October 9, 2024 • 52 mins
Discover the secrets to seamless wireless networking with our special guest, Alex Marquodont, a rising star in network engineering from Atomic Data. This episode promises to transform your understanding of wireless network design, from tackling high-density environments like Major League Soccer stadiums to mastering outdoor arena Wi-Fi. Alex's journey from a sysadmin to a Game Day Technologies specialist is nothing short of inspiring, and his passion for creating robust wireless solutions shines through every minute of our conversation.
Get ready to dive deep into Wi-Fi network planning. We uncover essential strategies, such as the importance of site surveys and predictive modeling, and how these elements are crucial for designing effective, high-density wireless networks. Alex shares invaluable tips on collaborating with on-site personnel and balancing cutting-edge technology with client needs. From managing network traffic during events to ensuring 85% connectivity in crowded venues, you'll gain expert insights that can be applied to both enterprise and high-density wireless environments.
Finally, we explore the unique challenges of outdoor arena Wi-Fi, including weather-related outages and the physical demands of on-site work. Alex's innovative solutions and anecdotes, like using turkey basters to remove water from enclosures, add a practical layer to the discussion. Plus, we delve into the world of wireless networking certifications and future-proofing your skills with the latest advancements like Wi-Fi 7. This episode is packed with hands-on advice and real-world experiences, perfect for anyone passionate about wireless network engineering.
More from Alex:
Alex's Blog: https://www.aomit.tech/
Find everything AONE right here: https://linktr.ee/artofneteng
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is the Art of Network Engineering podcast.
In this podcast, we exploretools, technologies and talented
people.
We aim to bring you informationthat will expand your skill
sets and toolbox and share thestories of fellow network
(00:21):
engineers.
Welcome to the Art of NetworkEngineering.
I am AJ Murray Engineering.
I am AJ Murray and I am joinedthis evening by Kevin Nance.
Kevin, how you doing man?
Speaker 2 (00:30):
I'm doing really well .
I have to admit something thatmy mind has not been on this
podcast at all.
I am leaving for Europe in afew days.
I'm kind of phoning everythingin recently.
So if I ask some dumb questions, just know that my mind is in
Europe already.
So I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Like where in Europe are you?
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Flying into Paris, doing France for a week, and
then going to Rome for a week.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
Oh man, you already got the pasta on your mind,
exactly.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
I'm already there Mentally.
I'm there Carb overload.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
That's awesome.
Well, congrats.
I can't wait to hear about that.
I am excited and my mind islaser focused on the podcast,
because we're talking aboutsomething tonight that we don't
normally talk about, right Likewe're all network engineers, but
we're pretty wired, wired upman.
So wireless is the topic fortonight, and we are joined by
Alex Marquodont.
We met Alex at Cisco Live andboy he sold us on a show topic
(01:25):
and we signed him right up.
So, alex, thank you so much forjoining us.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
Yeah, thank you a lot , adrian.
Kevin, it's my pleasure to beon here.
I hope we can dive into some ofthe nitty gritty things about
Wi-Fi and some of the cooldeployments I've worked on in
the past.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Yeah, absolutely.
So to just kind of give somebackground on who are you, what
do you do, how long you've beendoing this thing, the cliff
notes of your career, as it were.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
Yeah, totally.
So I'm pretty young in thewhole realm of IT 23.
But I mean working in the MSPspace.
I feel like you mature so fast.
If there's any advice I havefor anybody getting started it's
like get your feet wet in anMSP and never look back.
You learn so much.
Started right out of college,kind of landed the job right out
(02:13):
of college.
My first job before out ofcollege was a sysadmin role.
Worked for a car automotiveplace, 20 locations.
First week on the job he's likehere's the admin and domain
creds, we're running Windows2008.
We got to get out of this.
So it was at college.
We would be like labbing stuffup and I'm like sweet, I'm going
(02:34):
to go do this in prod next week, transferring the FISMO roles,
doing all the group policies andreally learning by just
lighting things on fire but notbreaking production, which was
kind of the best thing I couldhave asked for for.
An entry-level IT job taught mea lot for sure.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Yeah, it's great when you land a role like that
because you can go to class,learn something and then go to
work and apply it.
Or you might learn something atwork and take it back to class
and be like, oh, but I learnedthis at work and kind of share
that knowledge.
When you can immediately learnsomething and then put it to
good use, I think it reallyhelps it stick.
Speaker 4 (03:07):
Yeah, agreed.
And then after that I graduatedcollege when I was 20 in the
peak of COVID.
There's really nothing you cando from a social aspect.
So I put my head down in thebooks, went and got certified in
a bunch of things, most notablymy CCMP in Enterprise Wireless
Design and Cisco Market SolutionSpecialist, most notably my
CCMP in enterprise wirelessdesign and Cisco Market
Solutions specialist.
I think those are the two keyaspects.
(03:28):
I drink blue all day but I'mvery versed in a lot of vendors.
And after that mixed hybridnetwork and systems admin role
at an MSP called Marco, Imigrated over to my current role
right now is with Atomic Data.
Number two my current roleright now is with Atomic Data
working on the Game DayTechnologies portfolio that we
offer, supporting our customersin Game Day Technologies when it
(03:49):
comes to stadium deploymentsand other large venues, whether
it's conference halls or yourone-off other unique deployments
.
So I got to do a lot of flashydeployments and get to see a lot
of cool things.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Awesome.
To be an SME in anything at 23is absolutely amazing.
So kudos to you, man.
That's incredible.
Speaker 4 (04:10):
Appreciate it.
I think the people on my teamthankfully respect me a lot and
I know I've definitely pinged alot of my team and it's
definitely cool, but I've earnedtheir respect at my age.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Yeah, yeah, that's great Congratulations.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
I barely remember my early 20s.
That's crazy, let alone beingresponsible enough to be an
admin somewhere and actuallydoing things I couldn't imagine.
It's awesome.
Kudos to you, man.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Awesome.
So I want to get into wirelessnetworking.
We've talked a lot aboutnetwork design on the show, but
we've never talked aboutwireless design, and there's
obviously some things that arevery different when it comes to
designing a wireless networkversus a wired network.
So let's start from thebeginning.
What's some of the high-levelstuff that we're going to kind
(05:03):
of cover or want to think aboutwhen we're doing a wireless
network?
Speaker 4 (05:06):
Yeah, when it comes to wireless, you kind of got to
think of it like your speakers.
You got to think about theproper placement.
You got to think about all thethings that could get in the way
, whether it's the walls, thethings that are going to
attenuate, the things that aregoing to cause interference
going from your projector thatsomebody's going to put up, the
random device that someone'sgoing to bring into the office,
(05:26):
all the BYOD devices.
How many devices are peoplegoing to have on average?
What are the type of devices inthe office?
Is everyone using laptops,surfaces, iPads?
And what are the commitmentsfrom a data perspective?
Is your team built with a lotof CAD and engineers, high data
traffic, or is your team justgoing to be sitting on Zoom
(05:46):
calls all day, which is lowlatency dependent, but not a ton
of throughput?
There's a lot of things that gointo building a wireless
network and especially when youneed to get things like
analytics or data out of it.
Placement is a huge thing andstarting off and really taking a
step back before you just jumpin and propose a solution to a
client, the one size doesn'treally fit all.
(06:08):
Sure, it works 90% of the time,but most of the time.
If you take a step back, reallywork with the client and earn
their trust, you're going tocome out with a way, better
solution in the end andhopefully a placement that's
going to work for them fromrefresh to refresh and a lot
less help desk tickets.
If you invest in the front endof the design, you'll have way
less noise over the years.
(06:28):
And I'm guessing that startswith a site survey Not
necessarily a site survey.
For the most part it's let'stalk with the client and
understand their business needs,look at their existing traffic
use on the firewall side ofthings and the switching
perspective and get a betterunderstanding of the business
needs.
And then, of course, we go tothe perspective of can we
(06:48):
actually find a floor plan forthis client?
That's a big issue.
Thankfully, with a lot of thestadiums that we work with, it's
like the stadiums aren't builtyet or it's in the process of
being built.
So we're getting the CAD filesas they're hot off the press or
we're able to get something.
But there's definitely caseswhere you're working with
enterprises or medical orgovernment facilities where they
(07:10):
don't have floor plans becausethe building was built back in
way before our times, like 1800s, 1900s and stuff like that.
So a site survey is definitelygoing to be needed, and
sometimes you have to createyour own floor plans.
Thankfully, like EchoHour comesout with this new fancy feature
where it's just a ghost.
It's called just go, so it'sable to use the lidar sensor on
the back of an ipad to justbuild a floor plan for you,
(07:32):
which really does help in yourin a pinch, but, uh, not the
best option have you ever gottena like a floor plan that's like
on a napkin just written outlike hey, there's some, some
walls over here, it's walls overhere.
Totally.
And I think when you get walllike those, like really unique
issues, it's kind of like allright, we're going to go out
with a sidekick, we're going totry to mock up a floor.
So you're sitting out therewith the laser, you're
(07:54):
calculating the distance betweenrooms to rooms and you're
trying to create a somewhataccurate thing.
But you spend more time on iton site and you're like
calculating the distances andyou're almost like, once you
know Wi-Fi and you've done itfor a while, you can kind of
walk around a building and belike, okay, and AP should go
here in the ceiling.
And then you walked around acorner and it's like here's
another one.
(08:15):
And it becomes more natural andcomfortable from that
perspective of mapping thingsout.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
So you talked about floor plans.
Is there something that you cando ahead of time like a
predictive survey?
I've heard that tossed aroundbefore in my past careers
professional services but Iwasn't like a wireless network
engineer, so I only heard thecool guys talking about it.
I didn't actually get to do anyof that stuff myself.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
Yeah, it is very common and from a cost
perspective, going on site isvery costly, especially because
most of the companies that endup using professional services
they have to pay that engineerto everything you're.
You're doing a predictive fromthe ground up and most of the
time with a predictive you canget away with getting everything
(09:13):
really accurate.
And most of the time whenyou're doing just a predictive
survey for a site and maybe weshould take a step back quick
and a predictive is where you'rejust simulating the wireless
environment.
I think we need to set thatground because we have the site
survey, which is where you're onsite and you're performing and
you're taking a measurement ofthe RF environment.
And then we have the passivesurvey, which is again on site
(09:35):
and getting its current load,and then now we're on to the
predictive, which is predictingthe best possible outcome for
the RF environment.
And most of the time you can getaway with creating a predictive
if you simulate the accesspoints lower than their max
output.
So most of the time if you wantyour radios and in wireless it's
(09:55):
better to have smaller coveragecells, so most of the time if
you're going to predict anoffice, you don't want your
radios to be more than like 15to 18 dBm for an office space
and that's kind of high.
So most of the time what you'regoing to do in the simulation
perspective is you're going toput all your radios to 12.
So then if a wall gets stood upthat is really thick or has
(10:15):
some weird material types, youcan kind of compensate from that
by tweaking the RF radio, byincreasing the power output,
because most of the time whenyou're doing a predictive you
don't have the in-depth CADfiles that actually show like
the wall thickness and stufflike that.
That's going to cause those RFissues.
So because a normal door versusa thick door is going to create
(10:37):
a lot of issues.
Or when it comes to glass,that's another big problem when
it comes to just doingeverything predictive.
So yeah, I think predictive toois based off of a floor plan
that you kind of feed of glass.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
that's another big problem when it comes to just
doing everything predictive.
So yeah, I think predictive toois based off of a floor plan
that you kind of feed into itand likely it's probably not an
accurate floor plan, right, likeit could be super old, uh,
there could be walls in places.
There's you know on the floorplan that there aren't.
You know they could havecompletely remodeled over a
couple of years.
Like there's the of helpful,but is it really helpful?
Speaker 4 (11:05):
Yeah, I suppose it's better than nothing, it's better
than nothing.
And then another good point isyou don't really know what's
there.
You get really old files or youcan't.
Especially in this case, it'sreally important to work with
those non-technical people orsomewhat technical people on
site to kind of have them walkthrough.
I've done FaceTimes before withpeople and it's like let's just
(11:25):
walk through the building quick, just like give me a casual
stroll.
Like you walked in from thefront door to your desk and like
from that you're able to likelook at things and like you kind
of get an eye for certainmaterials and certain wall types
and you're like, okay, that's a40 DM wall type where you're
sitting there, like walkawkwardly, walking up and down
the hallways, like banging onthe walls to see like what
they're made of.
This sounds weird.
But like, um, I grew up on afarm and whatnot, so as a kid
(11:50):
kind of just get used to likethose little weird nuances of
like material types and whatnot.
