Pop-up Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Sensing, Backscatter & More! Waves October 2025

A polo field, a VIP tent, and thousands of devices waiting to light up—this week we take you behind the scenes of building a festival‑grade network that had to stand up fast, survive wind and wobble, and still deliver when John Mayer took the stage. We share the practical playbook: dual circuits into a gateway, 60 GHz point‑to‑multipoint for distribution, clean PoE runs to access points, and the small field hacks—like orange flags on telescoping poles—that make line of sight and troubleshooting human‑fast. Expect candid notes on channel utilization, why 2.4 GHz was a swamp, when simple tooling beats exotic analyzers, and how teardown can take ten minutes when setup is intentional.

From there, we zoom out to the bigger waves reshaping enterprise wireless. Wi‑Fi 7 adoption is climbing, which means real‑world mixed‑generation estates, careful upgrade points, and a renewed focus on telemetry and automation. We dig into the early promise of 802.11bf passive sensing—turning existing Wi‑Fi into a presence and motion sensor without new transmissions—and the rise of analog backscatter for ultra‑low‑power IoT. Privacy, consent, and coexistence aren’t afterthoughts; they’re table stakes if ambient intelligence is going to be useful and welcomed. On the competitive front, watch the split between cost‑sensitive solutions and license‑heavy premium stacks as buyers prioritize networks that “just work,” observable by default and simpler to run.

We also tackle private 5G’s steady role alongside Wi‑Fi, the reality check on satellite‑to‑device indoors, and what an FCC furlough means for approvals and product timelines. Underneath the tech is the human story: field craft, community, and a job market that’s finally moving again. If you’re looking to pivot into roles like solutions architecture or systems engineering, now’s a good moment to raise your hand—and we’re happy to make introductions where we can.

Subscribe for weekly, field‑tested insights on Wi‑Fi, sensing, and connectivity strategy, share this episode with a teammate who loves hands‑on lessons, and leave a quick review to help more builders find the show.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:30

What a happy morning, man. What a week, dude. What a week. You know, it has been uh it's been a crazy last couple weeks. I've been out of the office, getting a lot of stuff done, getting a lot of work done, having a really, a really good time. And so much has been happening in the industry since then. And oh my gosh, the FOMO is about to be real, kicking in. WLPC Prague is coming up. Oh boy, oh boy, I'm not gonna be there. Already

Catch‑up, FOMO, and WLPC Prague

SPEAKER_00 1:00

getting the text messages. So I hope everyone who's gonna be on prog has a spectacular time. Looking forward to seeing the the posts and the comments and all the great data that's gonna be coming out of that. It's gonna be pretty, pretty awesome. Let's do this. Give me a second. There we go. Let's try and change this input real quick. Make sure this is working. I missed the last couple live podcasts. I guess I hopped on LinkedIn at the right time today. It's been a bit of forever. Drew, how have you been? Josh, I'm doing good, man. It has been. It has been uh the last couple weeks have been have been really nutty. Uh but but good. You know, uh, I'm glad that the majority of the people that listen to this are people that know me or that are friends, so it's always uh it's always a good time. Um it's been crazy. I you know, let's start with that. Let's talk about what's been going on. I got to produce the the the Wi-Fi at a VIP section called the Palm Tree Club for an event called the Palm Tree Music Festival last weekend with John Mayer and Kaigo and Sophie Tucker, and this was an event that took place in Santa Barbara, California, and it was at the polo fields of the Santa Barbara Polo Fields in Montecito. It was in Montecito where one of the princes, Harry, William, I'm not up to date on the princes,

Palm Tree Music Fest VIP Wi‑Fi build

SPEAKER_00 2:20

the one that's married to Megan Markle, that one. Apparently he was a polo player there. Didn't see him, that's okay. Uh, but I got to go uh help out with the Wi-Fi there, and it was pretty neat. It was an interesting event. A couple thousand people showed up for it, and it's a pretty high-end event, and it's called Palm Tree Music Fest. So if you look them up online, you can see what they do. They produce events all across the United States and in these funsi areas and the Hamptons and in Napa and in Montecito. And so uh we got to provide the Wi-Fi out there with Eero, set everything up, got it up and running, supported. I think in our section there were like 50 tables of 10 people each or something, all jumping on watching John Mayer do the John Mayer thing. You know, I'm not I'm not not a fan. Uh I'd never seen him live. He that dude can play the guitar, I'll tell you that much. Um, that was pretty neat, but lots of lessons learned there. You know, it's it's fun to continually go out and learn about the way that people do things. And so I wanted to talk a little bit about that. Worked with a group out there that was uh that that they used to produce these events all across the US and in different places, and one of the guys that was out there with me uh did the Wi-Fi Burning Man. So I got to learn a little bit about what they do at Burning Man, what goes into that, and how long it takes. But for the nerds, I'll I'll tell you real quick the back end of it was we had two uh circuits that were delivered, two gigabit per second circuits that were out there, uh one one gig and one two gig circuits, and then those circuits were connected into uh a gateway, and then from that gateway they branched out into a point-to-multi-point 60 gigahertz. And so it was 60 gig connecting the stage area, the the artist trailer area, the VIP section, some of the merch, you know, stuff like that was all connected in via 60 gig. These little uh these little devices are about this big. And it was neat the way that that

