let me give this shout out there . So cisco live was happening in san diego and what a great time , and I'm so glad it was in san diego , love san diego . I got to spend time at the world surfing league event , supporting the surfers at wsl , providing the era wi-fi all along the beach there , at trestles it was . It was incredible , um , and then I got to go down to cisco live right afterwards and and see what was happening , you know , with the whole ecosystem
New Tools in Wireless: Hamina AI Features
Speaker 1of Cisco , and then , of course , like Juniper does , and God , I love it , man . I knew the second .
Speaker 1I landed at the airport in San Diego . I was wondering , as soon as I land , am I going to see Juniper advertisements all over baggage claim , like they do in Vegas ? And sure as shit , man , there they , there . They were big old green advertisements and billboards for everything Juniper you could possibly imagine . And I was already registered . Of course I'm gonna stop by lots of friends there to go say hi to . I cruised over , jumped in the Uber , cruised over to go listen to what they were saying and they had such a cool story .
Speaker 1Now there was one guy that I was listening to who was like a little bit too on the salesy side . Don't remember his name , um , but it was a little . It was like , not concerning , but just like man , that guy's , he's been drinking a lot of tony robbins apple juice . Man , he was really pushing strong on the . The world's gonna end if you're not ai , you know driven . And I was like , oh , chill , man , like hold on , just like , give us a break , let's understand what you're talking about . He was was nuts , but nothing .
Speaker 1Nothing compared to the swag juniper at that surfboard cookies dude they had . I'm not even lying , they had some of the best chocolate chip cookies I've ever had in my life and and I know that you know it's a tech conference or whatever and that's not the highlight but if you were there and you had one of those chocolate chip cookies , dude , they were legit . I don't know where they got them , but they were legit . I don't know where they got them , but they were so good . So kudos to the catering . Um , they had beach towels , they had crazy little hats , they had breath mints , they had all the the ai stuff and it was happening right up the street from live and it was , you know , great to see so many people supporting it . Um , albeit a little bit of a smaller space than they usually do in in vegas , but still there was a good vibe there with what was happening and you know they got to tell their story and kudos to them for doing that the same time as live .
Speaker 1It's always , it's always a lot of fun , okay , kibikaro says I totally agree on your ai statement . Until something comes up and until we think we need , until we need to think outside of the box . You know , that's one of the coolest things I think about ai is you can feed it information and tell it , ask it what you're not seeing . I've done that with site surveys so many times , you know . I'm not ashamed of it , I love it . I think these tools are great . I love taking site survey information or taking a method of procedure that I have and loading it in there and saying , hey , this is how I do a site survey , here's what I'm looking for . What did I miss ? Like , just ask if you want to start with some basic stuff , just ask AI what you missed . Tell it hey . Tell it hey . Consider best practices for hotel Wi-Fi or restaurant Wi-Fi or whatever it is and send that in and say give me what I'm missing and then point it . Point it to YouTube to go look at sessions from WLPC or Mobility Field Day . Point it to go research and find out information and learn from the best . Leverage Brene and Mark and everyone who's doing this and leverage their knowledge from stuff that they've already talked about .
Speaker 1Um , I saw you hanging out on the balcony of the juniper event as I drove past my uber head . I know , dude , I didn't even get to see you for like a hot minute . I was there anyway . So cisco live happened . Uh , introduction of the new access point . Those , those matt swartz . I was hoping to run into matt when I was there . I didn't see matt . But you know their new access points that they that they cranked out for event and for , uh , large public venues . Those are great access points .
Speaker 1Got to see the , the , the team from curb , which I don't think they're calling it ultra reliable broadband anymore I don't know what they're calling it but um , but got to see those guys out there . Igor and the team from curve is really cool . They put on , you know , obviously , a great concert . The Killers were incredible . One of the things I thought was really great and it was bad but great is someone was having a medical emergency in the crowd at Cisco Live in the middle of the Killers set and Brandon Flowers , lead singer of the Killers , stopped and he said they need help , they need attention , they need help , and he pointed and the crowd parted and they got paramedics in there and they had everything done and he just stopped . He didn't say a word , he backed away from the microphone , he just stopped until the entire situation was resolved and then started the event back up and I thought that was so cool , having a background doing event promotion and doing concerts and stuff . I look at that and I mean kudos to him and the team and everyone with the killers and that organization to understand how to handle that . That was really , really great to see . So that happened . But Cisco Live overall was great .