You're like is that going to bestrong enough to like create a
pivot, to like lift this up orlike a wedge, and you kind of
get used to those material types.
So it kind of get used to thosematerial types.
So it's really common, like onceyou understand more of like the
designing and buildingstructure types that you kind of
like you have like a littleniche or like this eye, like
(12:12):
pulling things out when you'rekind of creating those
predictives, because you neverknow, like on a floor plan it's
like it's flat, it's 2d, youdon't know if the ceiling's 10
feet tall, 20 feet tall or 8feet tall.
So like that plays a hugecontributor to like what access
point are we going to select?
What are the antennas we'regoing to put on?
If we have to use antennas, andlike if we're trying to reuse
(12:32):
existing network drops, like canwe reuse any of them from a
cost perspective, cause it'scostly to run new cables, every
new AP.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
And how?
How specific are you when itcomes to that?
So, like uh, I, when I we kindof did everything and one of
those jobs was wireless and whenwe were doing a remodel, we
tried to use existinginfrastructure as much as
possible.
It was like some jacks, and ifit was off by like a couple, you
know a couple of yards, we'relike, eh, this is probably good
(13:02):
enough.
How specific did it get to be?
Speaker 4 (13:05):
That's the reality of things is like wireless always
comes second and it's aestheticsis almost always more important
than the placement of theaccess point.
So, like, if it's within like10 feet, you're probably not
going to see a big difference.
The biggest concern is like,let's say, you had an access
point in like the center of acorridor where, like you have
two hallways crisscrossing andit was supposed to be in the
(13:27):
middle, and then you move itdown the hallway 10 feet, like
that's going to be a big issuebecause that's such a high
traffic, like pivot point andlike when you round that corner,
if you don't have an ap therefor, say, you're going to get
dropped off the network mostlikely because in a lot of those
tighter corridors the walltights are concrete or like
really thick material.
Um, so like ap placements likethat really matter.
(13:47):
But like if you're talking likea generic office space where
it's just like pretty open andyou're like 10 feet off, or like
we said at campus, and it'slike 10 feet off in the hallway
or something like that, likethat's not going to be a huge
concern for total RF performanceand most of the time if you,
depending on the solution youoffer or using those radios, are
going to be able to communicateand like pull the receive
(14:09):
signal strength clients and belike, okay, I need to increase
my power a little bit tocompensate for that and mitigate
that hole and coverage.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
So yeah, how, speaking of that, how?
How much do you rely on that?
Like, do you, because you knowmodern, you know cisco prime or
whatever, whatever can you knowon the fly, adjust power of the
aps?
But how much do you rely onthat?
How much do you actually go inand tweak the rf levels and
power levels and all that kindof stuff so that you know you
(14:36):
don't have to rely on, hopefully, the system automatically doing
it?
Speaker 4 (14:40):
Yeah, I've worked with a lot of vendors and it
really comes down to the vendor.
Now, if we're talking to likeCisco, I'm going to let that
thing do what it needs to do.
If it's Cisco or Juniper, mistlike those things are set and
forget it.
They do such a good job,especially in the high-density
venue spaces.
Jump in, make sure it only uses20 MHz channels.
Let it go.
(15:01):
It's going to do its propercoverage cells, dna Center and
the wireless line controller andall the APs communicate so
flawlessly.
From that perspective, it willsave you a ton of time.
Now, if you're working with a, avendor like aruba, which loves
fat 80 megahertz channels out ofthe box, and even if you go in,
(15:22):
tweak it to 20, it's alwaysgoing to try to use its max
output.
Something just doesn't sitright from the coverage cell
perspective.
You can enable dfs channels,but it won't use dfs channels.
So, like when it comes tostatically setting radio output
power, it really depends on thevendor.
I'm like I'm have to becompletely honest, especially
like, if you're doing the subenterprise grades like a
ubiquity, you're definitely haveto do a lot of manual tweaking
and, like when it comes to thatmanual tweaking, you're not
(15:42):
always going to be able to go onsite to do the validation
survey.
Back to the cost perspective, soyou're going to like simulate
the overall output of the accesspoints in a program like Ekahau
or Hamina and you're going tosit here and be like, okay, so I
need to be on this channel atthis frequency and on this DBM
range from an output power andDBM is like the overall output
(16:03):
power that you can have on an AP.
Just the measurement inmilliwatts of the total output
power that you can have and youcan think of the higher output
power leads to one the overallsize of the coverage cell or how
far away you can have.
And you can think of.
The higher output power leadsto one um the overall size of
the coverage dollar, how faraway you can be, um.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
So, and again, there's some more nuances, but
so when you're, when you'redeploying APs, is there a
different technique?
Um, you mentioned about likefiguring out the customer's
needs, but if you're doing likea high density, um, stadium
verse, uh, office space, whatare your strategies there?
To, kind of, how do youapproach each one, because
they're completely different?
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 4 (16:38):
I think the large venue space is a lot of fun
because before you really getstarted you're working with the
architecture team to identify,like the building, and then from
there you're working with a lotof sponsorships and you're
reviewing RFPs or requests.
You're reviewing this hugedocument that is consumed of
(16:58):
hundreds of pages and most ofthem are all public and they're
mostly put together by externalvendors.
So, like the NFL for example,they have their own commissions
and their own standards.
And the last time I readthrough an RFP for the NFL and
this is public it was like mustbe able to support 85%
connectivity rate and if youreally think about it, some
stadiums hold 60,000 people,70,000 people.
(17:22):
So when you're building awireless network to support 85%
of the connectivity of theclients, because most of the
time people have multipledevices but you also have to
think about the fact thatthere's a DAS system going in.
So when you're building thesehigh-density deployments, I'm
going to pick on the clubs,because MLS is kind of our cup
of tea here Over at Atomic Data.
(17:43):
That's what we specialize in isworking with MLS and we have a
really good partnership.
Minnesota United and MCCincinnati are kind of our
favorite two clubs.
But when it comes to designing,you're going to have additional
access points near the gatesbecause you're going to have
access points that are set upfor ticket scanners only and
then you're going to have APsthat are focused on just the
client onboarding perspective,because all these guest networks
(18:06):
are open, so there's so manydevices trying to connect up
even if you don't initiate theconnection.
So you have that.
You're going to take up a lotof airtime with all that client
onboarding, which is going todegrade the performance
tremendously.
Even if you try to set up allthe quality of service profiles
under the sun to like, say, Ineed the ticketing SSID to be
(18:28):
the most important thing outthere, it's not going to work
that way, simply due to the factthat you have so many
onboarding requests on the AP.
That's going to take up airtime, and airtime is just how much
time you get dedicated tocommunicate.
So you're going to put multipleaccess points near the gates to
really focus on one AP just hasthe tickets and one just has
onboarding clients.
(18:48):
So you're creating customprofiles and you're setting up
niche AP profiles on certainaccess points to prioritize
traffic and then also havingredundant APs in some of those
hired areas because sales againa lot, a lot of these clubs and
the NFL like.
At the end of the day, it's amarketing gig and they're all
about making money.
And yes, we all love to go andsee our favorite team lose on
(19:12):
Sunday or Saturday, but if youcan't get a beer at the stand,
why are you there?
For I feel like everyone goesthere to have a good time, buy
the merch and enjoy Again.
It's a great opportunity andsomething that we can really
enjoy.
In the United States in general, we have some of the greatest
facilities and some of the bestsporting arenas, but if the most
(19:34):
critical infrastructure doesn'twork during the 90 minutes,
what are you building it for?
That's when thinking about highavailability is such an
important thing.
Building redundant controllersand almost overbuilding
everything.
In the event of anything fails,the entire game can go off
without a hitch or no impact toanybody on site.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Man, you've already like blown my mind in the first
few minutes talking about someof this stuff, Because like
client onboarding, likeabsolutely that makes a ton of
sense.
Never thought about it.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Yeah, we never thought of that Open.
Speaker 4 (20:06):
SSIDs are horrendous for every network.
Like in no good space should youhave an open network if you
don't need it.
Like you should, even for yourinternal network, put a
pre-shared key on it and putthat guest password everywhere,
because your performance isgoing to be way better just
because you're not going to havedevices trying to connect all
the time.
You're not going to haveeverybody that walks outside
your building trying to connect.
(20:27):
Just the overall rf environmentis going to be way better.
You're not going to have likeweird issues, like a pretty
common issue that's noted withlike onboarding.
Onboarding, leading to issues,is like you'll notice, like
you'll be connecting,everything's fine, and then all
of a sudden you like randomlylike somebody will walk by you
and like you're like why did thewi-fi just like crap out on me
and it's probably because ofroaming, wasn't set up right or
(20:48):
the access point is alreadyunder a lot of load from a CPU
perspective and you're it justcan't prioritize that traffic,
because onboarding traffic isreally like has a very high
priority to an AP like thatassociation to get on as a lot
of lot higher priority in mostcases than your traffic that's
trying to load a webpage.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
So um, man, where, where do we go from here?
There's so much I want to cover.
Uh, so so from a from a designarchitecture perspective, you
know there, where do we go fromhere?
There's so much I want to cover.
So, from a design architectureperspective, you know, there's
centralized management anddecentralized management, right
Like.
So when we're talking about alarge venue like that, there
must be, you must be using both,right Like you want to, like
(21:29):
you said, over-engineer it sothat way, you've got multiple
controllers.
You've got, you know,controllers on that way you've
got multiple controllers.
You've got controllers on site.
You've got backup controllersin the cloud, maybe.
So what does the management ofall of this that we're about to
dive into look like Management?
Speaker 4 (21:44):
is pretty old school when it comes to venues.
I would say we're still veryheavy on controllers on site.
There have been some cloudlimitations.
We've ran into working withvendors and they're like don't
do this, please, putting thatmany access points.
Also, you have to think ofcloud latency and bandwidth
utilization If you're going tohave 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 access
(22:06):
points.
Uploading telemetry data tosome dashboard at the same time
during the game, that'slow-priority traffic.
Why are we wasting all thatbandwidth?
But at the same time, duringthe game, that's low-priority
traffic.
Why are we wasting all thatbandwidth?
But for the most part, we'reusing controllers still on-prem,
simply due to the security factA lot of controllers we can
still cap-wap or encapsulatetraffic from the AP back to the
(22:26):
controller so we can create aDMZ network to egress all that
traffic out of because guestnetwork traffic, especially at
the venue spaces.
Man, there's some crazy thingsthat happen and like you're
going to get DDoS during yourfirst game, you're going to get
a nice letter from the local ISPthat says why are you trying to
download X movie?
And you're going to be like ohgreat, you know, it's like.
(22:49):
Things like that You're nevergoing to think about.
It's like we have the DNSsecurity in place, we have the
firewall in place.
How did this happen?
It's like, oh, he's probablyusing some poor browser that's
creating a VPN tunnel out.
And most of the time when youthink of guest networks for
smaller enterprises, you're likeit's just going to be internet
access, don't care aboutanything.
But with the venue space, youend up having to almost treat it
as an internal network andcreate some of those security
(23:11):
postures and to prevent, like,the things that can pop up.
You know all right.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
So you, you talked about numbers.
Let's, let's throw some numbersaround here.
Um, let's say we're we're doingthe stadium 60,000 people.
I'm sure you know, obviously,how big that stadium is.
There's probably a lot offactors, but you know the
average stadium that you'vedealt with around that size.
How many aps are we, you know,thrown around here?
Yeah, I would say for like nfl.
Speaker 4 (23:37):
If you're talking like that many, you're going to
be pushing like 13 to 1500access points in the deployments
.
I've worked a part of um so Imean you can think about the
fact that that's going to becisco's biggest controller,
wireless land controller, um.
So like when you're tossingaround that many access points,
realistically for uh, mls clubit's going to be about a to 400,
(23:58):
depending on the size.
But in MLS Club again, itscapacity is around that 15,000
to 20,000 seating perspectiveand most of your APs are going
to be in the bowl, notnecessarily back of house and
whatnot.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
With that many people .
How do you play?
Because people are interferenceright.
Speaker 4 (24:17):
We're giant sacks of water.
You sit on top of that accesspoint and you just destroy the
rf.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Yeah so how do you, how do you plan for that?
How do you plan to have thatmany people all jammed in space
together all cutting the rf likeI can't even I can't picture
that yeah, also the fact thatthe rf has to work when no one
is in the stadium is a biggerissue.
Speaker 4 (24:37):
I think like wireless , yeah Cause when you think
about it you can have twowireless frequencies.