Backhaul, 60 GHz links, and AP layout

SPEAKER_00 4:10

uh that he did it because you always learn something from some, you know, from watching someone else do a deployment. And in this case, it was neat to see uh what he did is he you know raised up the flag, these like uh extendable poles, like almost flag poles, and then at the top put big orange flags on them so you could see all across the the park, you could see wherever the orange flags were, there were connections that were taking place. And you know, I can only imagine that that comes with having done that hundreds and hundreds of times to make sure that you you figure out the easiest way to figure out where your points of presence are. Uh, and you know, overall it worked pretty well. There were some issues with one of the devices was on some of the staging, so when people would walk back and forth, the thing would just wiggle around back and forth. And so that I think that created a couple of issues, but for the most part, it worked pretty well. And uh it was a quick and rapid deployment, and then from there we branched off into one of uh into a power over Ethernet gateway, and from there into access points providing access right there in the VIP section. But it was a pretty simple deployment, and you know, just from point to multi-point, and then you know, back into by fiber and then connected to Wi-Fi on the front end. So I'm curious if you've ever done events, you know, what you've learned from doing events, you know, channel utilization was through the roof. Five gig was was was super, super high. Up uh, you know, up higher into the spectrum was crazy. No six, no outdoor six gig uh that I saw that was deployed there, and then uh 2.4. 2.4 is pretty trashed, as you can imagine. You know, and the tools that I used when I was out there this weekend or this past weekend,

Tooling, utilization, and on‑site lessons

SPEAKER_00 5:40

I I have my go-tos and my kit. Um, but you know what I used a lot of on this one was Wi-Fi Explorer Pro, obviously, and connected to the OSIM uh device for six gig scanning and for five gig scanning. So it was really that was the most simple kit I think that I'd use in a while, where I just used my laptop as the main hub for everything. Didn't I I didn't fire up any of the other spectrum analyzers, I was only doing two and five gigs, so I didn't need anything crazy. Channel utilization gets reported on the dashboards of the Euro access points I had deployed out there, so I was able to see that. Um, but I didn't there wasn't any crazy troubleshooting that was going on because it just did what it was supposed to do. So it was great to be out there using some simple tools to get a network done uh as simply as possible and stand it up and ran it throughout the course of the event. And it was really, it was really cool. It was a lot of fun. Um and then I got to see John Mayer, which I had never seen before. So there was that. Uh let's see, outdoor large events are wild, everything is temporary and comes together at the last minute. Really fun to deploy and support. Yeah, they are. It's one of those where it's like it's fun until something breaks, yeah. You know, uh luckily it's you know, if you've done it enough times, you you have it down pat, right? You know exactly what to install, how to install it, and what to do. The one thing that was a variable that we were not expecting, or two things that were variables. One is a crazy windstorm came in and actually knocked the main mast of that 60 gig point to multi-point over. And then the second was there was a

Event hiccups: wind, staging, and teardown

SPEAKER_00 7:03

polo match the day of the event. So the whole morning was taken up by a polo match. They have polo match at the polo fields in Santa Barbara, Montecito, you say. Um, so that was pretty interesting to see the crowds. You had a polo crowd on one side, and then you had all these people that were like festival goers on the other side. So that was pretty interesting to watch. But overall, it was a pretty neat event. Not the first live event I've done, not the last live event that I'm sure that I'll do, but that one, you know, there were no big major challenges. It was like a mini coachella, so you're sitting in the middle, you know, same same concept, right? You're sitting in the middle of a polo field, and you got to stand up a network for a couple thousand people and then tear it all down and pack it up. And obviously, you know, setting it up took took about, you know, took a couple hours to get everything set up, and but mostly running cables and making sure it power was was where it needed to be, and then tear down took like 10 minutes. Threw everything in a in a plastic, you know, case, a big nanit case, and then ship that thing off. But it was a great, it was a great show. It was fun to be a part of. And coming up, um, I've got some really fun stuff coming up. I'm doing an overnight install. Uh, I like those where you the business operates during the day, so we've got to shut down and do everything at night. So that's coming up uh next week. I'll be at the Wispapalooza event next week um in Las Vegas. So it's uh it's gonna be really cool. And if any of you know me from the old Wisp days, it's gonna be neat to see some old faces that are out there and be a part of that event. So I'm showing up Wednesday morning and I'll be there Wednesday, Thursday for Wispapalooza. So it'll be good to see some old faces out there in the crowd, some people that I haven't seen in a while. Um but that's coming right out right on the heels of a of a really neat install that I'll have more details about later. What else we got going on? Um yeah, it's just

Upcoming installs and Wispapalooza plans

SPEAKER_00 8:51

been it's been a lot of back and forth. I know that resonates with with a lot of y'all. And for those of y'all, if anyone's out in the job market and you're looking for a job and you want to do something and get involved with projects like this, I have seen posting after posting after posting on LinkedIn for jobs, which is such a cool thing because for a while it there was an issue where that it didn't seem like there were a lot of jobs to be had, and people who are doing what we do didn't have a place that they could go and and do the things that they love. And I just keep seeing so many jobs posted online. Um, if something pops up and you're in my network and you need an introduction, let me know. I've been making introductions for a handful of y'all already. I know that we're hiring where I work at Eero, and I know that there's a lot of other people that are hiring right now. So if you're still in the market for a job or if you want to make a move or something's happening, please feel free to reach out. Let me know what's going on, whether it's solution architecture, system engineering, uh, whatever's happening. So there's a lot of there's a lot of really neat stuff that's that's uh that's happening there in the space. So, you know, I look forward to seeing you out in the field. Um what else? Very different crowds. Did you see different take rates and client device types between the polo match and the music fest? So they were separate networks. Um the network at the polo field was a Meraki network, dude. It was like an overbuilt Meraki network. Whoever did the Meraki install at the Santa Barbara Polo Club, that's a that's a lot. There's a lot of Meraki in that spot. Uh and it, I mean it works, I'm sure it does. There's a lot of there's there's probably a lot of people to go out there and take in the event, but um I didn't I didn't have any access to that. So no, I didn't I didn't see it. Um yeah,