Speaker 1I think the ecosystem was strong . It seems smaller , but maybe it's just because of the way the venue was laid out . It seems smaller with regards to how many vendors were there , but I'm probably wrong . I didn't get to go to any of the sessions . But you know it's . You know , should I be honest ? Right , I'm going to be honest . It's great to see that ecosystem supporting everything that Cisco is and that Cisco does , and that's why they're there right To show off how they interact with Cisco stuff . And the product team is doing some great stuff at Cisco .
Speaker 1But it just when you see where the industry is going and when you pay close attention to it as much I feel like as much as I do and you watch all the little moves that are being made , it's not hard to see Cisco in the rearview mirror and I kind of hate to say that because I've got so many friends there , but the innovation is happening and it feels like it's happening around Cisco and I could be wrong . I could totally be wrong . They could be doing a bunch of stuff that I don't know about . But I'm just looking at this from the market perspective . I'm looking at what I see out there . I mean , you guys know , I'm at like every freaking trade show there is and I'm constantly in front of people and customers and opportunities and it just feels like their AI messaging .
Speaker 1It got a real big push at Live . It really did . They put a lot of effort into that , into proving that they're valuable in this day and age , but I think they really needed it , man , because it was starting to feel like it really wasn't coming together . So there's that . But I'm not picking on them , I'm just saying like that's you know , it's the industry man it's like watching a race . I got to go watch a NASCAR race and that was not the most exciting thing I've ever been to in my life , but it was fun to watch them . You know , volley for spaces and go back and forth , and you saw this car move up and then that car move up and this one go back and you really didn't know what was going to happen until the end of the race and I don't know what the end of the race looks like for us . I don't think that there is an end . This is a constant race . So , watching them scoot back a little bit maybe they slingshot around the next corner , maybe they don't , I don't know but it just felt weird coming into Cisco Live like they weren't really getting in there .
Speaker 1What I will say is that the partner ecosystem is nonstop . It's not stopping and waiting for them to do stuff , and I think that that's one of the bonuses is that what we'll find is that partners not just with them , but with every vendor partners are going to continue to fill those gaps and bridge those holes where the vendors aren't doing what the industry feels like they're supposed to be doing . And so when you see that , when you start to see partners doing more , I think that that's really cool because that opens up an opportunity or an avenue for innovation . When you see people that are coming up with things that the vendor should be doing , in their eyes , that's a great way for someone to start up a company . Build in their eyes , that's a great way for someone to start up a company . Build up a company , build up a brand and get acquired by that vendor eventually . So I'm all for it . The slowdown thing is real , but it also gives an opportunity for people to make up that space and vendors who can pick and choose and do what they need to do might be able to make those acquisitions to speed up , speed up the process . So I think that that's one of the bonuses of of something like going to a show like this and seeing what the ecosystem looks like as a whole .
Speaker 1Stew you're , he says . You're missing me in vegas . Man , uh , I'm having I'm not gonna lie , I'm having discover fomo . I'm having hp discover fomo and I didn't . I've gone to discover for so many years , man and , and this year I'm not there and I find myself watching , watching the sessions and watching everything that's going on because it's like man , it really what a great , what a great time . It looks like everybody's having a good time out there .
Speaker 1Speaking of , you know Stu from Echow's on chat and , and you know there's a vendor that's doing some pretty cool stuff . I got to see you know there's a vendor that's doing some pretty cool stuff . I got to see you know the ecosystem of vendors who support wireless . Like , let's talk about them , right , we've got NetAlly . What did NetAlly talk about ? They've got their new 6 gigahertz device , the NT2000 , that's a plug-in device into the AirCheck or into the Cyberscope or the NXG that you can plug in and you can scan the six gigahertz spectrum in ridiculously fast amounts of time and you can feed that data direct into the net ally device and then , once it's in the net ally device , you can do those scans and you can push those into hamina . That is like one of the coolest partnerships . I think that's out there .