But like when the stadium'sopen, the powers are most likely
going to be way too high whenno one's in there.
So it's like how can we stillmake the wifi work when no one's
in there, along when people arein there?
And it's like for me, example,I might cut five dbm on that ap
(25:02):
by sitting on top of it, but bythe end of the game I might
drink a gallon of water and itmight be six dbm um or a few
years yeah, exactly so.
It's like that's a big thing andyou almost you add a ton of
access points in the bowl.
Um, your coverage cells aresuper small and you create zones
they're called within the bowl.
So you have really smallcoverage cells that are going to
cover like three to four rowsin total up in some width.
(25:24):
And again you're going to throwthese into programs like Echo,
how, and really simulate it.
Because again, when you'reputting APs too, it's really
common to do under seat rightnow that's kind of the best
thing.
It's not the best for the RF,but it's the best for containing
the coverage cell.
Because if you're going to tryto roof mount everything, it's
an aesthetics perspective backat that point.
And then, from a maintenanceperspective, do you really want
(25:47):
to get a lift every time youhave to jump up and tweak an AP?
It's a lot easier to put itunder seat.
And then also like the elementsfrom that perspective, like the
weather, but like when you'redesigning in the bowl, you're
going to have an RF profile andit's going to have a certain
range of RF and it's a lotbetter on the Cisco side of the
world than like Aruba right nowor some of the other vendors we
(26:08):
work with, like Extreme, it'sgoing to be pretty good at just
being able to increase anddecrease the overall power
because most of the time you'renot going to want to create
static channels.
But if you are using staticchannels it's planned for it to
be a full venue, not necessarilyan empty venue.
From that perspective, andagain, you're going to do a
validation survey in most casesYou're going to go on site and
(26:31):
you're going to create an RFprofile and you're going to
validate when the stadium isempty and then you're going to
do a validation survey when thestadium is full.
You're not going to survey theentire stadium, but you're going
to have portions Because forthe most part the bowl's going
to be the exact same all the wayaround.
I know everybody's seen thatpicture of some guy at an NFL
game or some game sitting therewith a laptop with a bunch of
(26:52):
antennas on it.
He's the front page of themeans for a week and a half and
that's really what it is.
It's on site during the gameand then not during the game.
One to measure is that outputpower right.
Is it too low?
Is it too high?
Did you set the bit rate toohigh from a connectivity
perspective, where clients can'teven get connected because the
signal, the noise is so bad orit just doesn't have a clear
(27:14):
path of communication, Likethat's a big issue overall.
The reality is is like you'renever going to be able to get it
perfect your first go and it'sgoing to take a few matches or a
few games on a new deploymentto get everything I have a weird
question for you.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
Yeah, do you.
This would go.
This would go many ways um.
Have you ever had anyonecomplain that their aps are
underneath them?
Speaker 4 (27:34):
no, I actually never.
Never heard that.
Um, I didn't know that they put.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
APs under people in a stadium.
It never crossed my mind.
Now it's going to get out there.
Now it's on a podcast.
Speaker 4 (27:48):
I've had people be like you know, you sometimes see
it in a railing too.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Yeah, I went to Cisco Live and I saw they had railing
encasings and underneath theseat and all that kind of stuff.
But I've been in officebuildings where I've had people
complain that they're too closeto the AP, that's giving
radiation and it's going tocause them to have whatever hair
loss or something crazy.
I was just curious if you hadanyone be like no, you're going
to fry my butt off during thegame or something I don't know.
(28:13):
My grandma tells me to kill allthe bees with the 5g.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
Every time I see her to be completely honest, but
I've never heard a complaintfrom anybody.
Um, especially a bee.
Yes, yeah uh, we do have somelike running jokes like in the
office, like oh, we're gonnalike decrease the like birth
rate of some cities or something, but it's just complete jokes
like you guys do joke about.
(28:38):
I knew it yeah um, there'snothing like from a perspective
like you do have to be carefulabout it because there are rules
that you have to have an ap.
So far away from like people,um, like from a distance
perspective, um, but for themost part, no, I've never had a
complaint because most timepeople don't even know they're
there because they're shovedunderneath the seat and like
(29:00):
they fold like most seats arelike set where they fold down,
so you sit down, you're sittingover it and like no one's really
gonna know unless they'retrying to shove a bunch of stuff
underneath the seat.
But then like what's this greatbox?
And they don't really questionas far as yeah, it's about as
far as they go, I don't care,yeah, like nobody really knows
what's in the box.
It's just like what's the boxfor?
They don't know it's an accesspoint, because we purposely
disguise them.
(29:21):
We don't want people being likeoh, we know there's an access
point here, we're going totamper with the box and try to
steal it and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Some junk out of the screwdriver.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
So that kind of answers a question we had in the
chat.
Dan asked if you ever had todeal with people tampering with
it.
Dan asked if you ever had todeal with people tampering with
it but it sounds like you guysthought ahead in that regard.
Speaker 4 (29:41):
Yeah, I don't think in my time we have not lost a
single access point.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
You sound like a cop or something I've never lost one
on my watch.
Speaker 4 (29:52):
I mean, they go offline all the time and I think
weather is the biggest issuewhen it comes to access points
for outdoor arenas.
It's like every year you'regonna have aps that go offline
and you're just gonna likethey're gonna have to wait until
the next off season until youcan get a low voltage vendor to
go and run a new cable or figuresomething out like um and then
ufc, like the first year.
(30:12):
Like they, we went live withthem.
Like the running joke wasthere's people on my team like
out there with turkey basters,like pulling water out of the
enclosures because like theyweren't sealed right.
So like you have these outdooraps.
And like you open up theenclosure because they're
covered with snow and ice inminnesota you're like scraping
away at it and I've heardstories of people sitting out
there with a turkey baster andlike squeezing the water and
(30:35):
getting it out during springtime.
Oh man, Some of the things likethat we uncover and like run
into and like, like gettingshipped out to a client site and
be like all right, you have 48hours.
How much can you get done inthis entire deployment?
Because you don't want to goback down there for another two
months.
If I can get everything onlineso I can configure remotely,
(30:56):
Like so like you play games withyourself a lot of the times
with these larger deploymentsand you try to automate
everything if you can.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
You sound like a typical network engineer who's
just like get it remotely so Ican go back to my office and do
it all remote.
I don't want to mess with it.
Speaker 4 (31:10):
Or like who else in my team wants to travel, like
the juniors, I don't know.
Like five years of travelingtook a toll on me, like two,
three times a month.
You know like you're gone andI'm like who's the junior, young
bushy tail that wants to go andlike sweat until they like are
dripping in Houston and duringthe middle of summer and just
like, yeah, and there's peoplethat like raise their hand up
(31:33):
because they've never seen it,they've never done it.
Like, the first time you walkinto a stadium, working it from
a network perspective versus afan perspective, your, your
mindset changes.
I mean, when you go into astadium, like everyone's like,
oh, this is so cool.
They're looking around, youknow, you're like looking at all
the knickknacks and then, onceyou work so many, it's like, oh,
it's another venue.
(31:53):
You know the layout of thestadium to stadium and it's like
a lot of these, like a lot.
Like I've looked at so manyarchitect drawings that I
probably can go crazy at thispoint.
It's like you know, like,especially when it comes to
stadiums, like they're prettycut and paste, like the
companies that work on them arethey.
They do, they're good at whatthey do for a reason, like they
build a lot of stadiums, so likea lot of the floor plans become
(32:15):
pretty like cookie cutter,almost like you kind of know,
like oh, this is going to workhere kind of thing in this bowl
deployment.
Um, you kind of assume materialtypes and stuff like that too
before things get built.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
So so if you ever get bored of doing networking, you
can become an architect.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
Now you can just yeah I was in robotics back in high
school and, like I would, wewould run cad machines and like
build 3d renderings.
I don't know if you guys haveever heard of SolidWorks oh yeah
but yeah, I spent a ton of timewith SolidWorks back in high
school like caddying up anddesigning our robot FRC, and
that's something that's prettycommon these days but spent a
(32:51):
lot of time in CAD, so it's kindof funny now that I work in
Wi-Fi, it's like oh, I know whatit takes to put one of these
together and it sucks.
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(33:26):
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(33:48):
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Now back to the show.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
All right, I want to compare and contrast a little
bit.
I think a lot of our audienceis familiar with the enterprise.
They've probably been to a fewstadiums.
What are some of the biggestdifferences when we talk about
wireless networks, deploymentsbetween enterprise and a
high-density location like astadium?
So you might ever get 60,000people on a business campus, but
(34:30):
that's going to be spread overa much larger area and several
buildings compared to a stadium.
So what's some of the biggestthings that cause interference
that maybe you, you know youwouldn't think.
Speaker 4 (34:43):
Let's dive into that a little bit.
Yeah, I think when it comes todeployments, it's a little bit
different in venues and stadiumsbecause a lot of the times
you're not creating where yourSLA is super high.
You're going to have a lowerservice level agreement for all
these clients, like you're goingto be okay with certain levels
of packet loss and your totaldata rate and your commitment to
a client device is a lot lower.
(35:03):
In most cases, like when you'rethinking of an enterprise
employment, you have to haveperfect connectivity because
you're expecting to be on a zoomcall, but the reality is like
when you're at a stadium, you'repretty engaged until someone
scores or something, and that'swhen you're going to see the
huge spikes in data.
And that's where it's reallyimportant to have high
throughput on your firewall,because we don't like to limit
(35:27):
clients, because we want to getclient devices off the air done
communicating as fast aspossible.
That should go from enterpriseand to the venue space, but the
faster you can get a client tostop sending traffic, the better
.
So, like making sure you havethe underlying infrastructure
built to ensure you can likereally send all that traffic out
to the internet right away, solike you can post to facebook
(35:48):
right away, instagram right away, like post on twitter.
Like that is like the biggestthing you're building for is
like those speak, those spikesof traffic and most of the time
when people hit the uploadbutton they put their phone back
in their pocket.
You know, like you're buildinga network that's not necessarily
built for low latency and highthroughput, but you're it's more
like building something withhigher capacity from a client
(36:11):
perspective.
So you're going to put aps inthat are like have a ton of
antennas, whether it's an eightby eight or a four by four, on
the 5 gigahertz or 6 gigahertzfrequency, and you're really
going to focus on building APsthat can handle a lot of
connected devices not so muchthrough perspective.
So you're going to use, like aCisco 9166, which is going to be
(36:31):
their latest and greatest, oran Aruba 655 or some of their
outdoor APs, some of the six,seven, nine models, or six,
seven, seven.
So it's it's really comes downto making sure that with the
game day, like with the venueside, that you're focusing more
on client connection than ratheroverall, like client quality
(36:52):
and slas.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
It's almost like a shotgun approach, instead of
like you're just trying to getmass amount of people to get a
little bit of data.
Yep, yep, totally yep.
Speaker 4 (36:59):
That's exactly what it is so and of like, you're
just trying to get mass amountof people to get a little bit of
data.
Yep, yep, totally Yep, that'sexactly what it is.
So and I mean you're buildingfor the 95, 98% of client
devices and not if you can'tsupport the 2% of devices, as
long as they're not crucial tothe business needs, you're not
going to worry about them.
So like, if someone comes inwith their Samsung galaxy 3 and
(37:19):
they can't get connected to thewi-fi, tough luck, we don't care
like, that's just like that'sjust the reality of things we're
.
We're building like a lot of thevenues and like any campus you
go into it's like build, put thelatest and greatest in, because
their technology likeachievement per se and a lot of
the times it's like a showcasefor those vendors because they
(37:41):
sponsor hardware, give discountsor like something from that
perspective.
So like it's a showcase.
So like just as important as animportant deployment is, and
like making sure everythinglooks good, it's a branding deal
for a lot of these larger venuelike companies.
Um and again, like we helpthrough the entire process with
these clubs.
Like because a lot of timeslike you'll have a larger club,
(38:04):
they'll come to us and they'relike we don't really know where
to start.
And like we'll offer like thatc, that cto, that technology
roadmap, to like work with theconstruction company, work with
all the low voltage installersand like handle everything for
me, for you, when it comes to itplanning, like where should the
idfs go in the stadium, stufflike that what a problem to have
, huh kevin yeah, you're puttingon rfp for for wireless uh in
(38:28):
your uh in your area and and nowyou know, you got like all
these vendors coming to givefree stuff to the, to the nfl or
you know whoever soundsterrible.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
So you're saying that the latest and greatest, you
always want the, the newest andbest, and it's kind of a
competition.