Hiring boom and community networking

SPEAKER_00 10:28

uh there's golly, I mean there's just I feck there's a lot going on. So so I want to jump into some of the the headlines and stuff that are out there. LinkedIn seems to have really taken off in the last year, so as a place for the Wi-Fi community to land online. Uh I couldn't agree more, man. Uh really. That's you know, for a while we were all on X and or you know, Twitter at the time, X at the time, whatever it is, and a lot of us have moved past that. I posted something the other day, like yesterday, I wanted uh I wanted to see if anyone had an invite code to Sora. So if you have an invite code, let me know because there's some funny stuff that I want to make. But um, but I posted it, and usually when you would post something like that on X before, it would just like immediately you've had 30 people that would respond. But there's so few people I feel that are actually on that platform anymore for various reasons. But part of it is that you know, a lot of us just don't. I mean, let me try and fix my camera here. It's just been uh the place has been kind of a

Polo vs festival networks and Meraki sighting

SPEAKER_00 11:23

suck lately, to be honest. And LinkedIn has done a really good job of connecting people with work-only related stuff. So I would agree. I think that that LinkedIn has really has really shown uh its colors. And I, you know, I've been so busy, I haven't even posted a lot of stuff on social media. I got to meet some social media experts, uh, some crazy social media nerds, man. Sean Walchief and the team over at Cali Barbecue Media. What a fun group of people to work with. This guy started a barbecue restaurant in Southern California, and let me see if I don't destroy the story. Uh basically, he started a barbecue restaurant and started posting a lot of content on social media, did a really good job with it. That content took off, and some of the manufacturers and vendors he worked with started to use him to produce more content. And now this guy's like a crazy restaurant influencer, and uh, you know, he's he's so much fun to hang out with. I had a great time with their team. You'll see some content being published with with this ugly mug on

Social platforms, creators, and content

SPEAKER_00 12:18

on some of it, uh, you know, me and my my face for radio. Um you'll see you'll see some new content being posted for some of the events that we did at that uh at that event. Uh, some some content posted from the John Mayer concert at Palm Tree. Um, they were out there with us. I got to meet them and learn a little bit and watch them. It was, you know, if you are doing any type of uh production or or social media or anything you want to learn more about it, the best thing you can do is find some of these people and watch them. A lot of people don't mind sharing their stories and their secrets or and whatnot. Um, at least the ones that I've met, they're really fun to be with, and they'll give you tips and they'll say, hey, you know what? I watched your podcast, and what you should do is you know, don't do this or do that. And then of course I don't listen to them, but you know, that's why I stick at a thousand subs. 1,600 subs, I think we're at. Although I do have one video on TikTok. If you're not following me on TikTok, I have a video that has 66,000 views on there that I didn't realize had 66,000 views, and it's the video where I I pretend to do the ASMR. I'm gonna make my daughter's lunch today. And instead of putting in lunch, I put in SFP connectors and flipper zeros. So if you haven't seen that ridiculous video, uh please go watch it. It's really dumb. Uh, and it was a lot of fun. And you know what? I used to think that the people that made a lot of these videos, like the goofy, the goofy videos, I was like, oh, they're not taking it seriously, you know, watching Alexis do her dances and whatever. And then it's like, and then I'm like, hey, that's really fun. You know, after after talking to Alexis and getting to know her a little bit and watching what she does online, I'm like, that's just looks like fun. Like, who am I to judge? That looks like you're having a good time. Speaking of uh, speaking of uh friends in the industry, there is a new podcast, uh Life Life in the Uptime, Life in Uptime, is that what it's called?

