Is one of the top SMB tech brands ready for prime time in the Enterprise market? This episode takes you inside the Ubiquiti UniFi World Conference in Chicago, where I, Wireless Nerd, bring you first-hand insights into Ubiquiti's preparation to leap into the enterprise sphere and their innovative breakthroughs. With the looming presence of illegal signal jammers and the sensational Canadian Flipper device saga, we're unraveling the complex fabric of wireless device security. I'll also recount the startlingly simple ways hotel key cards can be copied, shedding light on the striking security loopholes in places we trust.
Join us as we navigate Ubiquiti's bold stride toward enterprise readiness. Our buddy Tom delivered an engaging rundown on Wi-Fi 7 for newcomers, while we also got a peek ahead to the company's ambitious roadmap ... complete with 11 new access points set to revitalize Ubiquiti's standing in the market in 2024. We'll dissect the technological advancements in their gateway devices, physical security, and customer support, including an AI-driven chatbot that's pushing the boundaries of user assistance. Yet, with Ubiquiti's reluctance to initiate a channel or partner program, we're witnessing the teething problems of a company gearing up for a substantial shift. Expect a narrative intertwined with expert knowledge and raw, unfiltered glimpses into a company on the verge of transformation.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 0 (00:00):
Well, well, well, I guess we'll go ahead and get
started.
This is the Waves Podcast.
I'm Wireless Nerd and I amsitting in a hotel room in
beautiful Chicago, illinois.
It's a great day.
Outside you can't see A littleproblem with the camera, but
whatever I look good, I guess asgood as I can look.
And I am sitting here because Igot invited to come up to the
(00:23):
Ubiquity World Conference.
Now the Ubiquity Unified WorldConference is an event where
Ubiquity showcases everythingthat's happening in their
unified world and they were kindenough to extend an invite,
came up here and got to sittoday through some amazing
sessions, learn a lot aboutwhere Ubiquity is headed.
I've got some great thoughts, Ithink, on that, at least what
my thoughts are.
But I do want to start withwhat's new, what's now and
(00:47):
what's next.
Since this is the Waves podcast, I'm going to jump over real
quick and make sure that I'mstreaming live on all the
channels before I go ahead andget too far into it.
Got to make sure thateverything's ready for the
podcast.
The podcast hit a very coolmilestone.
We had a whole lot of downloadsthis week, which was fantastic.
So I appreciate the support.
I appreciate everyone tuning inand downloading the podcast and
(01:11):
listening.
It's always cool to get suchgreat feedback, and so thank you
so much for all of you that aredoing that.
It looks like I am live, sothat's awesome.
We can go ahead and start.
Yay, what's up everybody.
It's Drew Lentz, the WirelessNerd, and this is the Waves
Podcast.
Today it is March 26th, tuesday,march 26th.
I'm coming to you from Chicago,illinois.
(01:32):
I'm sitting in the Westin Hotelin my nice room overlooking the
lake here, and I just got donewalking across the street from
the Ubiquity Unify WorldConference.
Lots of really good stuffhappening, but first let's dig
into what's new, what's now,what's next, what's actually
happening in the wirelessindustry?
I've got my notes on my phone,so I'm going to be looking down
Instead of launching GoogleEarth, it would help if I
(01:53):
launched the correct thing here.
So let's see what we got here.
The first thing I wanted to talkabout is very interesting Lots
of buzz around illegal signaljammers, and it looks like
they're trying to crack down onthe sale of illegal signal
jammers things that are beingsold and marketed on Amazon to
take down drones or to dodifferent nefarious things, if
(02:13):
you will, using wireless signals, and this is of special
interest because of what justhappened in Canada a couple
months ago, with the flipperbeing blacklisted in the
Canadian market, not being ableto buy or sell or use the actual
Flipper itself, and so we justgot done doing a course on the
Flipper WLPC.
It's a lot of fun, and I justgot back from spring break a
(02:34):
couple of weeks ago and I wasshowing my kid how to clone a
hotel room key card not someoneelse's key card, my own key card
.
But it's really interestingthat I could take a device and
quickly and easily use it todupe a key card and use that to
open up the door.
Now I think it's great thatthey're cracking down on it, you
know, on Amazon.
I just don't want to see itaffect what's going on with the
(02:57):
Flipper Market, because that isa wireless tool that a lot of us
can use and do a lot of reallyneat things with.