Um, so what is your?
What does your upgrade cycleslook like then?
What is your refresh?
Look, because if you're alwaysbest, greatest, whatever, that's
a crap ton of money that you'reputting into these stadiums
it's interesting.
Speaker 4 (38:56):
It really depends on the club, like the audience, I
would say, and the venue spacelike, and the overall like
sports league, so like the nfl,has requirements that must be
met and if you read their rfps,like that are hundreds of pages.
Um, they set the refresh cycle,so it's not really controlled
by us.
The mls is a little bitdifferent.
Like it's managed by the club.
(39:17):
There's no like real standard.
You don't even need publicWi-Fi from that perspective.
So the refresh cycle is mostlyput a new deployment in right.
When it's built, run it untilits end of life, or the overall
services are degradingdrastically, or it makes more
sense from a cost perspective toreplace everything than to
maintain it and deal with thepossible cost of an outage.
(39:40):
So the refresh cycle is yeah,the refresh cycle is oh yeah,
it's.
It's pretty standard um it ityeah.
It fluctuates from organizationto organization.
I mean, again, it's funding.
At the end of the day, thewinning this team's gonna have
the nicest technology, mostlikely because they're gonna
have the most sponsors and stufflike that.
It is cool, though, being in,like in the venue, with the
(40:02):
ecosystem.
I'm in because I get to playwith all the new flashy toys and
I get to see all the old toysstill like.
I still get to work on the old,like cisco 2960xs one day, and
I can be working on a cisco 9500the next.
So, like same with the accesspoints.
Like.
We have clients that are inwave one access points from 2008
, when I was in elementaryschool, to the access points
(40:25):
that were not even released yet,and we're getting first models.
It's a cool experience.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
How about when you have wireless technologies that
are emerging?
So I'm not a wireless guru.
I am aware that Wi-Fi 7 is out,about to be out I'm not sure
exactly where it is, but whenyou have a scenario like that,
is a venue more likely to gotowards the new flashy, shiny
stuff coming out or, you know,the tried and true known to be
(40:55):
good?
You know, because I have toimagine there's maybe certain
benefits of the new architecturethat in theory they sound
better, but are they, you know,have they really been tested in
a stadium type environment?
Is that a risk that the youknow, for example nfl, might be
willing to take on a newtechnology?
Uh, you know, can you speak tothat at all?
Speaker 4 (41:15):
yeah, I think for the most part.
Uh, all the clients we workwith, they come to us as the
professionals and they reallytrust our opinions.
Um, so, like, if we have aproduct we haven't embedded yet
or we know it's not ready formain stage, we won't recommend
it and we won't try to sell themthe most flashy things.
Um, it is a little bitdifferent, like with the venues.
Again, we're it's gonna be liketry to get the latest and
(41:36):
greatest thing in and some ofthe incentives we get on some of
the new hardware versus the oldhardware.
It's like we'd be shootingourselves in the foot not to
take the new hardware.
I know, like back in the day,like Cisco used to give out free
DNA center appliances and freeice appliances and just be like
put these things in, we need thedata.
It looks really good from amarketing perspective.
(41:57):
But I mean, with enterprise,it's like let's do something
that's trying, true, but alsolike analyze if the upgrade is
worth it.
I have a lot of clients likethat have been pretty hesitant
about Wi-Fi 6E as long as samewith me me personally, it's like
it's a marginal upgrade.
We're going to see a lot ofbenefits when it comes to Wi-Fi
7.
Like, if you're holding on toyour Wi-Fi 5 access points or
(42:21):
your Wi-Fi 6 access points, youcan mark my word Wi-Fi 7 is
actually worth it.
There's going to be a ton ofthroughput improvements,
especially like MLO it's areally popular terminology being
thrown around right now.
It allows a client device toconnect to a 6 GHz radio and a 5
GHz radio simultaneously, soyou can have a client basically
doing full duplex communication.
Because, like, when we think ofwireless, it's half duplex,
(42:43):
it's one way all the time.
So, like, if we can do fullduplex over six gigahertz and a
five gigahertz frequency at thesame time, you're going to see
drastic throughput increases,way lower latency and, just a
way, better user experience onthe wi-fi from that perspective.
So, like with the refreshes andeverything and emerging
technologies, it's again itrelies on us as a consulting
(43:05):
firm to determine, like, is thisthe right choice for them and
is it going to fit their budget?
Because, like, we help them andassist with the budgeting of a
lot of their refreshes and it'slike like if we have to hold off
a year or six months, like wecan do that.
Like, again, we have the bestinterest to make sure that the
venue has the funds to continuegoing.
(43:26):
Because tech debt is such areal thing and like how can we
minimize that?
Tech debt is like what we focuson, because it's like I don't
know.
I've worked for companies likein the past where it's like sell
them the newest, latest, latest, greatest thing, get the
biggest spiff and make the mostamount of money from a sales
perspective.
But Atomic Data, we don't dothat.
That's why I like working here.
(43:48):
It's never been a sales-focusedmentality.
It's always been what's rightfor the client and what's right
what makes the most sense.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
I love it.
We've got a little bit of timeleft in this show.
I want to pivot away a littlebit because a lot of our
audience is, you know, breakingin, uh, getting started earlier
on in career.
Um, if somebody wants to getmore wireless focus, this
question comes from digital bitein the audience.
Um, when would somebody getstarted DigitalBite?
Speaker 4 (44:17):
I think we all know her name.
Oh, I know, I know who is she.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
Where would somebody get started?
Is it the CCNA?
Is it the Network Plus?
Wi-fi is a little bit differentthan wired networking, so where
do we go, certification-wise,yeah.
Speaker 4 (44:37):
Every thing is going to work different for people.
I would say if you have acertain vendor that you already
have in your organization, getcertified in that vendor.
But when it comes down to thebest Wi-Fi certifications, I'm
going to have to say the beststarting is CWNA, the Certified
Wireless Network Administrator.
That is, they have an entireplatform of certifications that
(44:58):
can teach you very specificthings.
The CWNA is going to be like ahigh-level overview of
everything where else and thenfrom there you they have more
specific certifications that youcan get, whether it's the
analyzer, analyzer side ofthings, the security side of
things, the designing side ofthings, and going from there.
Like for me, like I was workingsuper heavily in cisco with c
(45:19):
Gear, my previous role and Ifelt comfortable with Cisco
First company was Meraki.
So go Meraki and then reallyCisco heavy.
So I'm like this makes completesense.
I'm supporting this vendor, Ishould go and we get the cert
and a CCNP is a verywell-respected certification
within the industry.
So, like for me, it was likelet's get a CCNA to get started.
(45:39):
And then I found out that Ireally like Wi-Fi from the CCNA
and that was kind of like myniche and I went and pursued the
CCNP and enterprise andwireless design, so tied into
the Cisco side of things whereyou can only really use your
CCMP for the implementation side.
So the designing one made a lotmore sense because I'm very
(46:11):
vendor agnostic.
I know I've been talking aboutCisco, but I'm partial to Cisco.
Just at the end of the day,it's one of the best products
out there, but again, cisco'sexpensive.
We have to take that intoreality.
Just at the end of the day,it's like one of the best
products.
I'm out there, um, but againlike cisco's expensive.
Like we have to take that intoreality.
Like you can build an entireubiquity stack and have extra
switches in the corner and gohot swap to things when they die
, like that that's just thereality of things.
(46:32):
Like, yeah, but again, likewith some of the larger venues,
like downtime's not a thing, sohot swap doesn't save you during
game day, like at the 90thminute of an mls.
Like you can't do that, youknow.
Like could you be?
Like imagining watching thepremier league go and all of a
sudden, like 90th minute they'redoing like, like going into
overtime and all of a sudden thecore switch dies out or
(46:53):
something and they only have onebecause like they didn't build
the redundancy and stuff likethat.
So yeah, wireless is fun, um,but I think before you get into
wireless like super heavy and goget your ccn like cwna, I think
you really have to have thefundamentals of, like the
switching perspective, thefirewall perspective, before you
can really be a good wirelessnetwork engineer.
(47:14):
Because you have to understandway more things.
Because most of the time whenit comes down to wireless issues
, with the right deployment andthe configuration set up and you
have everything set to itperfectly, from the radio output
power, the minimum bit rates,the SSID profiles and everything
like that, most of the time itcomes down to the client device
being the issue or theunderlying network
infrastructure.
(47:34):
So I think you have to knoweverything because you can't
just be like I'm just a wirelessengineer, I put APs in and set
the RF radio.
You have to understand whateverything depends on, whether
it's the DNS servers, the NATs,on the firewalls, the throughput
limitations, the IPS and stufflike that.
So there's a lot that goes intoit.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
So, in addition to all the wireless networking
knowledge, you've got to bepretty good with your networking
knowledge in general.
Speaker 4 (48:04):
There's no cutting corners here.
Yeah, no, no, quick way towireless success.
It sounds like, yeah, I thinkyou can get really good.
You can get really good at it.
Like just the rf side of things, like going through some
training I've not been throughany of the account training and,
uh, maybe matt needs to get methrough it so I can, like vouch
for him going forward.
Um, but, um, I like the agaoguys.
They're good shit.
Um, but that that's definitelysomething I've never done yet.
(48:26):
So on the to-do list.
Speaker 1 (48:28):
Awesome, alex.
This has been a ton of fun.
Uh, what?
What should we have squeezedinto this episode with a little
bit of time that we have left?
Speaker 4 (48:36):
um with networking, you'll probably never get over
the reality of imposter syndrome.
I don't know about you guys, butI feel like every day you walk
in and you're just as cluelessas you were the day before, and
you should never think thatyou're above anybody on your
team.
Again, it's a team effort andthe moment you stop learning and
stop slowing down, you're onlyfalling behind.
(48:57):
Where it's a constant evolvingspace and automation isn't going
to steal our jobs because again, we're the plumbers of the
internet.
Only the good plumbers aregoing to stick around.
That's just the reality of it.
Speaker 2 (49:08):
So I like you, alex, I like you awesome so that's all
I got.
Speaker 4 (49:16):
I mean, feel free to reach out and connect with me on
any socials.
I'm pretty active on LinkedIn.
Speaker 1 (49:22):
I was just going to ask where can people find you if
they want to learn more?
Speaker 4 (49:26):
LinkedIn is really all I do.
I know I've definitely beenconvinced to jump into some of
the social media stuff, but Idon't know.
I like to be an introvert endof day and I don't know, we'll
see I'm starting a new role herepretty soon and work-life
balance should be a lot betterand maybe I'll have that time to
jump into the social mediarealm of things.
But just on LinkedIn right nowis at Alex Marconaut.
(49:49):
You can find me over there.
Speaker 1 (49:51):
And do you have a blog or anything like that?
Speaker 4 (49:53):
Oh yeah, I suppose I have a brief blog and it's just
my initials A-O-M-I-Ttech.
Again, it's just something Ipost some occasional articles on
and things that I run into.
It's something I'm starting tobuild out as one day I want to
go and get a CWNE, and for aCWNE you kind of have to have
(50:14):
some sort of personal record ofeither a blog or some sort of
media presence.
And for me, being more of anintrovert at heart, I felt like
blog was the easiest way to go.
So, and also like I can go backand refer to those technical
articles in the past and stufflike that.
I know I've heard like otherpeople be like oh, I just have a
blog so I can always go backand look at things and that's
just the reality of things.
(50:34):
Like build documentation toshare with everybody Because,
again, like we're all young,like everyone comes from a
starting ground and like you'regonna have mentors that are
gonna help you a ton and itsucks having to learn everything
on your own.
And like me coming up duringCOVID, I kind of felt like I was
sheltered into, like just learneverything on your own and like
learn through failing, andthat's kind of like how I
(50:54):
learned, um, but I meanthroughout the way.
I've had great mentors, like atmy previous, and I mean some of
those mentors have reached backout to me now and that's how I
ended up getting my new role isthrough an old mentor.
So I would say, have a mentorand really learn from them, and
you never know where it's goingto take you.
So build your personal network.
It's a big thing, great advice.
Speaker 1 (51:14):
Alex, thank you so much for joining us.
This has been such a funconversation about wireless and
stadiums and stuff.
You blew my mind with some ofthe things I hadn't considered,
but I don't do wireless everyday, Kevin.
Any closing thoughts?
Speaker 2 (51:28):
No, this is really cool, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 4 (51:31):
No, thank you, guys again for having me.
Always feel free to reach outif you need anything.
Speaker 1 (51:35):
Awesome.