AI‑aided news scanning and research

SPEAKER_00 14:06

I don't know. Uh, there's uh um Kevin Nans and Alexis have a new podcast on the Packet Pushers Network. So go take a listen to them. They're gonna be interviewing and talking to people about how they got where they are and what they're doing, and how you know, maybe sharing some stories about how that's getting there. So kudos to them for launching the podcast. And and uh you know, it was funny to listen to the first episode and then watch some of the outtakes where they're like, we suck at this and we don't know what we're doing. Uh, you know what? Everybody sucks at it, and nobody knows what they're doing the first time they cut one of these things. I've been, you know, I don't even know how many episodes I have out now, and nobody really ever really knows what they're doing unless you hire a full production team to do everything. So so kudos to you guys for for kicking it off. I'm really looking forward to seeing um seeing and hearing more. Um, it's a fun, a fun one to listen to. Packet Pushers does a really good job. There's lots of great content on that network. JJ's got a podcast, Keith has a podcast, and now Alexis and Kevin have theirs on there too. So kudos to you guys for doing that and uh to Packet Pushers for for kicking that off. Um but yeah, it's uh the guys from Cali Barbecue were a lot of fun to hang out with. So if you if you ever need a good contact in the restaurant space, you need someone to shoot some video or do some media, the Cali Barbecue team is pretty, pretty dope. All right, let's see. What do we got going on? There there's a there's a few things I wanted to look at here, and what I started to do, you know, not for full transparency, I started to run all these little scripts on Chat GPT and you know, uh Anthropic Claude and just trying to scrape and find news and see if there's a better way to do it than what I've been doing historically in the past, which is RSS feeds, because I love RSS feeds, but then at one point I was like, Drew, you're a moron. You could be using AI to look through those RSS feeds for you and pull out things that you wouldn't normally talk about. So I have this, I'm I'm trying to learn more about the way that I that I get information about what's happening in the industry. And some of it's kind of lame uh and but important. Like there's no fun, I don't think, in talking about it, but it's still important. Such as item number seven, enterprise wireless land market jumps 16% in quarter two, and Wi-Fi 7 shares double. You know, it sounds like a lame headline, but then you realize that that's the industry that we all work in. Uh Del Oro, our good friend Sean, reports that the enterprise wireless land market grew 16% year over year in Q2 of 25, driven by a jump in Wi-Fi 7 adoption, shares doubling from 13% to 26%. The pace of Wi-Fi 7 uptake signals that many enterprises will need to plan for mixed generation deployments, new APs, license models, and interoperability challenges. A good talking point here, it says that I should use is creating upgrade paths where to inject Wi-Fi 7 without disrupting legacy clients, cost versus benefit. When is the performance or features of Wi-Fi 7 actually justify the spin? I don't know. Uh you know, these are these are questions for the audience, I guess you will. Um, but definitely keep an eye on monitoring and analytics tools to ensure that diagnostics can support those multi and mixed generation networks. Um Corvo, Wi-Fi 8's quote, ultra high reliability quote, of focus signal shift in next generation direction. So there was an interview about Wi-Fi 8 and and what it consists of. And it's time, I guess, to start talking more about Wi-Fi 8, reliability, coordination between multiple access points, interference management, real world performance peaks. Um this is the whole mission critical, latency sensitive buzzword,

Wi‑Fi 7 adoption and mixed estates

SPEAKER_00 17:55

buzzword, buzzword, um, deployment of what Wi-Fi 8 brings to the table versus what was seen in Wi-Fi 6, 6E, 7. Now 8 is focused on ultra-reliability. So that should be coming out. So look for that interview from Corvo. Q O R V O. That's happening. Um check this out. I don't I don't know how to say it. I should have asked Chat GPT how to say it. Legiro, Legiro, L E G G I E R O. Legiro introduces an analog backscatter method that embeds analog sensor data into Wi-Fi CSI measurements in real time without using a microcontroller, achieving ultra low power, and maintaining Wi-Fi throughput performance using backscatter. Wi-Fi backscatter. Fantastic. Um, this is a path for passive sensors, battery, battery-free sensors, or the ones that just have the little loop in them, uh, to piggyback onto existing Wi-Fi infrastructure without degrading performance. For large-scale IoT sensing deployments, this might shift how we integrate sensors with wireless LAN. So the analog embedding uh works by it's trend it's transparent to Wi-Fi and it works by offering backscatter power to some of these sensors that are out there. Um the the sampling rate, the noise is there, interference is still going to be an issue, especially with Wi-Fi, and then overall sensor fidelity

Wi‑Fi 8 reliability and coordination

SPEAKER_00 19:10

and making sure it sensors work the way that they're supposed to. Uh, it might have some issues right now moving into it. But it's something to think about if you're designing a network, the future of what Wi-Fi is going to bring, not just for Wi-Fi data, but for all of these other things, which leads me into Doppler Radiance field guided antenna selection, which I'm not gonna talk about yet, but what I am gonna talk about is 802.11 BF multiband passive sensing. This is reusing existing Wi-Fi signals for sensing. Now, I'm gonna I gotta set

Backscatter sensors riding Wi‑Fi

SPEAKER_00 19:45

my little screen share so you guys can see what I'm looking at here. If I tap this button right there, that's not gonna go because now my freaking stream deck isn't working the way that I'm supposed to. Give me a second, let me mess with my uh my settings on OBS. Anyway. Let's see here. Let me open this up real quick and show you guys what I'm looking at, because this is pretty this is pretty cool. Come on. There it is. There it is. Yay! The internet worked. Multi-ban passive sensing, reusing Wi-Fi signals for sensing. So this is something that just went through IEEE and IEEE uh uh covers it. And let me see, where is the is this the link right there for it? Add the linking way. So 80211 BF. What this does is this leverages existing Wi-Fi signals, and this is important to note because this does not interrupt your Wi-Fi service. It works. I believe there's there's chipset modifications that need to take place, and uh you know, absolutely firmware modifications that need to take place. But what's great about this is it's using existing Wi-Fi infrastructure, and it's using these signals to do sensing infrastructure. Now we've heard about this and we've talked about it. This was shown off at Wi-Fi Now, it's been showed off at WBA. A lot of people have seen this, but now the there's a there's a IEEE 80211 BF standardization effort has been formally submitted. Um channel state information from sub 7 gig and millimeter wave enhances signal band passive sensing accuracy using a novel model called uh Milagro, right? Yeah, milagro, miracle, milagro. Um the system demonstrates robust performance across different scenarios, including monitoring human presence in workspaces and tracking movement in corridors. Experimental results show