Speaker 1So hamina was talking about that , showing that off . Um , uh , the guys from from ocm , I got I'm happy , I got a new Nomad . I gifted my Nomad to someone . You guys know me , I love to gift stuff , so I gifted my Nomad to somebody . That was an agreement that I had with them . They said you can use it as long as if there's someone who needs it more , you have to give it to them . And I found someone who needed it more . So I guess it paid to be my friend for a hot minute , but the guys from Oseum gave me that .
Speaker 1I got to see some of what's going on there , got to see how the AI wall generation in Hamina works and it still blows my mind that that's even a thing . And this is that whole idea that we've entered this new generation of what we're capable of doing using AI . And if you haven't seen it , yussi just posted something on LinkedIn . I'll pop it up here on the screen , and he posted what he was able to do . Now that it has been officially launched , it looks like AI the first AI components . Big Day AI version 1 of Amina Wireless is out of beta , and so he posted that on his LinkedIn page .
Speaker 1Let me see if I can load that up real quick . Let's see . Okay ,
Innovative Vendor Ecosystem Updates
Speaker 1give me just a second . I'm going to hang up . Let me let me choose the right screen here . Just give me double down . Let me choose the right screen here . Just give me Double down . Let me choose the right screen . Give me one second here . Okay , I got my audio back . Now let me make sure that I have the correct window capture . There we go , so check this out .
Speaker 1This is pretty neat and what I wanted to show . I think everybody can hear me . I'm good . My wi-fi stands are here in the wild . Oh , stew . Thanks , man . I've been getting lots of you know what ? Maybe that's what it is . I've been getting lots of love . I'll show that video here in just a second . Um from from discover .
Speaker 1So what you're looking at here is is uc showing off let me turn these captions off . He's showing premature reduces , premature balding . That's not what is um . He's taking floor plans from Google images and he's dragging and dropping them , and he's just putting them right into check this out . Ready , watch this .
Speaker 1Here comes the magic . He's dragging and dropping a floor plan that he downloaded from Google images direct into Hamina and then he clicks a button and once he clicks that button , he can zoom in on this thing thing and it's automatically going to create the walls . And he's doing this . He's showing off a hotel and I can't even tell you how much time that saved . Is that an hour ? Is that 30 minutes ? Is that three hours ? I mean , what is it ? And one of the things that he said is he's like look , if you do this , it's going to give you time to do more of what you're good at . It's going to give you time to do more of what you're good at . You know , more time on design and engineering , less time on drawing walls .
Speaker 1And he shows off that it's not just a perfectly uh , you know , sent over CAD drawing . It's also being able to download a fire escape plan from the back of a door and put it in there Sorry , there's dogs running around now , so check this out , man . So he drives , he drags and drops it in there and it just works and it Sorry , there's dogs running around now , so check this out , man . So he drags and drops it in there and it just works and it draws everything out for you . And this is so revolutionary for the people that do this that man , I talk about a feature that people can actually use that's going to save them time and save them effort . This is so cool and to see that was so neat , man . It was just great to see it happen . Now . It's great that it's released and people are able to use that , and it's only gonna get better . This is that statement of the best thing about AI right now is this is the worst that it will ever be Like . It's never gonna be worse than what it is today , and so , if that's where we are super excited about the future , one of the other things I saw that Ekahau was showing off Ekahau had a great presence there as well , and they were showing off how you can take your Sidekick 2 and you can walk up to it with a device and you hold your device close to it and it immediately profiles that device and starts to give you all the data and information about that device and starts to help you learn what that device's capabilities are and what it can do and how that works in the larger environment .
Speaker 1If you want to see a review of that , go , check out Echo House . I think they just did a webinar on it . Stu can help you out there . But seeing how they're extending the capabilities of the Sidekick to above and beyond what it used to do is great . I mean , they've done . They've done , you know , the Just Go survey stuff that Echo House is doing , you know , is fantastic . But I mean is is fantastic . But Hamina and Ekahau are really keeping each other on each other's toes . Man , the new speed test stuff , the new Ookla speed test stuff that's coming because of that Ookla ownership and now partnership within the , the Ekahau software is great . But then the AI stuff that Hamina is , you know , leveling up . It's like they keep just leveling up in different ways . You know , eventually some of those features are all going to come in together . There you go . Stu says there's a webinar tomorrow . So if you're listening live , there's a webinar tomorrow . Just go look at Ekow's page and they'll talk about what they're doing . It's really awesome . And then you know NetAlly supporting them .