Of course, as with any tool,you can always use it in a way
that's not supposed to be used.
But what's interesting is I'mstaying in this hotel and I'm
with a friend of mine who's ahotelier and we're walking up
and down.
We're talking about just howeasy it is to take advantage of
key cards.
And that brings me to the secondtopic of today, which was
(03:20):
ethical hackers showing off howto open millions of hotel key
card locks.
And so there was an oldersystem.
I guess everything has beenreplaced now.
It says but over 3 millionhotel room locks in 13,000
buildings, 131 countries, arevulnerable to an exploit.
Let's attackers forge masterkeys for any door.
According to Techspot, theDormacaba SafeLock electronic
(03:44):
door system, these are RFIDlocks.
According to tech spot, thedormicaba safe lock electronic
door system, these are rfidlocks.
Specifically, the system 6000ambience or community management
software is susceptible to uhto this exploit.
Now, this exploit can be donewith any android nfc phone, or
it can be done with somethinglike the flipper zero, the
pricks mark 3 or any nfrelateddevice.
And it says a simple fake cardcan unlock any door in the hotel
(04:06):
that's produced by thatoriginal.
So apparently you can take evenan expired key card and dupe
that card and with the correctsettings you can turn that into
a master key.
And that to me is fascinating.
But it's not as scary assomething as simple as walking
by the cleaning person'shousekeepings cart and grabbing
a quick cart off of there andtaking 30 seconds to duplicate a
(04:29):
master key using a flipper.
So there's really easy ways todo it.
There's a little bit morecomplicated ways to do it, but
we're definitely entering a timewhere people are taking
wireless devices and using themas a day-to-day object, either
for something security-based orfor something non-security-based
.
Jorge Herrera says I want aFlipper Zero.
Yeah, flippers are fun.
It's a lot of fun.
You can have a lot of fun withthose tools, but just be aware
(04:51):
that they can be used forsomething they're not supposed
to.
One thing speaking of low-endcommunications or near-field
communications NearLink asopposed to BLE and Wi-Fi the
emerging communicationstechnology.
Nearlink as opposed to BLE andWi-Fi the emerging
communications technologyNearLink is positioning itself
as an alternative to Wi-Fi andBluetooth in the Chinese market.
So Huawei has said that they'vegot 300 partners for the use of
(05:15):
NearLink.
So if you're not familiar withNearLink, look for it.
If it's anybody else other thanHuawei, not sure who else is
going to adopt it.
They do say they have 300partners.
It's 60% less power consumption, 6 times higher data
transmission speed and 1 30th ofthe latency of BLE.
It gives you a 7 dB improvementfor anti-interference and a
(05:36):
more stable connection withtwice the coverage and distance
and 10 times more networkconnections.
Now sorry, I fell down therabbit hole while looking this
up Cyclic prefix, orthogonalfrequency division, multiplexing
, so cyclic prefix, ofdm, andwhat that does is that helps
with the latency issue.
Basically, what they do is theytake your data packet that
(05:57):
you're sitting across the littleradiogram that's going across,
and they take the end of it andthey take the last component of
it and then they use that as aprefix to the packet that they
send over.
So you get the last part firstand then you get the data and
then you get the last part againand they use that to make sure
that everything from forwarderror correction, something that
they call HARC, which I alwaysmess up the synonym for HARC is
(06:21):
Hybrid, automatic Repeat,re-request.
So when you combine HARART andyou combine that forward error
correction that they're usingand you combine that with the
cyclic prefix OFDM, it makes fora very stable connection at
smaller distances not hugedistances, but smaller distances
.
So that's interesting to seewhat NearLink will do.
Everyone's looking for thatdata, for more data in smaller
(06:44):
areas, and so if you think aboutthese signal jammers and you
think about Flipper Zero and youthink about NFC and RFID, and
then you merge that in withNearLink as a new and upcoming
technology NearLink, ble andWi-Fi.
It's going to be kind ofinteresting to see what happens
there.
So I've got a lot of noteswhere I really fell down the
rabbit hole looking up cyclicprefix, ofdm and Nearlink.
But I just wanted to mentionthose real quick because I
(07:07):
thought that those werefascinating to learn about.
But on to what happened today atUbiquity World Conference.
So to start off the day, youknow we got a couple of us
invited to come out here.
We came out, we had a good time.
There was about 400 people theysaid that were registered for
it.
It was a packed house.