802.11bf passive sensing arrives

SPEAKER_00 21:47

how we improve the performance of single band passive sensing approaches um uh sensing, uh proposing measures to mitigate potential risks. The system addresses key security issues. The work advances the use of Wi-Fi for passive sensing by reducing reliance on active sensing and extending the capabilities of low-cost, non-intrusive environmental um sensing. So you can do this for home automation, remote health monitoring, security, people that are trying to break in. Here's all the the deal, gesture recognition, in-car sensing, localization, and object tracking. This is now a thing, man. It's it's coming out, and 802.11 BF is in there. So I wonder who the first manufacturer to start to support this is gonna be. Like who's gonna be the first manufacturer that says, hey, we're gonna integrate this? Is it gonna be uh enterprise? Is it gonna be residential? Is it gonna be small business? I'm curious where this is gonna land. I would imagine residential. Um, if you're thinking about security systems, I would imagine that this changes the way that security systems work for sensing. So, you know, and we've seen demos of this before, but now that that this is actually a thing, that's uh it's fascinating to learn about. Um, you know, I did ask, I did ask uh the AIs right here about this, and I asked uh if it if it interferes with anything that's happening, and uh according to AI, it doesn't, which is pretty neat. But again, smart home, human competitor computer interaction, retail, augmented reality. Um, product certification next, it says the Wi-Fi lines will likely work on a certification program to ensure interoperability, market option, and then key privacy and security concerns. Um, passive sensing, Wi-Fi sensing devices do not transmit new signals, instead, they listen to existing Wi-Fi signals that are already part of normal network communications, such as beacon frames. It has no impact on existing data transfer because it uses network traffic that is already present. Dude, that is so boss. You just need, I mean, do you just need like a little box to add on to your access point, or does it work on the same firmware? I have so many questions here, and I can't wait to see where this goes. Active sensing, new signals are transmitted for more detailed measurement. The 80211 BF standard includes MAC layer modifications for coordinating these sensing sessions, which if you have any of these enterprise grade radios, or if you've got devices that have multiple radios, I mean it's not a far stretch of the imagination to think that these radios chipsets can now be used, you know, when one's not transmitting data, then the other one can be doing Wi-Fi sensing or vice versa. Allow sensing devices to negotiate for channel access, ensuring that sensing transmissions are scheduled to prevent collisions and interfere. Sensing is performed using

Use cases, privacy, and coexistence

SPEAKER_00 24:25

the same radio frequencies, 2, 4, 5, and 6 and 60 for you by Tsing 60, maximizes the efficiency of the spectrum. And it's backwards compatible. So check this out. The standard provides basic support for sensing while ensuring backwards compatibility with legacy 802.11 devices that do not have sensing capabilities. Isn't that cool? This is so cool, man. And then, you know, it talks about coexistence challenges for high network, you know, high density networks. If you think about dude, turn this on a stadium. Oh my god. Nope, let's not do that. I wonder what that would look like. Uh, so there's there's lots going on there, and then on top of that, you've got the backscatter stuff that's happening, and then you've got Doppler Radiance field guided antenna selections. So there's this is another one that I need to dig more into before I start talking about it. Like I know it, but it's another way for uh using Wi-Fi-based human uh activity recognition. So, you know, understanding where people are and how they are. There's uh there's a lot of stuff that's that's that's there, man. So this is using the Wi-Fi not for Wi-Fi, but for for other things. And, you know, if we look at whether it's backscatter using it to power devices, or whether it's using uh, you know, different types of antenna selections in order to find out where people are, now we're starting to see that Wi-Fi is becoming more and more just a critical part of the infrastructure that entire organizations and companies and services are going to be built off of. Because, you know, who's gonna be the first startup in the sensing space that works with you know existing equipment manufacturers so that they can take that data and do incredible things with it, do people counting, do tracking, do telemetry, uh, understand environments, you know, um work with with groups like you know, the what's the one that does like all the motion sensing inside businesses to turn Schneider, like Schneider Electric, how are they gonna leverage this thing to turn rooms on and off, to adjust based on how many people are there and change the thermostat? I mean, there's so much that's gonna be built on things like this, where now that Wi-Fi has been fully established as a mechanism and a communications medium, now what else can you do with it,

Beyond Wi‑Fi: sensing and startups

SPEAKER_00 26:31

right? And along those lines, you know, I'm having so much fun. You guys know what I've been doing with Signal Room, watching Signal Room grow and do some incredible things with Signal Roam as well, and using you know the whole YDAS component of it and using cellular offload and being able to offload neutral host networks onto Wi-Fi so that you could take advantage of this robust Wi-Fi network that's been built to really offer high quality of service in venue and out of venue. You're looking, you're just seeing all these things that are popping up that are Wi-Fi related but non-Wi-Fi related, and it's just so encouraging as we move into I feel like this next life of where Wi-Fi is. And part of that, right? Uh you know, to be honest, part of that is understanding that that we're at a point where all of the stuff that you had to do to get Wi-Fi to work the way that you needed it to do to solve your problem, man, that's like so 2005, right? We're in this, we're in this period now where Wi-Fi is just supposed to work, right? It's just supposed to do what it's what it what it's meant to do, and deployment should be easy, and administration should be easy, and we're we're at a level where there's all these companies that are doing it. Why can't everybody just make it as simple as possible for Wi-Fi to work the way that it's supposed to? You know, I'm having a good time doing the things that I'm doing in that space, and there's other companies out there, meter, for example, doing it in a completely different way, where they're automating all the things that happen on the back

