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Wi-Fi

Redesigning is Useless in Wireless – The On-Premise IT Roundtable

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Redesigns in wireless are done more for compulsive than technical need. When a new access point comes out, the entire wireless network doesn’t need a redesign, other than to satisfy the need to tinker for those managing them. We discuss if and when a redesign is actually needed, why you need to consider what’s driving your wireless refresh in the decision, and how to put a monetary value on defining a “pointless” redesign.

The Future of Sports Wi-Fi is Intelligent with Extreme Networks

Is your wireless network producing more data than you can manage? Is there a way to sort through it all to provide real information? And how does that all scale in a stadium? Tom Hollingsworth takes a look at the new hardware and software releases from Extreme Networks and how they’re working together to build the next generation of wirelessly-connected stadiums.

Ookla Acquires Ekahau – The Future of Wi-Fi Design is Speedy!

Big news! Ekahau is being acquired by Ookla, the power behind Speedtest.net. What does this mean for Ekahau? And why would a speed test website want wireless smarts? Tom Hollingsworth takes a look at both companies to find out where the synergy is between them and how this will pay dividends in the future.

Babies vs Wi-Fi

A new dad looks at babies and Wi-Fi. Seemingly entirely dissimilar. But when you start looking at troubleshooting them, some commonalities arise.

Finding the Why in Wi-Fi

Wireless IT also seems to personally effect end-users. Perhaps it’s because it’s easier for them to seemingly isolate Wi-Fi as the source of their frustration, it seems less bundled into other IT infrastructure (even if it really isn’t).

This makes these end-users both insanely frustrating, with the blanket declaration that “Wi-Fi sucks”, but also useful as the ultimate arbiter of performance. There’s generally only binary reactions of approving apathy or vocal derision.

Explaining Wi-Fi to a Non-Techie Audience

Keith Parsons of Wireless LAN Professionals comments: We’ve all been in the situation where we are trying to explain to a customer or client why their D-Link Wi-Fi Router at home works fine, but it won’t work for an enterprise deployment. After years of explaining the reasons why — I thought to build a presentation […]

Wi-Fi Analogies for Non-Technical Audience

Keith Parsons of Wireless LAN Professionals writes: I had a task to help bring a bunch of non-technical people up to speed on how/why they needed to spend funds and time to upgrade their Wi-Fi networks to support a 1:1 initiative — where each student in K-12 has a minimum of one Wi-Fi enabled device. […]

Podcast 11: Why do we have Wi-Fi controllers in the enterprise?

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Bob O’Hara, co-founder of enterprise Wi-Fi pioneer Airespace, tells the story of the origination of the controller-based architecture. He discusses the challenges of managing a multitude of access points and how a controller helped bring metrics and manageability to that market. Airespace built a centralized hierarchical system to control Wi-Fi access points in the early 2000′s and was purchased by Cisco in 2005.

Wi-Fi Stress Test Report

Here’s a fabulous resource for Wi-Fi professionals, and anyone interested in the subject. Keith Parsons “stress tested” most of the major enterprise Wi-Fi access points and his results are startling. There will likely be major controversy about this in the AP vendor space! After weeks of planning, a full week of testing, and then a […]

Detecting Un-fair Wireless Usage

John Herbert points out one surprising issue with Wi-Fi Intrusion Prevention systems: It deactivated an awesome science fair project! I had the pleasure this weekend of being one of the judges for my county’s Educational Technology Fair (the winners of which then feed up to the state Educational Tech Fair). Read more at: Detecting Un-fair […]