Well, we'll see you next timeon another episode of the Art of
Network Engineering Podcast.
Speaker 3 (51:43):
Hey everyone, this is Andy.
If you like what you heardtoday, then please subscribe to
our podcast and your favoritepodcatcher.
Click that bell icon to getnotified of all of our future
episodes.
Also follow us on Twitter andInstagram.
We are at Art of Net Eng that'sArt of N-E-T-E-N-G.
Art of NetEng that's Art ofN-E-T-E-N-G.
You can also find us on the webat artofnetworkengineeringcom,
(52:07):
where we post all of our shownotes, blog articles and general
networking nerdery.
You can also see our prettyfaces on our YouTube channel
named the Art of NetworkEngineering.
Thanks for listening.
We'll see you next time.
This is the Art of Network Engineering podcast.
In this podcast, we exploretools, technologies and talented
people.
We aim to bring you informationthat will expand your skill
sets and toolbox and share thestories of fellow network
(00:21):
engineers.
Welcome to the Art of NetworkEngineering.
I am AJ Murray Engineering.
I am AJ Murray and I am joinedthis evening by Kevin Nance.
Kevin, how you doing man?
Speaker 2 (00:30):
I'm doing really well .
I have to admit something thatmy mind has not been on this
podcast at all.
I am leaving for Europe in afew days.
I'm kind of phoning everythingin recently.
So if I ask some dumb questions, just know that my mind is in
Europe already.
So I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Like where in Europe are you?
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Flying into Paris, doing France for a week, and
then going to Rome for a week.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
Oh man, you already got the pasta on your mind,
exactly.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
I'm already there Mentally.
I'm there Carb overload.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
That's awesome.
Well, congrats.
I can't wait to hear about that.
I am excited and my mind islaser focused on the podcast,
because we're talking aboutsomething tonight that we don't
normally talk about, right Likewe're all network engineers, but
we're pretty wired, wired upman.
So wireless is the topic fortonight, and we are joined by
Alex Marquodont.
We met Alex at Cisco Live andboy he sold us on a show topic
(01:25):
and we signed him right up.
So, alex, thank you so much forjoining us.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
Yeah, thank you a lot , adrian.
Kevin, it's my pleasure to beon here.
I hope we can dive into some ofthe nitty gritty things about
Wi-Fi and some of the cooldeployments I've worked on in
the past.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Yeah, absolutely.
So to just kind of give somebackground on who are you, what
do you do, how long you've beendoing this thing, the cliff
notes of your career, as it were.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
Yeah, totally.
So I'm pretty young in thewhole realm of IT 23.
But I mean working in the MSPspace.
I feel like you mature so fast.
If there's any advice I havefor anybody getting started it's
like get your feet wet in anMSP and never look back.
You learn so much.
Started right out of college,kind of landed the job right out
(02:13):
of college.
My first job before out ofcollege was a sysadmin role.
Worked for a car automotiveplace, 20 locations.
First week on the job he's likehere's the admin and domain
creds, we're running Windows2008.
We got to get out of this.
So it was at college.
We would be like labbing stuffup and I'm like sweet, I'm going
(02:34):
to go do this in prod next week, transferring the FISMO roles,
doing all the group policies andreally learning by just
lighting things on fire but notbreaking production, which was
kind of the best thing I couldhave asked for for.
An entry-level IT job taught mea lot for sure.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Yeah, it's great when you land a role like that
because you can go to class,learn something and then go to
work and apply it.
Or you might learn something atwork and take it back to class
and be like, oh, but I learnedthis at work and kind of share
that knowledge.
When you can immediately learnsomething and then put it to
good use, I think it reallyhelps it stick.
Speaker 4 (03:07):
Yeah, agreed.
And then after that I graduatedcollege when I was 20 in the
peak of COVID.
There's really nothing you cando from a social aspect.
So I put my head down in thebooks, went and got certified in
a bunch of things, most notablymy CCMP in Enterprise Wireless
Design and Cisco Market SolutionSpecialist, most notably my
CCMP in enterprise wirelessdesign and Cisco Market
Solutions specialist.
I think those are the two keyaspects.
(03:28):
I drink blue all day but I'mvery versed in a lot of vendors.
And after that mixed hybridnetwork and systems admin role
at an MSP called Marco, Imigrated over to my current role
right now is with Atomic Data.
Number two my current roleright now is with Atomic Data
working on the Game DayTechnologies portfolio that we
offer, supporting our customersin Game Day Technologies when it
(03:49):
comes to stadium deploymentsand other large venues, whether
it's conference halls or yourone-off other unique deployments
.
So I got to do a lot of flashydeployments and get to see a lot
of cool things.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Awesome.
To be an SME in anything at 23is absolutely amazing.
So kudos to you, man.
That's incredible.
Speaker 4 (04:10):
Appreciate it.
I think the people on my teamthankfully respect me a lot and
I know I've definitely pinged alot of my team and it's
definitely cool, but I've earnedtheir respect at my age.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Yeah, yeah, that's great Congratulations.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
I barely remember my early 20s.
That's crazy, let alone beingresponsible enough to be an
admin somewhere and actuallydoing things I couldn't imagine.
It's awesome.
Kudos to you, man.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Awesome.
So I want to get into wirelessnetworking.
We've talked a lot aboutnetwork design on the show, but
we've never talked aboutwireless design, and there's
obviously some things that arevery different when it comes to
designing a wireless networkversus a wired network.
So let's start from thebeginning.
What's some of the high-levelstuff that we're going to kind
(05:03):
of cover or want to think aboutwhen we're doing a wireless
network?
Speaker 4 (05:06):
Yeah, when it comes to wireless, you kind of got to
think of it like your speakers.
You got to think about theproper placement.
You got to think about all thethings that could get in the way
, whether it's the walls, thethings that are going to
attenuate, the things that aregoing to cause interference
going from your projector thatsomebody's going to put up, the
random device that someone'sgoing to bring into the office,
(05:26):
all the BYOD devices.
How many devices are peoplegoing to have on average?
What are the type of devices inthe office?
Is everyone using laptops,surfaces, iPads?
And what are the commitmentsfrom a data perspective?
Is your team built with a lotof CAD and engineers, high data
traffic, or is your team justgoing to be sitting on Zoom
(05:46):
calls all day, which is lowlatency dependent, but not a ton
of throughput?
There's a lot of things that gointo building a wireless
network and especially when youneed to get things like
analytics or data out of it.
Placement is a huge thing andstarting off and really taking a
step back before you just jumpin and propose a solution to a
client, the one size doesn'treally fit all.
(06:08):
Sure, it works 90% of the time,but most of the time.
If you take a step back, reallywork with the client and earn
their trust, you're going tocome out with a way, better
solution in the end andhopefully a placement that's
going to work for them fromrefresh to refresh and a lot
less help desk tickets.
If you invest in the front endof the design, you'll have way
less noise over the years.
(06:28):
And I'm guessing that startswith a site survey Not
necessarily a site survey.
For the most part it's let'stalk with the client and
understand their business needs,look at their existing traffic
use on the firewall side ofthings and the switching
perspective and get a betterunderstanding of the business
needs.
And then, of course, we go tothe perspective of can we
(06:48):
actually find a floor plan forthis client?
That's a big issue.
Thankfully, with a lot of thestadiums that we work with, it's
like the stadiums aren't builtyet or it's in the process of
being built.
So we're getting the CAD filesas they're hot off the press or
we're able to get something.
But there's definitely caseswhere you're working with
enterprises or medical orgovernment facilities where they
(07:10):
don't have floor plans becausethe building was built back in
way before our times, like 1800s, 1900s and stuff like that.
So a site survey is definitelygoing to be needed, and
sometimes you have to createyour own floor plans.
Thankfully, like EchoHour comesout with this new fancy feature
where it's just a ghost.
It's called just go, so it'sable to use the lidar sensor on
the back of an ipad to justbuild a floor plan for you,
(07:32):
which really does help in yourin a pinch, but, uh, not the
best option have you ever gottena like a floor plan that's like
on a napkin just written outlike hey, there's some, some
walls over here, it's walls overhere.
Totally.
And I think when you get walllike those, like really unique
issues, it's kind of like allright, we're going to go out
with a sidekick, we're going totry to mock up a floor.
So you're sitting out therewith the laser, you're
(07:54):
calculating the distance betweenrooms to rooms and you're
trying to create a somewhataccurate thing.
But you spend more time on iton site and you're like
calculating the distances andyou're almost like, once you
know Wi-Fi and you've done itfor a while, you can kind of
walk around a building and belike, okay, and AP should go
here in the ceiling.
And then you walked around acorner and it's like here's
another one.
(08:15):
And it becomes more natural andcomfortable from that
perspective of mapping thingsout.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
So you talked about floor plans.
Is there something that you cando ahead of time like a
predictive survey?
I've heard that tossed aroundbefore in my past careers
professional services but Iwasn't like a wireless network
engineer, so I only heard thecool guys talking about it.
I didn't actually get to do anyof that stuff myself.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
Yeah, it is very common and from a cost
perspective, going on site isvery costly, especially because
most of the companies that endup using professional services
they have to pay that engineerto everything you're.
You're doing a predictive fromthe ground up and most of the
time with a predictive you canget away with getting everything
(09:13):
really accurate.
And most of the time whenyou're doing just a predictive
survey for a site and maybe weshould take a step back quick
and a predictive is where you'rejust simulating the wireless
environment.
I think we need to set thatground because we have the site
survey, which is where you're onsite and you're performing and
you're taking a measurement ofthe RF environment.
And then we have the passivesurvey, which is again on site
(09:35):
and getting its current load,and then now we're on to the
predictive, which is predictingthe best possible outcome for
the RF environment.
And most of the time you can getaway with creating a predictive
if you simulate the accesspoints lower than their max
output.
So most of the time if you wantyour radios and in wireless it's
(09:55):
better to have smaller coveragecells, so most of the time if
you're going to predict anoffice, you don't want your
radios to be more than like 15to 18 dBm for an office space
and that's kind of high.
So most of the time what you'regoing to do in the simulation
perspective is you're going toput all your radios to 12.
So then if a wall gets stood upthat is really thick or has
(10:15):
some weird material types, youcan kind of compensate from that
by tweaking the RF radio, byincreasing the power output,
because most of the time whenyou're doing a predictive you
don't have the in-depth CADfiles that actually show like
the wall thickness and stufflike that.
That's going to cause those RFissues.
So because a normal door versusa thick door is going to create
(10:37):
a lot of issues.
Or when it comes to glass,that's another big problem when
it comes to just doingeverything predictive.
So yeah, I think predictive toois based off of a floor plan
that you kind of feed of glass.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
that's another big problem when it comes to just
doing everything predictive.
So yeah, I think predictive toois based off of a floor plan
that you kind of feed into itand likely it's probably not an
accurate floor plan, right, likeit could be super old, uh,
there could be walls in places.
There's you know on the floorplan that there aren't.
You know they could havecompletely remodeled over a
couple of years.
Like there's the of helpful,but is it really helpful?
Speaker 4 (11:05):
Yeah, I suppose it's better than nothing, it's better
than nothing.
And then another good point isyou don't really know what's
there.
You get really old files or youcan't.
Especially in this case, it'sreally important to work with
those non-technical people orsomewhat technical people on
site to kind of have them walkthrough.
I've done FaceTimes before withpeople and it's like let's just
(11:25):
walk through the building quick, just like give me a casual
stroll.
Like you walked in from thefront door to your desk and like
from that you're able to likelook at things and like you kind
of get an eye for certainmaterials and certain wall types
and you're like, okay, that's a40 DM wall type where you're
sitting there, like walkawkwardly, walking up and down
the hallways, like banging onthe walls to see like what
they're made of.
This sounds weird.
But like, um, I grew up on afarm and whatnot, so as a kid
(11:50):
kind of just get used to likethose little weird nuances of
like material types and whatnot.
You're like is that going to bestrong enough to like create a
pivot, to like lift this up orlike a wedge, and you kind of
get used to those material types.
So it kind of get used to thosematerial types.
So it's really common, like onceyou understand more of like the
designing and buildingstructure types that you kind of
like you have like a littleniche or like this eye, like
(12:12):
pulling things out when you'rekind of creating those
predictives, because you neverknow, like on a floor plan it's
like it's flat, it's 2d, youdon't know if the ceiling's 10
feet tall, 20 feet tall or 8feet tall.
So like that plays a hugecontributor to like what access
point are we going to select?
What are the antennas we'regoing to put on?