Neutral host, offload, and Signal Roam

SPEAKER_00 28:05

end to make it, you know, uh easy and and to do what it's supposed to do. And I think that we're entering this period now where networks aren't the networks that they used to be. And you know, I don't want to harp on AI too much, but really I love the idea that we're at this period where you can leverage simplicity and and ultra-lible functionality of devices because of lessons learned with AI. And so when you take it, whether it's in home or with whether it's in enterprise, when you start to leverage what the network can do once a network understands itself with AI, um, I think we're at this really cool period where everything is just supposed to work. And and and it does, you know, in some of these deployments, it just does. It does what it's supposed to do. And uh, and that's that's really neat to see. I'm looking forward to the advances that are gonna come out. I know um meter has their conference, meter up coming coming up uh in November. The meter up conference is gonna be really interesting to watch because there's lots of thought leaders that are gonna be there, and they're all you know, a lot of people have aligned behind this organization to watch what they're doing with the AI components and with the automated components and and really extending that enterprise capability of Wi-Fi networking and networking overall forward. It's a connectivity company, right? It's not, it's it's we're getting

Simplicity, AI, and “just works” networks

SPEAKER_00 29:21

this age where companies are connectivity companies. They're not, it's not a Wi-Fi company, it's a connectivity company. It's getting people connected, right? And that's you know, that's the ethos that we have at Eero. That's that's what's we're seeing in other organizations, is just we're just getting people connected, and it's such a cool thing because now that opens up opportunity to do a whole lot of other stuff. Uh oh, look, everybody's got a couple comments on here. Let's see, Eva, I miss Eva. Oh man, I miss you, Eva. I saw the the uh the post uh with the sad face where you were asking about uh about who's coming in for Wyco. Um if you're in the DC area and and you want to go see something cool and hang out with some nerds, go check out Wyco in DC. I dude, I can't keep up with all the Wycos. I man, and I still have yet to go to one. I I wish I had I wish I had the bandwidth to to make it out to every single one of those events, man. But there's just I'm having like this is this is the thing, right? I was thinking about this the other day. I've been getting Instagram, you know, my algorithm is talking about the work-life balance. Apparently

Market shifts: cost vs premium vendors

SPEAKER_00 30:23

it knows what my travel schedule is. And and the CEO of Pepsi, the ex-CEO of Pepsi, I I got sent this this comment uh from my wife about the ex-CEO of Pepsi, how the work life balance was ridiculous, how you have to work, how you have to be good at one thing at one time and be good at another thing at another time. And and part of that, right, us as nerds in the industry and in the space, is how do you balance out doing the stuff that you want to do versus the stuff that you have to do, right? And and part of that also is you know, I take pride in having a um I don't know if you'd see me rubbing my hand. I take pride in having calluses on my hand because it means that I'm actually out doing something. Uh, you don't get calluses from a keyboard unless they're on your fingertips. I've never gotten calluses on my fingertips, but uh maybe I don't write that much code. But I love the idea that that I'm in a position where I get to get out in the field and do the things that to me matter. I love getting hands-on, I love breaking stuff, I love seeing things break and then fixing them and then getting creative on how to do it. And I think that it not the work-life balance, but the work-work balance, you know. Uh I I know that there's a certain uh dreadful group of people like myself, you know, sadistic people who love to get out in the field and get sunburned installing stuff and climb towers and still do that so that we can go back and have conversations about it. But I'm wondering how much, I mean, how many of us are there? Are there a lot of people like that who just really still enjoy everything? And Eva, I think about you on this because you, you know, you've transitioned to a new role and and and it's you know it's fun to watch. And I know a lot of us have moved roles back and forth, but how do you, you know, how do you balance out getting into a position like can you go from working in the field to behind a desk? Or

Nostalgia, old gear, and perspective

SPEAKER_00 32:11

how do you how do you make time to go out in the field and do things? And then there's the other side of it, which is how do you continue, how do you find the time to go to events like Wico? How do you find the time to make the time to go to events like WLPC? And how do you balance out learning and networking? And and let's be frank, some of it is just sitting around table and talking to friends and talking to people that are you know like-minded as you. How do you balance out the work, the field work, the office work, the learning, the education, the downtime? It can be a lot, man. And I'm you know, I think we all have our seasons, to quote my wife. Uh, we all have our seasons of different things. Like right now, I feel like I'm in the season where I'm just like nose down, digging into getting stuff up and running and working with it and tearing it apart and putting it back together again. And I'm having a real good time doing that. I had, you know, the podcast season, I try and keep up with it. It's I I guess I don't do it as much as I should, but it's really it's really fascinating to see it. So I wish I had time to go out to the WICO stuff. Um, but I did I there's just so many of them, they're just so difficult to keep up with for me, just because it seems like now there's an event happening every month, and it's like, oh, I want to go, I want to go, I want to go. But uh I'm being picky and choosy. It didn't, you know, again, the FOMO is gonna kick off because Prague starts next week and I'm not gonna be there. Uh, but you know, I hope everyone that's going has a tremendous time because WLPC prog is is nothing to shake a stick at. All right, let's see. What else do I have going on here in the news? Those were uh I think those were like last week's deal. Backscatter, enterprise wireless land jumping 16%.