I posted some pictures on myTwitter or my ex-account at
Wireless Nerd so you can seewhat was going on.
(07:28):
We had a really cool Redditthread going also, but
essentially about 400 peopleshowed up and they were invited
to come out and be a part of theUnify World Conference and it
was just a run-through of whatthey're doing with Unify where
it's headed.
They started off the day with akeynote from Robert Pera, which
is really cool because that'snot someone who makes a lot of
media appearances.
So having him come out waspretty fantastic.
(07:49):
You know he's a tall guy as Iam, and it was funny.
He had two little microphoneson the podium.
He was like leaning over halfthe time talking into the podium
and then someone walked outwith a handheld mic and looks at
him and says where'd you guysget that mic?
But other than that, no bigtechnical troubles to report,
but it was really good.
It was great to hear from himand I'll tell you, having having
(08:09):
attended HP discover and havingattended Cisco live and a lot
of these big polished, you knowcorporate things, the ubiquity
one was different.
It was refreshingly different.
Lots of candid conversationinstead of saying, you know,
instead of the marketing hype ofthis is what we do and how we
do it.
There was a lot of our stuff'spretty good, it's working the
(08:29):
way that we expected it to.
We've had some hiccups.
He even made one comment aboutyou know how a certain product
had taken years off of his life.
There was lots of fun banterback and forth about what the
company is doing and wherethey're going and where they're
going, the vision that was setwas definitely in the enterprise
space, definitely coming afterenterprise from a product
perspective, from a softwareperspective, from a support
perspective, there's a lot ofmoves that they're making.
(08:50):
Some new products were announced.
We were asked not to talk aboutthem and definitely don't
photograph them.
I did get permission to takephotographs.
That was pretty cool, but Idon't want to talk about them.
We'll let those come out.
Q3, some of those products aregoing to come out, so we're
going to come out in the nexttwo weeks, which is pretty cool,
but lots of really coolproducts that they're coming out
with to push into theenterprise market, which is good
, and then they drilled downinto that.
(09:12):
So then we had Tom come out anda lot of y'all met Tom at WLPC
when Ubiquity was out there.
So he came out and gave arundown of Wi-Fi 7, but
basically explained what Wi-Fi 7was to a group of people that
weren't familiar with Wi-Fi.
So I was hoping that that wasrecorded, because he did a
really, really good job ofbreaking down some of the most
basic and common things in Wi-Fi7 and why it makes a difference
(09:34):
overall for businesses.
So that was really good to hear.
Talked about some new productlines, talked about launching 10
or 11, I can't remember if itwas 10 or 11, I think it was 11
new access points in 2024.
Is 10 or 11, I think it was 11new access points in 2024.
That's pretty cool.
There's a lot there it talkedabout you know.
Then they moved in and theytalked about the gateway devices
, the unified gateway devices.
(09:57):
They talked about what they'redoing for enterprise there,
because they basically had theUDM that sits in the middle.
They needed something a littlebit lower end, and then they
definitely needed somethinghigher end, if that's where the
aspirations were to go into.
Enterprise Moved on to talkabout physical security.
They talked about theirsecurity camera systems, their
identity systems.
Then they went in and theytalked about the support and the
structure for pre-sale support,all the tools that are
currently available, includingtheir chat, gpt, clone, unified
(10:20):
GPT, and then they went on totalk about the post support,
some of the new things that werejust announced about after the
install is done.
How do you make sure that?
If you need that higher levelof support, how is that done?
The one thing that they didn'ttouch on was the channel model,
and that was important to mebecause, as much as they talked
about all the products beingenterprise ready, which it seems
(10:41):
like they are third generationon APs, or fourth generation APs
, third generation on switching,you know, second generation on
gateways.
They're really moving forward.
They've learned a lot oflessons, knowing I mean, they
were quite bluntly honest aboutknowing where those pitfalls
were, but moving into where theyare now and getting the
equipment at a place where theyfeel like it's enterprise ready,
(11:02):
I think that's where they'restanding.
They're standing right on theedge of that.
And now it's how do they makethe organization more enterprise
ready?
We didn't hear a lot about that.
When asked if there was, youknow, if there's going to be a
partner program or a channelprogram, they said yeah, we've
heard the feedback that that'ssomething that people want, but
it's not something we'rediscussing right now.
That was like a kick in thepants for everyone who was
sitting in there, who was from aVAR, from a disty Lots of VARs,
(11:24):
lots of distys, lots of endusers here.