Speaker 1I can't wait for what I heard about that I can't talk about . I guess they didn't tell me I couldn't talk about it . They just told me that no one's talked about it yet . But I'm not going to talk about it . But I can't wait to hear what I heard talked about again in a public setting , with regards to the way that some of these tool sets are coming together . I mean this just it's awesome . It's awesome because there was a time not so long ago where if one vendor talked about another vendor , it would cost them their job , and maybe that's still happening in some places . But to know that there's other vendors that are embracing that and they're working together is super cool . And then , when you can take data from two tool sets and to a to a model and use AI to run tests and results analysis against that , this blows my mind , man . Um , it blows my mind . And yeah , so that's where I was going .
Speaker 1Next for an A is CEDOS . Cedos is doing some incredible stuff . Um , they just , you know , um , they just did a demo online where they showed off what they can do with with mesh systems and this is something that if you were at WLPC , you got to see live . Let me screen share on that thing . You got to see live where we tested out the ability to do like see this is like tweeting and commenting . That's great . We got to see this tool , which is their mesh deployment tool . We got to see this live .
Speaker 1We did it on site there inside the showcase area and the vendor area , and what you do is basically use this tool . You walk up and you hold it over a root node and then you walk around and it tells you where you should place your next mesh node . And this might not be big for people that are wired know , wired in , you know enterprise style aps where everything's connected and no mesh is needed . But for people who need mesh and need a good way to deploy mesh , this is a fantastic tool because it takes all that prediction it puts in the palm of your hand . So you don't have to be an industry vet of 30 years to figure out where to place the next node . You don't have to go do site surveys and all signal analysis to understand what's going to look like . You can simply grab a tool and walk around with it .
Speaker 1You know , shout out to Cito's , obviously , shout out to Eero in the picture there , super happy to know that they were using that product to test it out . Very cool , so excited all the way around to see what's happening in that space , because that one's near and dear , you know a little bit more than anything else and it's neat , man . It shows you right there , it shows you what your client experience looks like . It shows you what your mesh experience looks like and what those nodes look like when they're connected to each other . So CEDOS is doing some great stuff in that space as well . I mean , overall , you've got vendors that are all doing these different things and now starting to to show their unique value proposition , between NetAlly and Hamina and CETOS and Ekahouse . So it's really cool , man .
Speaker 1Who else did we run into on the show floor ? Who else was out there at Cisco Live ? Got to see Alexis that was cool from Megaport . Got to stop by and say hi to her . It was interesting to watch her do her thing live , because obviously she has just a handful more followers than I do . So seeing what it , what content creation , looks like for the masses was pretty nuts man and a lot of , a lot of work , a lot of repeat , a lot of repeat , a lot of repeat , a lot of getting it done , getting it accurate , getting it accurate . And what was really neat to see and I posted about this was the way that she was helping some of her coworkers record videos and record demos and walkthroughs and that's so cool to be able to share that with your coworkers . I know I love to do it . You know , when I was doing the WSL stuff , I got to talk to a couple of my coworkers that were out there and talk to them about , you know , not just content creation , but about what it means just to work with people and to be understanding of people and sympathetic to people's scenarios and help people out . And and it was , it was neat to see that coming through and what Alexis was doing with the team over at Megaports . That was awesome .
Speaker 1I wanted to go to that happy hour but , you know , with with Kevin who I haven't met in person yet with Kevin and with Alexis . But then , you know , I heard about the drama . I heard about the drama . There was some drama that happened with one of the influencers . I'm clearly not , you know , I'm not at the cool kids table when it comes to that , so I steer clear of it . I'll just create my own drama . Not really . Who's got time for that , dude ? So much cool stuff is happening . Who's got time for drama between friends ? So let's see , see , let me dive into some of the other things that we're talking about .