Work‑work balance and field time

SPEAKER_00 33:45

That's that's pretty cool. Private 5G to double share of enterprise wireless sales by 2030. Check this out. Anless firm mobile experts forecasts that private 5G will grow its share of enterprise wireless infrastructure from 10% to 20% by 2030, especially in industrial verticals. Uh yeah, I mean that gives us four years, five years to figure it out to go from 10 to 20. That's that doesn't seem like the hockey stick it was supposed to be, right? Doesn't seem like that's supposed to jump as high as it was. Private cellar gains ground. There's gonna be overlap competition coordinated with enterprise Wi-Fi. I don't I don't necessarily agree with that. I still think I uh there's no 5G versus you know 5G versus Wi-Fi. I think they're both complementary. I think that that you need both in a in a perfect world, you have both. What has been fascinating to watch is the whole 5G from outer space thing and people thinking that uh a signal that's beamed down from low earth orbiting satellites can penetrate a roof and get down, and now I don't have a need for a terrestrial carrier anymore because I'm just gonna talk to space all the time. That's awesome. Good luck with that. Talk to Iridium. Uh, let them let me know how well their phones work indoors for now. Don't know that that's gonna be a viable uh concept, but maybe I'm missing something. And and I've maybe I am. Maybe there's a different modulation or a different thing that they're doing, or it's different frequencies I'm not thinking about. But it's been fascinating to watch people think that uh space is gonna save everything when it comes to indoor coverage. I'm like, oh, I don't know about all that. Uh propagation rules being what they are, uh, I'm not really sure that we haven't met a wizard yet, but you know, I'd love to meet a wizard soon who can actually change what RF does. Um, what else is happening? Oh, this is crazy, man. 88%. That is the number of FCC employees that are furloughed. Due to the government shutdown beginning October 1st, 2025, where it's uh October 9th now, the FCC has furloughed 88% of its workforce,

Private 5G, satellites, and reality

SPEAKER_00 35:51

halting non-essential functions, including licensing and equipment authorization tasks, the delay or suspension of approvals for new devices, access points, models, test labs, spectrum, validation, all of that is now slowed down, uh procurement slowed down, regulatory compliance checks are slowed down, enterprise and service provider information is slowed down. Uh I mean, what are you gonna do? This is the US, it's the US doing the US thing, government shutting down, uh, physics is undefeated, no joke, man. Um, yeah, so if you're trying to get stuff through the FCC, I hope you know somebody there. Because right now, with 88% of its workforce uh furloughed, uh, that's crazy. We we still don't know how long the government shut down the states is gonna take, but now's a tough one. You know, I was reading an article this morning about how travelers are rethinking a lot of air travel because air traffic control is being affected and furloughed by the by this whole thing, also. And I've got like three flights next week, so I hope it doesn't hit me too hard. Um, those are some some of the news items that were taking place. What else? Um Cambium networks cranking out new Wi-Fi 7 APs and wired access gear. Um, this is part of that whole Xerus thing, and dude, the naming convention is

FCC furloughs and device approvals

SPEAKER_00 37:05

just brutal. X755X. I don't know, man. This this is a naming convention, it's just tough. Enterprise WLAN market up 16%. We already talked about that. Uh oh, check this out. According to Wi-Fi now, oh, so Klaus has a roundup that was cited here. He was citing Del Oro. So I'm gonna talk about Wi-Fi now, talking about Del Oro 16 year over year growth. Uh, we already know that doubling 13% to 26%. Ubiquity Comscope Ruck is Juniper all make gains, pointing to a uh bifurcation between cost sensitive versus feature licensing premium. Okay, okay. This is a this to me is the fascinating one. Watching who's making gains in the space and having the ubiquities and the ingeniouses of the world growing in market share and having the other big contenders either staying stagnant or not growing as fast as they were supposed to. Cost sensitive versus feature licensing premium. Dude, we knew this was coming. WLPC two years ago, we knew this was coming, WLPC last year we saw this one coming. There's a lot of questionable things that are happening in the quote unquote big enterprise space. The Juniper Aruba HPE thing, the Cisco Meraki thing, how all that's playing out. If we're

New Wi‑Fi 7 gear and naming woes

SPEAKER_00 38:25

starting to see some numbers of how that's playing out, uh we knew that was coming, man. We knew that was coming. Uh it's it's gonna be interesting to watch um equip people make equipment purchasing decisions no longer based on just like like overall brand uh not awareness, but you know, uh what loyalty. Brand loyalty. I think that we're in a spot now where it's giving rise to to companies who you wouldn't traditionally think are in those spaces, or new companies that are coming into the marketplace where people just want Wi-Fi that works, they just want connectivity that works, and now there's enough um

Community events and career moves

SPEAKER_00 39:14

variety in the marketplace where people can make decisions that that aren't the same that they made and or that they would have made had all these companies maintained stability over the last, you know, over the last 10 years, right? And part of that is it also goes back to learning curve, administrative curve, you know, all these things that people think about. And when you when you think about devices that are just supposed to work, and in comes AI, you know, the great the the great leveler, right? In comes AI to say, hey, you don't have to have a CCIE to deploy a network that's capable of supporting everything that's out there. And hey, you may not even need all this crazy equipment in order to do the things that you want to do, and hey, you may not even need all of these services that you've been paying for. Woo, buddy, we're getting into a fun time. So I'm curious to see uh how the numbers start to flesh out between what we assumed was gonna happen in the industry and uh and what it is now. So d uh that's that's crazy, man. What else do we have on here? Um let's see, what's the hey Drew? You should talk about things. Oh man, speaking speaking of old school manufacturers, I was I I took a trip to West Texas for my birthday. If you know me, you know that I love getting out in the middle of nowhere in West Texas and went out to Marfa with the family and chilled out. And we walked through the hotel Rio Paisano, and if you look on my Instagram or you look on my Twitter, I saw an original old school Meraki access point. The hotel still has them installed, not working, they're installed, and it was just really neat to walk up and see something really, really old with the with the old blip