So when you have 400 people whorepresent every group that you
can possibly imagine, hearingthat was a little bit of like oh
okay, you're not ready.
So that's what led me to sayearlier, and I'll say it again
is that I think that, from aproduct perspective, they are
getting enterprise ready.
They are making those moves.
We've seen their marketinguptick with those hilarious
(11:44):
videos that they're posting.
We're seeing more engagementthat they have.
Now we're seeing them going outon a road show with the
Ubiquity World Conference andthey're going to be taking that
in April to a whole bunch ofdifferent countries.
We're seeing this movement tobuild momentum to get them
enterprise ready.
But it still feels like there'ssomething lacking.
So it still feels like withinthe organization that maybe
(12:05):
they're not enterprise ready yetfrom a corporate perspective.
And I say that because therestill is no established channel.
There still is no Sparing Depotprogram.
There still is no partnerprogram in place.
There's lots of training andthey've got a lot of really cool
call center things going on.
But I think over the next sixto 12 months we might start to
see that change a little bit andthat's when they're going to
(12:27):
start really making that push.
I think, being a technicallyoriented company, an engineering
strong company, that camethrough.
We joked, we were sitting thereand it was like there were a
lot of great presenters thatwere on the stage, but what you
didn't have was that polishedcorporate event feel, which was
good, but also, at the same time, it left something to be wanted
(12:48):
, something to be desired, rightwhen it was.
Like you're used to seeing thatand this was, you know.
Granted, this is their firstevent, so I'm not being hard on
them at all.
I think that they're thatthey've got a lot of ways to
move into that and I think thatit's going to be really, really
cool to see them move into that,especially with everything
that's going on the turmoil inthe marketplace right now,
(13:09):
layoffs at Cisco and Aruba andJuniper getting together and not
knowing which directionwireless is going left or right,
or who's really taking thereins.
And then here comes Ubiquiti,up from the bottom, going, hey,
we're gonna make a strong pushinto enterprise.
It's gonna be reallyinteresting to see how the
market reacts to that,especially when I don't know
that everyone's.
They did, speaking of gettingit in people's hands and showing
(13:32):
them that they're enterpriseready.
They gave everybody a U7 Pro toshow off some of new SKUs that
they're going to come out withover the next.
You know, over the next yearare going to be.
(14:00):
The customer support on theforums is not the best.
That's what Jorge says overthere.
You know, on X he's commenting.
They mentioned that, you know.
Someone from the crowd saidyeah, you know, when I want
support I've got to go to theforums.
And if I go to the forums, well, sometimes it takes a while for
someone to respond, which theywere shocked to hear, which was
interesting, because I really Ifeel like that's kind of
(14:22):
commonplace.
Anyway, I think that's all Ireally got on what's going on.
It was a good day.
I'm trying to collect mythoughts, to do a write-up and
see, you know, to really putdown what I think overall of
what's going on.
But I think the short hot take,as Keith Townsend would say,
the hot take is that whileUbiquity is getting ready to
(14:42):
present themselves as anenterprise-ready competitor from
a hardware perspective, theorganization still needs a
little bit of work to instillthat faith in the industry that
they are enterprise ready.
I think that about sums it up.
Now they did have some reallyneat stuff that showed off some
deeper, not necessarily packetinspection, but SSL inspection.
(15:04):
If you're familiar with Gigamon, they talked about some new
features.
They're very Gigamon-like wherethey break the SSL so you can
see all those search queries andeverything else that are going
on.
These are new features thatthey hinted at becoming
available, but only once thatnew hardware is available, if
you like, their camera systemsand their identity stuff.
There was lots of talk there,lots of movement there, lots of
(15:24):
applause surrounding that.
They talked about some new NVRfeatures and some new ways that
they can aggregate storageacross multiple sites to like.
Thunderous applause, lots ofpeople.
It seems that there are a lotmore people here interested in
the cameras and the NVR thanspecifically they were in the
wireless or you know, or on theon the gateway side.
(15:45):
But it really did feel likethey were.
They were getting poised toreally enter the like, taking
seriously their entrance intothe enterprise market.
So I'll be interested to seewhat they do over the next six
to 12 months.
It's going to be.
It's going to be interesting.
I'll also be interested to seewhat they do over the next month
and a half, as they do more ofthese ubiquity world conferences
(16:07):
.
So I appreciate them extendingthe invite to me to come out and
see what what's going on.