Speaker 1Travis introduced the mcg . Oh my god , look at this , this guy . You know , when you work for a company , there's things that you could talk about and things you can't talk about . But one of the things that you see is you get to see people that you know and you respect working on products and and having . Yeah , I got to be on product management , on the , on the cisco team , on the cisco marocchi team , and I got to watch people work on products that were brand new and watch the struggles that they had and watch the victories that they had and it was really neat and I I gotta say that was one of the coolest things about working at that manufacturers . I got to see how this stuff was made and what it really takes from a team and a personal perspective for people to put into it , and so watching Travis introduce the MCG sorry , the CCG I don't know why I keep calling it . I was calling it the Baraki Gateway . It's not , it's a Cisco campus gateway . Watching this be introduced was so cool , man , and so kudos to Travis and the entire team that were able to push this thing through . If you don't know what it is , it's a campus gateway so that you can use cloud-connected access points on a campus , so that you can do seamless roaming , but across hundreds , if not thousands , of APs , and it's something that you know .
Speaker 1There's a lot of people that have a need for this with these large you know large deployments and there was no real easy , good way to do it . Juniper's got something that they have as well , but to see this introduced by Travis was super , super cool . So stoked for him that that's finally in the marketplace . I love a good product launch , especially when it's a friend that's doing it . Let's see Hamina and NetAlly partnerships deepen . Yeah , that's pretty cool Using your Sidekick to profile devices . That's happening .
Speaker 1So , aside from Cisco Live , you know the HP Discover stuff that was talked about . I don't know if there were any new models of Wi-Fi 7 that were announced
Private 5G: The Cell Phone Holster Analogy
Speaker 1at HP Discover this week . But one of the things that they talked about is the , and it was just like a big ominous slide where they talked about 5G and they talked about Wi-Fi 7 and everything that Aruba is doing , and then GreenLake AI running on top of that to bridge all of those together . So no huge announcements that I've seen yet . I've been pretty busy today . It's been a busy day , which is a good day , but I haven been pretty busy today . It's been a busy day , which is a good day , but I haven't checked and seen if there are any announcements on any new Aruba product that's out there . But the Aruba 5G private cellular products were definitely on display and I did get an image . Stu sent me an image of a Wi-Fi stand in the wild and it looked like a 5G base station that was on a wifi stand . So , uh , I guess there's got to be an upcoming 5g stand . Uh , coming to you soon to make sure that we can take advantage of that .
Speaker 1So , uh , what else is going on ? Uh , in merger news . Uh , one and a half billion dollar key sites , spirant network testing , merger this goes back to the whole tool conversation . You know . You know , spirent is has been around for a long time and keysight's got some incredible tools . But but those two tools coming together as a merger , that was an acquisition that was announced a while back and and it looks like it's finally it's finally been approved , so that's pretty good . Um , then there's the fcc man , the like .
Speaker 1I can't even comment on everything that's happening at the FCC . Uh , symington left and uh , chairman is Brandon , you know , brendan Carr . But now there's a new , another new commissioner that's been , or that's been , named Dude . There's just like a lot that's happening at the FCC right now . Um , senate confirms Olivia trustee , so a trustees at the FCC , and that's cool . I don't know much about her yet . So , let's see , let's read all this live . Let's run down the internet rabbit hole with me . Senate approval comes after FCC came to two commissioners , after Nathra Simington and Jeffrey Starks left . Yeah , they both they out and left the FCC just kind of hanging out with two commissioners . So now Senate approval for Olivia Trustee is in there . Let's see .
Speaker 1Telecom industry leaders gave high praise to Trustee for her hard work and extensive public sector experience . Next meeting is June 26th , which is mañana , tomorrow . This is a Trump nominee . Many telecom industry trade associations , blah , blah , blah , blah , blah , blah blah Doesn't say much about Jeffrey Starks . What are you going to do , man ? Senate 5345 , a long party line . So what are you going to do ? Us Senator Maria Cantwell , democrat from Washington , ranking member of the Senate Committee , said she opposed the nomination of trustees , saying Republicans' breach of longstanding practice to advance both Republican and Democratic nominees . Okay , I'm not going to even get into what the hell is going on from a political perspective , but let's just hope that Mrs Trustee is a wonderful person . I hope she's got the best interests of wireless in in her heart , deep , deep in her heart . So that's pretty cool .