Travel plans: shows and meetups

SPEAKER_00 40:50

logo and and everything. It was really cool to see that. I almost asked if I could just take one home, but I don't even know like what if they would know what I'm talking about or if they would think I was completely weird. But I got to see some old, old Rocky AP out in the wild. Um that was kind of cool. You know, it's always fun to get to get I get sentimental about stuff, right? And it's always fun to see something that just really takes you back to the idea of why you're doing what you're doing and how you started and what the industry looked like when you started and the things that you used to think were cool. Dude, I remember, you know, before the I when I was a kid in my room, I had a picture of an NEC 17-inch monitor on my wall and a silicone graphics indigo right beside it. And those that was like my goal board. I was like, I really want a 17-inch monitor. Uh I'm just turning it like a 28-inch monitor right now. I just wanted a 17-inch monitor, and then like it's someday I just want an SGI desktop to be able to play with, and I remember the feeling of all of the tech that I wanted and all the things that I wish that I could get my hands on. Uh, and when I was just like yearning or dying to be a part of the tech industry, and now it's you know, it's it's fun to have a flashback to that and see something and be like, man, I remember when when that came out. I remember you know hearing about that product and thinking, whoa, this is gonna change everything. And now now I've worked there, you know, and now I've seen how the sausage is made, and now I'm in this unique position. And I think that that's I think that that's really cool. So don't ever lose that that spark when you see something that reminds you of it. Don't ever lose that spark, because it's really cool to see, it's really cool to see things and you know take a minute to appreciate where you are and what you're doing. And that's kind of I think that's part of the deal with you know, to go back and talk about that podcast. Um the the uh Kevin, who I have not met yet in person, uh that uh that those two are working on because it's the the whole idea that how did you get started, what are you doing, and and where are you moving forward. So the the podcast with Alexis and Kevin, I think is gonna be really neat. I hope there's some good some good characters on there. Um

Closing thoughts and AI takeaways

SPEAKER_00 43:05

what else do we want to talk about? I think that's it. There's a lot of there's just a lot of stuff happening, and I think I think that we're all in a really cool spot. I think that the industry, and I mean that in the industry, and if you if you're not working for someone that you wish you were working for, um try. Try. Um re if if I know them, reach out to me. If a friend of yours knows them, reach out to them. Now's a great time to be in the industry and to get to find a position doing something that you love and that you're passionate about. There are a lot of openings right now, there's a lot of movement happening in the industry at all sides, right? You've got the big enterprise sides trying to figure out how they're gonna maintain market share, and then you've got the smaller sides that are getting scrappy trying to figure out how they can take that market share from the big guys. So you're seeing that now with those numbers that were reported by Del Oro, right? So now's a cool time when there's a lot of movement happening, and I hope that you all are having as much fun doing wireless as I'm as I am, because I'm having a hell of a time doing it, and and uh testament to that is how I haven't had a podcast in a while. Uh Eva says the shutdown is personal for us, my other half is furloughed without pay, but such is life in DC. Yeah, dude, that's that's tough, man. That's tough. There's a lot of crazy things happening in in the US right now. Um, but you know, this this too shall pass. Anyway, I hope y'all have a wonderful weekend. Um I it's great to jump on and have these conversations and have people go back and forth. Like I said, I'm gonna be super FOMO'd out next week when everyone's out in Prague. So I hope everybody at WLPC Prague has a great time. Looking forward to seeing everybody at WLPC Phoenix. I will be the next couple shows I'm gonna be at, I'll be at the MurTech Executive Conference in uh in Orlando talking about uh Wi-Fi and hanging out with some old friends in that space. I'll be at the Wispapalooza show uh on Tuesday, uh or I'm sorry, uh Wednesday, Thursday of next week. So if you're in Vegas at Wispapalooza, come by and say hi to me. Um I'll be at those two, and then Amazon's big show, reInvent, is happening in December. I'll be out there for that. If you're if you uh are an Amazon customer, if you're doing stuff with Amazon or if you're gonna be at ReInvent, drop me a note and uh I'll send you an invite to something really cool that we're doing out there. It's gonna be really neat. Euros putting on a hell of a hell of a thing out there, so send me a note. And then uh next after that is the crazy month of January. CES, National Retail Federation, my anniversary, one of my kids' birthdays, lots of stuff happening in January. If you've never gone to CES and you want to go and you're looking for people to go with, drop me a message. Uh there's a little group of us that gets together now and we go just walk the show floor and stuff together. So if you've never been to CES, you want to go see how all of the technology that we work on every day is going to be making its way into people's homes and into their pockets and whatnot, CES is the spot to make that happen. If you're gonna be at National Retail Federation, NRF, in January in New York, that's where you get to see how the businesses and retail and restaurants and stuff are gonna use that tech. So drop me a message if you want to hang out at any of those. Anyway, that is my 45 minutes. Thank you for listening. I do appreciate it. Lots of steady listeners, lots of people commenting. Um, really neat. Last comment here from Josh: the enterprise Wi-Fi market is in a period of transition, moving from what you've described to an era of automated, intent-based networking with massive telemetry streams, simplified into actionable insights. What companies will get from this is the ability to uh reallocate internal technical resources to projects and take other than just babysitting networks. I couldn't agree more. This goes back to that whole conversation of it's not AI that's gonna take your job, it's people that know how to effectively use AI to offload the stuff that is the the boring uh you know uh tasks in the network so that they can focus on really becoming information technology specialists. That's what AI is gonna do. We're about to kick this whole freaking thing into high gear, uh, and I can't wait for it. Can't wait for it. Anyway, hope to see y'all soon.