If we have to use antennas, andlike if we're trying to reuse
(12:32):
existing network drops, like canwe reuse any of them from a
cost perspective, cause it'scostly to run new cables, every
new AP.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
And how?
How specific are you when itcomes to that?
So, like uh, I, when I we kindof did everything and one of
those jobs was wireless and whenwe were doing a remodel, we
tried to use existinginfrastructure as much as
possible.
It was like some jacks, and ifit was off by like a couple, you
know a couple of yards, we'relike, eh, this is probably good
(13:02):
enough.
How specific did it get to be?
Speaker 4 (13:05):
That's the reality of things is like wireless always
comes second and it's aestheticsis almost always more important
than the placement of theaccess point.
So, like, if it's within like10 feet, you're probably not
going to see a big difference.
The biggest concern is like,let's say, you had an access
point in like the center of acorridor where, like you have
two hallways crisscrossing andit was supposed to be in the
(13:27):
middle, and then you move itdown the hallway 10 feet, like
that's going to be a big issuebecause that's such a high
traffic, like pivot point andlike when you round that corner,
if you don't have an ap therefor, say, you're going to get
dropped off the network mostlikely because in a lot of those
tighter corridors the walltights are concrete or like
really thick material.
Um, so like ap placements likethat really matter.
(13:47):
But like if you're talking likea generic office space where
it's just like pretty open andyou're like 10 feet off, or like
we said at campus, and it'slike 10 feet off in the hallway
or something like that, likethat's not going to be a huge
concern for total RF performanceand most of the time if you,
depending on the solution youoffer or using those radios, are
going to be able to communicateand like pull the receive
(14:09):
signal strength clients and belike, okay, I need to increase
my power a little bit tocompensate for that and mitigate
that hole and coverage.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
So yeah, how, speaking of that, how?
How much do you rely on that?
Like, do you, because you knowmodern, you know cisco prime or
whatever, whatever can you knowon the fly, adjust power of the
aps?
But how much do you rely onthat?
How much do you actually go inand tweak the rf levels and
power levels and all that kindof stuff so that you know you
(14:36):
don't have to rely on, hopefully, the system automatically doing
it?
Speaker 4 (14:40):
Yeah, I've worked with a lot of vendors and it
really comes down to the vendor.
Now, if we're talking to likeCisco, I'm going to let that
thing do what it needs to do.
If it's Cisco or Juniper, mistlike those things are set and
forget it.
They do such a good job,especially in the high-density
venue spaces.
Jump in, make sure it only uses20 MHz channels.
Let it go.
(15:01):
It's going to do its propercoverage cells, dna Center and
the wireless line controller andall the APs communicate so
flawlessly.
From that perspective, it willsave you a ton of time.
Now, if you're working with a, avendor like aruba, which loves
fat 80 megahertz channels out ofthe box, and even if you go in,
(15:22):
tweak it to 20, it's alwaysgoing to try to use its max
output.
Something just doesn't sitright from the coverage cell
perspective.
You can enable dfs channels,but it won't use dfs channels.
So, like when it comes tostatically setting radio output
power, it really depends on thevendor.
I'm like I'm have to becompletely honest, especially
like, if you're doing the subenterprise grades like a
ubiquity, you're definitely haveto do a lot of manual tweaking
and, like when it comes to thatmanual tweaking, you're not
(15:42):
always going to be able to go onsite to do the validation
survey.
Back to the cost perspective, soyou're going to like simulate
the overall output of the accesspoints in a program like Ekahau
or Hamina and you're going tosit here and be like, okay, so I
need to be on this channel atthis frequency and on this DBM
range from an output power andDBM is like the overall output
(16:03):
power that you can have on an AP.
Just the measurement inmilliwatts of the total output
power that you can have and youcan think of the higher output
power leads to one the overallsize of the coverage cell or how
far away you can have.
And you can think of.
The higher output power leadsto one um the overall size of
the coverage dollar, how faraway you can be, um.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
So, and again, there's some more nuances, but
so when you're, when you'redeploying APs, is there a
different technique?
Um, you mentioned about likefiguring out the customer's
needs, but if you're doing likea high density, um, stadium
verse, uh, office space, whatare your strategies there?
To, kind of, how do youapproach each one, because
they're completely different?
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 4 (16:38):
I think the large venue space is a lot of fun
because before you really getstarted you're working with the
architecture team to identify,like the building, and then from
there you're working with a lotof sponsorships and you're
reviewing RFPs or requests.
You're reviewing this hugedocument that is consumed of
(16:58):
hundreds of pages and most ofthem are all public and they're
mostly put together by externalvendors.
So, like the NFL for example,they have their own commissions
and their own standards.
And the last time I readthrough an RFP for the NFL and
this is public it was like mustbe able to support 85%
connectivity rate and if youreally think about it, some
stadiums hold 60,000 people,70,000 people.
(17:22):
So when you're building awireless network to support 85%
of the connectivity of theclients, because most of the
time people have multipledevices but you also have to
think about the fact thatthere's a DAS system going in.
So when you're building thesehigh-density deployments, I'm
going to pick on the clubs,because MLS is kind of our cup
of tea here Over at Atomic Data.
(17:43):
That's what we specialize in isworking with MLS and we have a
really good partnership.
Minnesota United and MCCincinnati are kind of our
favorite two clubs.
But when it comes to designing,you're going to have additional
access points near the gatesbecause you're going to have
access points that are set upfor ticket scanners only and
then you're going to have APsthat are focused on just the
client onboarding perspective,because all these guest networks
(18:06):
are open, so there's so manydevices trying to connect up
even if you don't initiate theconnection.
So you have that.
You're going to take up a lotof airtime with all that client
onboarding, which is going todegrade the performance
tremendously.
Even if you try to set up allthe quality of service profiles
under the sun to like, say, Ineed the ticketing SSID to be
(18:28):
the most important thing outthere, it's not going to work
that way, simply due to the factthat you have so many
onboarding requests on the AP.
That's going to take up airtime, and airtime is just how much
time you get dedicated tocommunicate.
So you're going to put multipleaccess points near the gates to
really focus on one AP just hasthe tickets and one just has
onboarding clients.
(18:48):
So you're creating customprofiles and you're setting up
niche AP profiles on certainaccess points to prioritize
traffic and then also havingredundant APs in some of those
hired areas because sales againa lot, a lot of these clubs and
the NFL like.
At the end of the day, it's amarketing gig and they're all
about making money.
And yes, we all love to go andsee our favorite team lose on
(19:12):
Sunday or Saturday, but if youcan't get a beer at the stand,
why are you there?
For I feel like everyone goesthere to have a good time, buy
the merch and enjoy Again.
It's a great opportunity andsomething that we can really
enjoy.
In the United States in general, we have some of the greatest
facilities and some of the bestsporting arenas, but if the most
(19:34):
critical infrastructure doesn'twork during the 90 minutes,
what are you building it for?
That's when thinking about highavailability is such an
important thing.
Building redundant controllersand almost overbuilding
everything.
In the event of anything fails,the entire game can go off
without a hitch or no impact toanybody on site.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Man, you've already like blown my mind in the first
few minutes talking about someof this stuff, Because like
client onboarding, likeabsolutely that makes a ton of
sense.
Never thought about it.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Yeah, we never thought of that Open.
Speaker 4 (20:06):
SSIDs are horrendous for every network.
Like in no good space should youhave an open network if you
don't need it.
Like you should, even for yourinternal network, put a
pre-shared key on it and putthat guest password everywhere,
because your performance isgoing to be way better just
because you're not going to havedevices trying to connect all
the time.
You're not going to haveeverybody that walks outside
your building trying to connect.
(20:27):
Just the overall rf environmentis going to be way better.
You're not going to have likeweird issues, like a pretty
common issue that's noted withlike onboarding.
Onboarding, leading to issues,is like you'll notice, like
you'll be connecting,everything's fine, and then all
of a sudden you like randomlylike somebody will walk by you
and like you're like why did thewi-fi just like crap out on me
and it's probably because ofroaming, wasn't set up right or
(20:48):
the access point is alreadyunder a lot of load from a CPU
perspective and you're it justcan't prioritize that traffic,
because onboarding traffic isreally like has a very high
priority to an AP like thatassociation to get on as a lot
of lot higher priority in mostcases than your traffic that's
trying to load a webpage.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
So um, man, where, where do we go from here?
There's so much I want to cover.
Uh, so so from a from a designarchitecture perspective, you
know there, where do we go fromhere?
There's so much I want to cover.
So, from a design architectureperspective, you know, there's
centralized management anddecentralized management, right
Like.
So when we're talking about alarge venue like that, there
must be, you must be using both,right Like you want to, like
(21:29):
you said, over-engineer it sothat way, you've got multiple
controllers.
You've got, you know,controllers on that way you've
got multiple controllers.
You've got controllers on site.
You've got backup controllersin the cloud, maybe.
So what does the management ofall of this that we're about to
dive into look like Management?
Speaker 4 (21:44):
is pretty old school when it comes to venues.
I would say we're still veryheavy on controllers on site.
There have been some cloudlimitations.
We've ran into working withvendors and they're like don't
do this, please, putting thatmany access points.
Also, you have to think ofcloud latency and bandwidth
utilization If you're going tohave 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 access
(22:06):
points.
Uploading telemetry data tosome dashboard at the same time
during the game, that'slow-priority traffic.
Why are we wasting all thatbandwidth?
But at the same time, duringthe game, that's low-priority
traffic.
Why are we wasting all thatbandwidth?
But for the most part, we'reusing controllers still on-prem,
simply due to the security factA lot of controllers we can
still cap-wap or encapsulatetraffic from the AP back to the
(22:26):
controller so we can create aDMZ network to egress all that
traffic out of because guestnetwork traffic, especially at
the venue spaces.
Man, there's some crazy thingsthat happen and like you're
going to get DDoS during yourfirst game, you're going to get
a nice letter from the local ISPthat says why are you trying to
download X movie?
And you're going to be like ohgreat, you know, it's like.
(22:49):
Things like that You're nevergoing to think about.
It's like we have the DNSsecurity in place, we have the
firewall in place.
How did this happen?
It's like, oh, he's probablyusing some poor browser that's
creating a VPN tunnel out.
And most of the time when youthink of guest networks for
smaller enterprises, you're likeit's just going to be internet
access, don't care aboutanything.
But with the venue space, youend up having to almost treat it
as an internal network andcreate some of those security
(23:11):
postures and to prevent, like,the things that can pop up.
You know all right.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
So you, you talked about numbers.
Let's, let's throw some numbersaround here.
Um, let's say we're we're doingthe stadium 60,000 people.
I'm sure you know, obviously,how big that stadium is.
There's probably a lot offactors, but you know the
average stadium that you'vedealt with around that size.
How many aps are we, you know,thrown around here?
Yeah, I would say for like nfl.
Speaker 4 (23:37):
If you're talking like that many, you're going to
be pushing like 13 to 1500access points in the deployments
.
I've worked a part of um so Imean you can think about the
fact that that's going to becisco's biggest controller,
wireless land controller, um.
So like when you're tossingaround that many access points,
realistically for uh, mls clubit's going to be about a to 400,
(23:58):
depending on the size.
But in MLS Club again, itscapacity is around that 15,000
to 20,000 seating perspectiveand most of your APs are going
to be in the bowl, notnecessarily back of house and
whatnot.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
With that many people .
How do you play?
Because people are interferenceright.
Speaker 4 (24:17):
We're giant sacks of water.
You sit on top of that accesspoint and you just destroy the
rf.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Yeah so how do you, how do you plan for that?
How do you plan to have thatmany people all jammed in space
together all cutting the rf likeI can't even I can't picture
that yeah, also the fact thatthe rf has to work when no one
is in the stadium is a biggerissue.
Speaker 4 (24:37):
I think like wireless , yeah Cause when you think
about it you can have twowireless frequencies.
But like when the stadium'sopen, the powers are most likely
going to be way too high whenno one's in there.
So it's like how can we stillmake the wifi work when no one's
in there, along when people arein there?
And it's like for me, example,I might cut five dbm on that ap
(25:02):
by sitting on top of it, but bythe end of the game I might
drink a gallon of water and itmight be six dbm um or a few
years yeah, exactly so.
It's like that's a big thing andyou almost you add a ton of
access points in the bowl.
Um, your coverage cells aresuper small and you create zones
they're called within the bowl.
So you have really smallcoverage cells that are going to
cover like three to four rowsin total up in some width.
(25:24):
And again you're going to throwthese into programs like Echo,
how, and really simulate it.
Because again, when you'reputting APs too, it's really
common to do under seat rightnow that's kind of the best
thing.