Speaker 1What else is going on ? Um , here we go . What's happening with cbrs ? What is happening with cbrs ? Man , I shouldn't even look it up . Um , trying to rebrand . Rebrand cbrs and move it out of the spectrum in the space that it's already in is what's happening with cbrs ?
Speaker 1At&t's got this thing where they're saying , hey , we need to , we need to move cbrs spectrum and and and allot it . Uh , um to three . Point , let's see the 3.1 proposing to relocate from its current 3.5 gig to 3.1 to 3.3 . It would free up 3.5 to 3.7 for exclusive licensed full power 5G . So they're saying , hey , let us take over all of this other spectrum up high and we'll take all those CBRS guys and then we'll move them down . Come on , man , like we just got that spectrum .
Speaker 1The only thing that sucks about all this is that means that you know if that happens , people just made , you know , these huge investments in it and it just it's hard to want to innovate and do something if you know that people like you know , at&t and these big powers are going to sit around and try and relocate your spectrum after a while . Like why would you want to make an investment in anything if you know that lobbying money is going to turn around and move everything that you're trying to do ? Like God , it's like oh , let me just go back to five gig . You know what's going to happen with six gig . What happens when AT&T decides you know what we don't like where six gigs at . Let's go lobby against it and try and push that as well . Many CBRS users that rely on the band say it's greedy and untenable . But some wireless the idea that it's going to move something that people have made , you know , huge investments . But then again there's the question private 5G CBRS is it viable ? Is it not viable ?
Speaker 1I have a conversation that I was going to post for everybody to listen to , but we had had a lot to drink and I didn't realize how much we had had to drink until I listened to the recording , which I might post anyway , just for funsies . But it was me and a couple of other industry experts at Cisco Live sitting in a rooftop bar talking about 5G , like you do , because that's what we do , because that's you know why . Talk about the things that don't involve wireless . And I used an example , and I'm not intoxicated today , so I'm just going to go ahead and use it again . I use the example that and this is from one of my business partners . He said private business , private 5G is okay , so hold on . He told me something and here's how I applied it . Let me get that straight . He didn't say it's about private 5G . He said about something totally different , but I applied it to private 5G .
Speaker 1So private 5G is like a cell phone holster . It is purpose-built , it does the job that it's supposed to do . It works extremely well when it's used in that application and , by all means , it's the perfect accessory to a cell phone . There's just one problem . It's a cell phone holster , right and no . Like I don't know how many people are wearing cell phone holsters , but not a lot of people that I know wear them for a number of different reasons , but it's like . It's like , imagine being the CEO of the cell phone holster corporation going God , I don't get it . Like , I don't get it . This is the perfect accessory for a cell phone . Why doesn't everybody who has a cell phone buy one of these ? And imagine you're an early investor in it and you're like oh my God , a cell phone holster . That's genius . Everybody who has a cell phone is going to need one . Except they didn't Like it just never took off . People just don't use them . You know en masse , like it's just not a big thing . So private 5G and cell phone holsters have so much in common . Where does you know when does private 5G make sense for mass adoption ? I don't know .
Speaker 1That was the intoxicating conversation that I had with some great friends at WL , oh , not even at W , at Cisco Live . Maybe I'll post that because that was a lot of fun . So thought I'd bring that up , just because that was a fun conversation that we had . What else do we talk about ? Network X WBA Global Crime . I talked about all that stuff .
Speaker 1What else is going on ? I haven't even scanned the news , man . I haven't looked around to see what's happening . Just so much is going on . Wlpc voting is now open , which is awesome for Prague . So make sure , if you're planning on attending Prague , you jump on the WLPC website and you vote for the things that you want to hear . There's some really great stuff that has not been publicly announced that we're talking about doing at Prague , so I'm going to make every effort to get out there this year to talk about what we're doing , and some of that is based on what we did in Phoenix this year , which is where we all crammed into one room and then had to pull the wall apart and go into the second room so that we could do some AP testing . I think it's about time that we get serious about some AP testing and seeing what real world performance and results look like from uh access point manufacturers to that note .