You know, uh, it's always greatto to be around.
Fellow nerd, saw some peoplefrom wlpc here, saw some faces I
hadn't seen in a while.
If you ever get a chance to,you know, to be invited to
something like this, don't everpass it up.
It's always more fun toparticipate.
That being said, that wraps itup for the week.
(16:28):
I've got dinner to get totonight.
I'm gonna go enjoy chicago herefor a minute before I get back
home and I look forward toseeing you next week.
If you have any questions aboutany of this stuff, just feel
free to drop me a line, ask meanything, and myself, daryl
DeRogia, sean Bender, my buddyHerschel we were all here
sitting in the audience, sothere's some resources too.
Go look at the thread on Reddit.
(16:48):
There were some questions thatwere answered on there, but if
you have questions about it,please let us know.
We'll be happy to communicatethat back.
Anyhow, that does it for thisweek's Waves.
With Wireless Nerd, we have somereally cool stuff coming up.
I've been doing some interviewswith other people, so be on the
lookout.
What I'm going to start doingis not just this, but I
mentioned before, I'm going tocrank out a Patreon and throw
(17:09):
some of the stuff behind apaywall.
Hopefully it'll help me out andmaybe I can buy a new lens or a
better camera or some betterlighting or something.
But I'm gonna be doing that andthen I'm gonna be appending
some of those interviews as wemove forward.
I had a really cool time twodays ago standing on rooftops
doing some private LTE.
I'll be talking more about thatin the future with some of the
sponsors that are on there.
So if you want to sponsor,please drop me a line, also
(17:30):
trueatruelenscom, or hit me upat Wireless Nerd.
Anyway, you all have awonderful week.
We'll see you next week, seeyou later.
Well, well, well, I guess we'll go ahead and get
started.
This is the Waves Podcast.
I'm Wireless Nerd and I amsitting in a hotel room in
beautiful Chicago, illinois.
It's a great day.
Outside you can't see A littleproblem with the camera, but
whatever I look good, I guess asgood as I can look.
And I am sitting here because Igot invited to come up to the
(00:23):
Ubiquity World Conference.
Now the Ubiquity Unified WorldConference is an event where
Ubiquity showcases everythingthat's happening in their
unified world and they were kindenough to extend an invite,
came up here and got to sittoday through some amazing
sessions, learn a lot aboutwhere Ubiquity is headed.
I've got some great thoughts, Ithink, on that, at least what
my thoughts are.
But I do want to start withwhat's new, what's now and
(00:47):
what's next.
Since this is the Waves podcast, I'm going to jump over real
quick and make sure that I'mstreaming live on all the
channels before I go ahead andget too far into it.
Got to make sure thateverything's ready for the
podcast.
The podcast hit a very coolmilestone.
We had a whole lot of downloadsthis week, which was fantastic.
So I appreciate the support.
I appreciate everyone tuning inand downloading the podcast and
(01:11):
listening.
It's always cool to get suchgreat feedback, and so thank you
so much for all of you that aredoing that.
It looks like I am live, sothat's awesome.
We can go ahead and start.
Yay, what's up everybody.
It's Drew Lentz, the WirelessNerd, and this is the Waves
Podcast.
Today it is March 26th, tuesday,march 26th.
I'm coming to you from Chicago,illinois.
(01:32):
I'm sitting in the Westin Hotelin my nice room overlooking the
lake here, and I just got donewalking across the street from
the Ubiquity Unify WorldConference.
Lots of really good stuffhappening, but first let's dig
into what's new, what's now,what's next, what's actually
happening in the wirelessindustry?
I've got my notes on my phone,so I'm going to be looking down
Instead of launching GoogleEarth, it would help if I
(01:53):
launched the correct thing here.
So let's see what we got here.
The first thing I wanted to talkabout is very interesting Lots
of buzz around illegal signaljammers, and it looks like
they're trying to crack down onthe sale of illegal signal
jammers things that are beingsold and marketed on Amazon to
take down drones or to dodifferent nefarious things, if
(02:13):
you will, using wireless signals, and this is of special
interest because of what justhappened in Canada a couple
months ago, with the flipperbeing blacklisted in the
Canadian market, not being ableto buy or sell or use the actual
Flipper itself, and so we justgot done doing a course on the
Flipper WLPC.
It's a lot of fun, and I justgot back from spring break a
(02:34):
couple of weeks ago and I wasshowing my kid how to clone a
hotel room key card not someoneelse's key card, my own key card
.