It's not the best for the RF,but it's the best for containing
the coverage cell.
Because if you're going to tryto roof mount everything, it's
an aesthetics perspective backat that point.
And then, from a maintenanceperspective, do you really want
(25:47):
to get a lift every time youhave to jump up and tweak an AP?
It's a lot easier to put itunder seat.
And then also like the elementsfrom that perspective, like the
weather, but like when you'redesigning in the bowl, you're
going to have an RF profile andit's going to have a certain
range of RF and it's a lotbetter on the Cisco side of the
world than like Aruba right nowor some of the other vendors we
(26:08):
work with, like Extreme, it'sgoing to be pretty good at just
being able to increase anddecrease the overall power
because most of the time you'renot going to want to create
static channels.
But if you are using staticchannels it's planned for it to
be a full venue, not necessarilyan empty venue.
From that perspective, andagain, you're going to do a
validation survey in most casesYou're going to go on site and
(26:31):
you're going to create an RFprofile and you're going to
validate when the stadium isempty and then you're going to
do a validation survey when thestadium is full.
You're not going to survey theentire stadium, but you're going
to have portions Because forthe most part the bowl's going
to be the exact same all the wayaround.
I know everybody's seen thatpicture of some guy at an NFL
game or some game sitting therewith a laptop with a bunch of
(26:52):
antennas on it.
He's the front page of themeans for a week and a half and
that's really what it is.
It's on site during the gameand then not during the game.
One to measure is that outputpower right.
Is it too low?
Is it too high?
Did you set the bit rate toohigh from a connectivity
perspective, where clients can'teven get connected because the
signal, the noise is so bad orit just doesn't have a clear
(27:14):
path of communication, Likethat's a big issue overall.
The reality is is like you'renever going to be able to get it
perfect your first go and it'sgoing to take a few matches or a
few games on a new deploymentto get everything I have a weird
question for you.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
Yeah, do you.
This would go.
This would go many ways um.
Have you ever had anyonecomplain that their aps are
underneath them?
Speaker 4 (27:34):
no, I actually never.
Never heard that.
Um, I didn't know that they put.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
APs under people in a stadium.
It never crossed my mind.
Now it's going to get out there.
Now it's on a podcast.
Speaker 4 (27:48):
I've had people be like you know, you sometimes see
it in a railing too.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Yeah, I went to Cisco Live and I saw they had railing
encasings and underneath theseat and all that kind of stuff.
But I've been in officebuildings where I've had people
complain that they're too closeto the AP, that's giving
radiation and it's going tocause them to have whatever hair
loss or something crazy.
I was just curious if you hadanyone be like no, you're going
to fry my butt off during thegame or something I don't know.
(28:13):
My grandma tells me to kill allthe bees with the 5g.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
Every time I see her to be completely honest, but
I've never heard a complaintfrom anybody.
Um, especially a bee.
Yes, yeah uh, we do have somelike running jokes like in the
office, like oh, we're gonnalike decrease the like birth
rate of some cities or something, but it's just complete jokes
like you guys do joke about.
(28:38):
I knew it yeah um, there'snothing like from a perspective
like you do have to be carefulabout it because there are rules
that you have to have an ap.
So far away from like people,um, like from a distance
perspective, um, but for themost part, no, I've never had a
complaint because most timepeople don't even know they're
there because they're shovedunderneath the seat and like
(29:00):
they fold like most seats arelike set where they fold down,
so you sit down, you're sittingover it and like no one's really
gonna know unless they'retrying to shove a bunch of stuff
underneath the seat.
But then like what's this greatbox?
And they don't really questionas far as yeah, it's about as
far as they go, I don't care,yeah, like nobody really knows
what's in the box.
It's just like what's the boxfor?
They don't know it's an accesspoint, because we purposely
disguise them.
(29:21):
We don't want people being likeoh, we know there's an access
point here, we're going totamper with the box and try to
steal it and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Some junk out of the screwdriver.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
So that kind of answers a question we had in the
chat.
Dan asked if you ever had todeal with people tampering with
it.
Dan asked if you ever had todeal with people tampering with
it but it sounds like you guysthought ahead in that regard.
Speaker 4 (29:41):
Yeah, I don't think in my time we have not lost a
single access point.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
You sound like a cop or something I've never lost one
on my watch.
Speaker 4 (29:52):
I mean, they go offline all the time and I think
weather is the biggest issuewhen it comes to access points
for outdoor arenas.
It's like every year you'regonna have aps that go offline
and you're just gonna likethey're gonna have to wait until
the next off season until youcan get a low voltage vendor to
go and run a new cable or figuresomething out like um and then
ufc, like the first year.
(30:12):
Like they, we went live withthem.
Like the running joke wasthere's people on my team like
out there with turkey basters,like pulling water out of the
enclosures because like theyweren't sealed right.
So like you have these outdooraps.
And like you open up theenclosure because they're
covered with snow and ice inminnesota you're like scraping
away at it and I've heardstories of people sitting out
there with a turkey baster andlike squeezing the water and
(30:35):
getting it out during springtime.
Oh man, Some of the things likethat we uncover and like run
into and like, like gettingshipped out to a client site and
be like all right, you have 48hours.
How much can you get done inthis entire deployment?
Because you don't want to goback down there for another two
months.
If I can get everything onlineso I can configure remotely,
(30:56):
Like so like you play games withyourself a lot of the times
with these larger deploymentsand you try to automate
everything if you can.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
You sound like a typical network engineer who's
just like get it remotely so Ican go back to my office and do
it all remote.
I don't want to mess with it.
Speaker 4 (31:10):
Or like who else in my team wants to travel, like
the juniors, I don't know.
Like five years of travelingtook a toll on me, like two,
three times a month.
You know like you're gone andI'm like who's the junior, young
bushy tail that wants to go andlike sweat until they like are
dripping in Houston and duringthe middle of summer and just
like, yeah, and there's peoplethat like raise their hand up
(31:33):
because they've never seen it,they've never done it.
Like, the first time you walkinto a stadium, working it from
a network perspective versus afan perspective, your, your
mindset changes.
I mean, when you go into astadium, like everyone's like,
oh, this is so cool.
They're looking around, youknow, you're like looking at all
the knickknacks and then, onceyou work so many, it's like, oh,
it's another venue.
(31:53):
You know the layout of thestadium to stadium and it's like
a lot of these, like a lot.
Like I've looked at so manyarchitect drawings that I
probably can go crazy at thispoint.
It's like you know, like,especially when it comes to
stadiums, like they're prettycut and paste, like the
companies that work on them arethey.
They do, they're good at whatthey do for a reason, like they
build a lot of stadiums, so likea lot of the floor plans become
(32:15):
pretty like cookie cutter,almost like you kind of know,
like oh, this is going to workhere kind of thing in this bowl
deployment.
Um, you kind of assume materialtypes and stuff like that too
before things get built.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
So so if you ever get bored of doing networking, you
can become an architect.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
Now you can just yeah I was in robotics back in high
school and, like I would, wewould run cad machines and like
build 3d renderings.
I don't know if you guys haveever heard of SolidWorks oh yeah
but yeah, I spent a ton of timewith SolidWorks back in high
school like caddying up anddesigning our robot FRC, and
that's something that's prettycommon these days but spent a
(32:51):
lot of time in CAD, so it's kindof funny now that I work in
Wi-Fi, it's like oh, I know whatit takes to put one of these
together and it sucks.
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(33:26):
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All functions are, of course,exposed via REST API endpoints,
(33:48):
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Now back to the show.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
All right, I want to compare and contrast a little
bit.
I think a lot of our audienceis familiar with the enterprise.
They've probably been to a fewstadiums.
What are some of the biggestdifferences when we talk about
wireless networks, deploymentsbetween enterprise and a
high-density location like astadium?
So you might ever get 60,000people on a business campus, but
(34:30):
that's going to be spread overa much larger area and several
buildings compared to a stadium.
So what's some of the biggestthings that cause interference
that maybe you, you know youwouldn't think.
Speaker 4 (34:43):
Let's dive into that a little bit.
Yeah, I think when it comes todeployments, it's a little bit
different in venues and stadiumsbecause a lot of the times
you're not creating where yourSLA is super high.
You're going to have a lowerservice level agreement for all
these clients, like you're goingto be okay with certain levels
of packet loss and your totaldata rate and your commitment to
a client device is a lot lower.
(35:03):
In most cases, like when you'rethinking of an enterprise
employment, you have to haveperfect connectivity because
you're expecting to be on a zoomcall, but the reality is like
when you're at a stadium, you'repretty engaged until someone
scores or something, and that'swhen you're going to see the
huge spikes in data.
And that's where it's reallyimportant to have high
throughput on your firewall,because we don't like to limit
(35:27):
clients, because we want to getclient devices off the air done
communicating as fast aspossible.
That should go from enterpriseand to the venue space, but the
faster you can get a client tostop sending traffic, the better
.
So, like making sure you havethe underlying infrastructure
built to ensure you can likereally send all that traffic out
to the internet right away, solike you can post to facebook
(35:48):
right away, instagram right away, like post on twitter.
Like that is like the biggestthing you're building for is
like those speak, those spikesof traffic and most of the time
when people hit the uploadbutton they put their phone back
in their pocket.
You know, like you're buildinga network that's not necessarily
built for low latency and highthroughput, but you're it's more
like building something withhigher capacity from a client
(36:11):
perspective.
So you're going to put aps inthat are like have a ton of
antennas, whether it's an eightby eight or a four by four, on
the 5 gigahertz or 6 gigahertzfrequency, and you're really
going to focus on building APsthat can handle a lot of
connected devices not so muchthrough perspective.
So you're going to use, like aCisco 9166, which is going to be
(36:31):
their latest and greatest, oran Aruba 655 or some of their
outdoor APs, some of the six,seven, nine models, or six,
seven, seven.
So it's it's really comes downto making sure that with the
game day, like with the venueside, that you're focusing more
on client connection than ratheroverall, like client quality
(36:52):
and slas.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
It's almost like a shotgun approach, instead of
like you're just trying to getmass amount of people to get a
little bit of data.
Yep, yep, totally yep.
Speaker 4 (36:59):
That's exactly what it is so and of like, you're
just trying to get mass amountof people to get a little bit of
data.
Yep, yep, totally Yep, that'sexactly what it is.
So and I mean you're buildingfor the 95, 98% of client
devices and not if you can'tsupport the 2% of devices, as
long as they're not crucial tothe business needs, you're not
going to worry about them.
So like, if someone comes inwith their Samsung galaxy 3 and
(37:19):
they can't get connected to thewi-fi, tough luck, we don't care
like, that's just like that'sjust the reality of things we're
.
We're building like a lot of thevenues and like any campus you
go into it's like build, put thelatest and greatest in, because
their technology likeachievement per se and a lot of
the times it's like a showcasefor those vendors because they
(37:41):
sponsor hardware, give discountsor like something from that
perspective.
So like it's a showcase.
So like just as important as animportant deployment is, and
like making sure everythinglooks good, it's a branding deal
for a lot of these larger venuelike companies.
Um and again, like we helpthrough the entire process with
these clubs.
Like because a lot of timeslike you'll have a larger club,
(38:04):
they'll come to us and they'relike we don't really know where
to start.
And like we'll offer like thatc, that cto, that technology
roadmap, to like work with theconstruction company, work with
all the low voltage installersand like handle everything for
me, for you, when it comes to itplanning, like where should the
idfs go in the stadium, stufflike that what a problem to have
, huh kevin yeah, you're puttingon rfp for for wireless uh in
(38:28):
your uh in your area and and nowyou know, you got like all
these vendors coming to givefree stuff to the, to the nfl or
you know whoever soundsterrible.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
So you're saying that the latest and greatest, you
always want the, the newest andbest, and it's kind of a
competition.
Um, so what is your?
What does your upgrade cycleslook like then?
What is your refresh?
Look, because if you're alwaysbest, greatest, whatever, that's
a crap ton of money that you'reputting into these stadiums
it's interesting.
Speaker 4 (38:56):
It really depends on the club, like the audience, I
would say, and the venue spacelike, and the overall like
sports league, so like the nfl,has requirements that must be
met and if you read their rfps,like that are hundreds of pages.
Um, they set the refresh cycle,so it's not really controlled
by us.
The mls is a little bitdifferent.
Like it's managed by the club.
(39:17):
There's no like real standard.
You don't even need publicWi-Fi from that perspective.
So the refresh cycle is mostlyput a new deployment in right.