Speaker 1One of the things that I'm totally excited about is sitting right behind me and and the camera blurs every once in a while , but if you look over there on this little rack that I have , there's two boxes there and there's one on the top and there's some other stuff and a keyboard and things over there . This is a testing rig from Aletheia and what this allows me to do is it allows me to take an access point and set it down and this simulates up to I think I'm up to 200 clients , so maybe 150 clients in different frequency sets . So I can do 56 gigahertz clients and 55 gig clients and 52.4 gig clients . I think is where I'm at on this one . But it allows me to run every type of saturation tests that I can think of on those access points and get real world results . And I've been working with it to make sure that I understand how it's working and what's going on with it , because if there's one thing that I have , it's a whole bunch of APs , and if there's one thing I want to know , it's how well do they actually all perform in the same environment ? And this is a test and these are things that have been done in our industry for a really long time , and so I'm curious what happens when you load tens , if not hundreds , of APs on wireless access points and how they perform , say is , if you have an access point that you're
Testing Equipment and Future Plans
Speaker 1interested in . This is a really high end piece of test equipment that is normally only found in manufacturers labs or in big labs to do stuff , and I got one sitting right here . If you're interested , let me know . Let me know which AP you want me to test . If I have a great , if I don't have it and you want to send me one , let me know and I'll test it , because my goal is to start running things on that rack and publishing the results for everybody to see .
Speaker 1Now is that a scary thing , kind of you know . But what I'm going to do is I'm going to try and calibrate it as best as possible and then I'm just going to leave the settings the way that they are . I'm going to use a specific location where I put down the wireless access point every single time . If I put it too close , mimo doesn't really get to do the thing and MLO doesn't really get to do the thing MIMO more than anything just because of where it is . So I'm going to try and maybe find a better place a little bit further away than right next to the box . But once I figure out the best place to do this , I'm going to be able to just run things through that rack over and over and over and over again .
Speaker 1Just connect and grab the results and post the results . Connect and grab the results and post the results , so we'll see what that means . Two gig , five gig , six gig . If you have anything that you want me to test , let me know . That's going to be sponsored , obviously , by Aletheia . They didn't give me any money so you know , not necessarily a sponsorship from that regard , but they did . Let me play with a really expensive piece can do with it . So kudos to them for letting me try that out on the bench and post some information for you all to see . Anyway , 43 minutes later , that's about it . I think that was a good update . I feel like that was a good update . Cisco Live really dominated the news cycle , I think for all of us that were out there . Next year it goes back to Vegas .
Speaker 1Hp Discover is happening right now . Wlpc is coming up . I can't encourage you enough to go to WLPC in Prague or in February . Make your plans now to join us at WLPC in Phoenix , where you can , you know , I don't know . Hang out with us now , have a good time and put faces to names .
Speaker 1If there's anything I didn't cover , let me know . Drop something in the comments . I appreciate everybody watching . Um , I really enjoy doing this and I wish you know's . Like I said , it's been a busy couple of weeks and I wish I got a chance to do this more , but summertime is summertime , so hopefully I get back on a regular cadence soon . Anyway , until then , I hope you all have a wonderful week .
Speaker 1If you're at Discover , enjoy HP Discover . If you have anything that you want me to talk about , something you want me to think about or something you want on the front of my mind , drop me a message , send me a hello . Uh , fernay , stew mark , uh , everybody on there , man , thank you for uh . Thank you for the comments . There's comments coming in from youtube and linkedin and everywhere else on x ? Um . September 12th through 16th . Uh , oh yeah , el 12 de septiembre . Uh is wlpc in espanol , in Valencia , spain . That's really cool . It's going to be beautiful . It'll be beautiful there . So September 12th through 16th , but that's right before Prague . So if you make it to Prague , make it to Prague . If you want to do it all in Spanish , you can make it out to Valencia . Anyway , I hope you all have a wonderful week . Thanks for listening . It's always good to catch up . I .
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