When it's built, run it untilits end of life, or the overall
services are degradingdrastically, or it makes more
sense from a cost perspective toreplace everything than to
maintain it and deal with thepossible cost of an outage.
(39:40):
So the refresh cycle is yeah,the refresh cycle is oh yeah,
it's.
It's pretty standard um it ityeah.
It fluctuates from organizationto organization.
I mean, again, it's funding.
At the end of the day, thewinning this team's gonna have
the nicest technology, mostlikely because they're gonna
have the most sponsors and stufflike that.
It is cool, though, being in,like in the venue, with the
(40:02):
ecosystem.
I'm in because I get to playwith all the new flashy toys and
I get to see all the old toysstill like.
I still get to work on the old,like cisco 2960xs one day, and
I can be working on a cisco 9500the next.
So, like same with the accesspoints.
Like.
We have clients that are inwave one access points from 2008
, when I was in elementaryschool, to the access points
(40:25):
that were not even released yet,and we're getting first models.
It's a cool experience.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
How about when you have wireless technologies that
are emerging?
So I'm not a wireless guru.
I am aware that Wi-Fi 7 is out,about to be out I'm not sure
exactly where it is, but whenyou have a scenario like that,
is a venue more likely to gotowards the new flashy, shiny
stuff coming out or, you know,the tried and true known to be
(40:55):
good?
You know, because I have toimagine there's maybe certain
benefits of the new architecturethat in theory they sound
better, but are they, you know,have they really been tested in
a stadium type environment?
Is that a risk that the youknow, for example nfl, might be
willing to take on a newtechnology?
Uh, you know, can you speak tothat at all?
Speaker 4 (41:15):
yeah, I think for the most part.
Uh, all the clients we workwith, they come to us as the
professionals and they reallytrust our opinions.
Um, so, like, if we have aproduct we haven't embedded yet
or we know it's not ready formain stage, we won't recommend
it and we won't try to sell themthe most flashy things.
Um, it is a little bitdifferent, like with the venues.
Again, we're it's gonna be liketry to get the latest and
(41:36):
greatest thing in and some ofthe incentives we get on some of
the new hardware versus the oldhardware.
It's like we'd be shootingourselves in the foot not to
take the new hardware.
I know, like back in the day,like Cisco used to give out free
DNA center appliances and freeice appliances and just be like
put these things in, we need thedata.
It looks really good from amarketing perspective.
(41:57):
But I mean, with enterprise,it's like let's do something
that's trying, true, but alsolike analyze if the upgrade is
worth it.
I have a lot of clients likethat have been pretty hesitant
about Wi-Fi 6E as long as samewith me me personally, it's like
it's a marginal upgrade.
We're going to see a lot ofbenefits when it comes to Wi-Fi
7.
Like, if you're holding on toyour Wi-Fi 5 access points or
(42:21):
your Wi-Fi 6 access points, youcan mark my word Wi-Fi 7 is
actually worth it.
There's going to be a ton ofthroughput improvements,
especially like MLO it's areally popular terminology being
thrown around right now.
It allows a client device toconnect to a 6 GHz radio and a 5
GHz radio simultaneously, soyou can have a client basically
doing full duplex communication.
Because, like, when we think ofwireless, it's half duplex,
(42:43):
it's one way all the time.
So, like, if we can do fullduplex over six gigahertz and a
five gigahertz frequency at thesame time, you're going to see
drastic throughput increases,way lower latency and, just a
way, better user experience onthe wi-fi from that perspective.
So, like with the refreshes andeverything and emerging
technologies, it's again itrelies on us as a consulting
(43:05):
firm to determine, like, is thisthe right choice for them and
is it going to fit their budget?
Because, like, we help them andassist with the budgeting of a
lot of their refreshes and it'slike like if we have to hold off
a year or six months, like wecan do that.
Like, again, we have the bestinterest to make sure that the
venue has the funds to continuegoing.
(43:26):
Because tech debt is such areal thing and like how can we
minimize that?
Tech debt is like what we focuson, because it's like I don't
know.
I've worked for companies likein the past where it's like sell
them the newest, latest, latest, greatest thing, get the
biggest spiff and make the mostamount of money from a sales
perspective.
But Atomic Data, we don't dothat.
That's why I like working here.
(43:48):
It's never been a sales-focusedmentality.
It's always been what's rightfor the client and what's right
what makes the most sense.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
I love it.
We've got a little bit of timeleft in this show.
I want to pivot away a littlebit because a lot of our
audience is, you know, breakingin, uh, getting started earlier
on in career.
Um, if somebody wants to getmore wireless focus, this
question comes from digital bitein the audience.
Um, when would somebody getstarted DigitalBite?
Speaker 4 (44:17):
I think we all know her name.
Oh, I know, I know who is she.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
Where would somebody get started?
Is it the CCNA?
Is it the Network Plus?
Wi-fi is a little bit differentthan wired networking, so where
do we go, certification-wise,yeah.
Speaker 4 (44:37):
Every thing is going to work different for people.
I would say if you have acertain vendor that you already
have in your organization, getcertified in that vendor.
But when it comes down to thebest Wi-Fi certifications, I'm
going to have to say the beststarting is CWNA, the Certified
Wireless Network Administrator.
That is, they have an entireplatform of certifications that
(44:58):
can teach you very specificthings.
The CWNA is going to be like ahigh-level overview of
everything where else and thenfrom there you they have more
specific certifications that youcan get, whether it's the
analyzer, analyzer side ofthings, the security side of
things, the designing side ofthings, and going from there.
Like for me, like I was workingsuper heavily in cisco with c
(45:19):
Gear, my previous role and Ifelt comfortable with Cisco
First company was Meraki.
So go Meraki and then reallyCisco heavy.
So I'm like this makes completesense.
I'm supporting this vendor, Ishould go and we get the cert
and a CCNP is a verywell-respected certification
within the industry.
So, like for me, it was likelet's get a CCNA to get started.
(45:39):
And then I found out that Ireally like Wi-Fi from the CCNA
and that was kind of like myniche and I went and pursued the
CCNP and enterprise andwireless design, so tied into
the Cisco side of things whereyou can only really use your
CCMP for the implementation side.
So the designing one made a lotmore sense because I'm very
(46:11):
vendor agnostic.
I know I've been talking aboutCisco, but I'm partial to Cisco.
Just at the end of the day,it's one of the best products
out there, but again, cisco'sexpensive.
We have to take that intoreality.
Just at the end of the day,it's like one of the best
products.
I'm out there, um, but againlike cisco's expensive.
Like we have to take that intoreality.
Like you can build an entireubiquity stack and have extra
switches in the corner and gohot swap to things when they die
, like that that's just thereality of things.
(46:32):
Like, yeah, but again, likewith some of the larger venues,
like downtime's not a thing, sohot swap doesn't save you during
game day, like at the 90thminute of an mls.
Like you can't do that, youknow.
Like could you be?
Like imagining watching thepremier league go and all of a
sudden, like 90th minute they'redoing like, like going into
overtime and all of a sudden thecore switch dies out or
(46:53):
something and they only have onebecause like they didn't build
the redundancy and stuff likethat.
So yeah, wireless is fun, um,but I think before you get into
wireless like super heavy and goget your ccn like cwna, I think
you really have to have thefundamentals of, like the
switching perspective, thefirewall perspective, before you
can really be a good wirelessnetwork engineer.
(47:14):
Because you have to understandway more things.
Because most of the time whenit comes down to wireless issues
, with the right deployment andthe configuration set up and you
have everything set to itperfectly, from the radio output
power, the minimum bit rates,the SSID profiles and everything
like that, most of the time itcomes down to the client device
being the issue or theunderlying network
infrastructure.
(47:34):
So I think you have to knoweverything because you can't
just be like I'm just a wirelessengineer, I put APs in and set
the RF radio.
You have to understand whateverything depends on, whether
it's the DNS servers, the NATs,on the firewalls, the throughput
limitations, the IPS and stufflike that.
So there's a lot that goes intoit.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
So, in addition to all the wireless networking
knowledge, you've got to bepretty good with your networking
knowledge in general.
Speaker 4 (48:04):
There's no cutting corners here.
Yeah, no, no, quick way towireless success.
It sounds like, yeah, I thinkyou can get really good.
You can get really good at it.
Like just the rf side of things, like going through some
training I've not been throughany of the account training and,
uh, maybe matt needs to get methrough it so I can, like vouch
for him going forward.
Um, but, um, I like the agaoguys.
They're good shit.
Um, but that that's definitelysomething I've never done yet.
(48:26):
So on the to-do list.
Speaker 1 (48:28):
Awesome, alex.
This has been a ton of fun.
Uh, what?
What should we have squeezedinto this episode with a little
bit of time that we have left?
Speaker 4 (48:36):
um with networking, you'll probably never get over
the reality of imposter syndrome.
I don't know about you guys, butI feel like every day you walk
in and you're just as cluelessas you were the day before, and
you should never think thatyou're above anybody on your
team.
Again, it's a team effort andthe moment you stop learning and
stop slowing down, you're onlyfalling behind.
(48:57):
Where it's a constant evolvingspace and automation isn't going
to steal our jobs because again, we're the plumbers of the
internet.
Only the good plumbers aregoing to stick around.
That's just the reality of it.
Speaker 2 (49:08):
So I like you, alex, I like you awesome so that's all
I got.
Speaker 4 (49:16):
I mean, feel free to reach out and connect with me on
any socials.
I'm pretty active on LinkedIn.
Speaker 1 (49:22):
I was just going to ask where can people find you if
they want to learn more?
Speaker 4 (49:26):
LinkedIn is really all I do.
I know I've definitely beenconvinced to jump into some of
the social media stuff, but Idon't know.
I like to be an introvert endof day and I don't know, we'll
see I'm starting a new role herepretty soon and work-life
balance should be a lot betterand maybe I'll have that time to
jump into the social mediarealm of things.
But just on LinkedIn right nowis at Alex Marconaut.
(49:49):
You can find me over there.
Speaker 1 (49:51):
And do you have a blog or anything like that?
Speaker 4 (49:53):
Oh yeah, I suppose I have a brief blog and it's just
my initials A-O-M-I-Ttech.
Again, it's just something Ipost some occasional articles on
and things that I run into.
It's something I'm starting tobuild out as one day I want to
go and get a CWNE, and for aCWNE you kind of have to have
(50:14):
some sort of personal record ofeither a blog or some sort of
media presence.
And for me, being more of anintrovert at heart, I felt like
blog was the easiest way to go.
So, and also like I can go backand refer to those technical
articles in the past and stufflike that.
I know I've heard like otherpeople be like oh, I just have a
blog so I can always go backand look at things and that's
just the reality of things.
(50:34):
Like build documentation toshare with everybody Because,
again, like we're all young,like everyone comes from a
starting ground and like you'regonna have mentors that are
gonna help you a ton and itsucks having to learn everything
on your own.
And like me coming up duringCOVID, I kind of felt like I was
sheltered into, like just learneverything on your own and like
learn through failing, andthat's kind of like how I
(50:54):
learned, um, but I meanthroughout the way.
I've had great mentors, like atmy previous, and I mean some of
those mentors have reached backout to me now and that's how I
ended up getting my new role isthrough an old mentor.
So I would say, have a mentorand really learn from them, and
you never know where it's goingto take you.
So build your personal network.
It's a big thing, great advice.
Speaker 1 (51:14):
Alex, thank you so much for joining us.
This has been such a funconversation about wireless and
stadiums and stuff.
You blew my mind with some ofthe things I hadn't considered,
but I don't do wireless everyday, Kevin.
Any closing thoughts?
Speaker 2 (51:28):
No, this is really cool, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 4 (51:31):
No, thank you, guys again for having me.
Always feel free to reach outif you need anything.
Speaker 1 (51:35):
Awesome.
Well, we'll see you next timeon another episode of the Art of
Network Engineering Podcast.
Speaker 3 (51:43):
Hey everyone, this is Andy.
If you like what you heardtoday, then please subscribe to
our podcast and your favoritepodcatcher.
Click that bell icon to getnotified of all of our future
episodes.
Also follow us on Twitter andInstagram.
We are at Art of Net Eng that'sArt of N-E-T-E-N-G.
Art of NetEng that's Art ofN-E-T-E-N-G.
You can also find us on the webat artofnetworkengineeringcom,
(52:07):
where we post all of our shownotes, blog articles and general
networking nerdery.
You can also see our prettyfaces on our YouTube channel
named the Art of NetworkEngineering.
Thanks for listening.
We'll see you next time.
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