But it's really interestingthat I could take a device and
quickly and easily use it todupe a key card and use that to
open up the door.
Now I think it's great thatthey're cracking down on it, you
know, on Amazon.
I just don't want to see itaffect what's going on with the
(02:57):
Flipper Market, because that isa wireless tool that a lot of us
can use and do a lot of reallyneat things with.
Of course, as with any tool,you can always use it in a way
that's not supposed to be used.
But what's interesting is I'mstaying in this hotel and I'm
with a friend of mine who's ahotelier and we're walking up
and down.
We're talking about just howeasy it is to take advantage of
key cards.
And that brings me to the secondtopic of today, which was
(03:20):
ethical hackers showing off howto open millions of hotel key
card locks.
And so there was an oldersystem.
I guess everything has beenreplaced now.
It says but over 3 millionhotel room locks in 13,000
buildings, 131 countries, arevulnerable to an exploit.
Let's attackers forge masterkeys for any door.
According to Techspot, theDormacaba SafeLock electronic
(03:44):
door system, these are RFIDlocks.
According to tech spot, thedormicaba safe lock electronic
door system, these are rfidlocks.
Specifically, the system 6000ambience or community management
software is susceptible to uhto this exploit.
Now, this exploit can be donewith any android nfc phone, or
it can be done with somethinglike the flipper zero, the
pricks mark 3 or any nfrelateddevice.
And it says a simple fake cardcan unlock any door in the hotel
(04:06):
that's produced by thatoriginal.
So apparently you can take evenan expired key card and dupe
that card and with the correctsettings you can turn that into
a master key.
And that to me is fascinating.
But it's not as scary assomething as simple as walking
by the cleaning person'shousekeepings cart and grabbing
a quick cart off of there andtaking 30 seconds to duplicate a
(04:29):
master key using a flipper.
So there's really easy ways todo it.
There's a little bit morecomplicated ways to do it, but
we're definitely entering a timewhere people are taking
wireless devices and using themas a day-to-day object, either
for something security-based orfor something non-security-based
.
Jorge Herrera says I want aFlipper Zero.
Yeah, flippers are fun.
It's a lot of fun.
You can have a lot of fun withthose tools, but just be aware
(04:51):
that they can be used forsomething they're not supposed
to.
One thing speaking of low-endcommunications or near-field
communications NearLink asopposed to BLE and Wi-Fi the
emerging communicationstechnology.
Nearlink as opposed to BLE andWi-Fi the emerging
communications technologyNearLink is positioning itself
as an alternative to Wi-Fi andBluetooth in the Chinese market.
So Huawei has said that they'vegot 300 partners for the use of
(05:15):
NearLink.
So if you're not familiar withNearLink, look for it.
If it's anybody else other thanHuawei, not sure who else is
going to adopt it.
They do say they have 300partners.
It's 60% less power consumption, 6 times higher data
transmission speed and 1 30th ofthe latency of BLE.
It gives you a 7 dB improvementfor anti-interference and a
(05:36):
more stable connection withtwice the coverage and distance
and 10 times more networkconnections.
Now sorry, I fell down therabbit hole while looking this
up Cyclic prefix, orthogonalfrequency division, multiplexing
, so cyclic prefix, ofdm, andwhat that does is that helps
with the latency issue.
Basically, what they do is theytake your data packet that
(05:57):
you're sitting across the littleradiogram that's going across,
and they take the end of it andthey take the last component of
it and then they use that as aprefix to the packet that they
send over.
So you get the last part firstand then you get the data and
then you get the last part againand they use that to make sure
that everything from forwarderror correction, something that
they call HARC, which I alwaysmess up the synonym for HARC is
(06:21):
Hybrid, automatic Repeat,re-request.
So when you combine HARART andyou combine that forward error
correction that they're usingand you combine that with the
cyclic prefix OFDM, it makes fora very stable connection at
smaller distances not hugedistances, but smaller distances
.
So that's interesting to seewhat NearLink will do.
Everyone's looking for thatdata, for more data in smaller
(06:44):
areas, and so if you think aboutthese signal jammers and you
think about Flipper Zero and youthink about NFC and RFID, and
then you merge that in withNearLink as a new and upcoming
technology NearLink, ble andWi-Fi.
It's going to be kind ofinteresting to see what happens
there.
So I've got a lot of noteswhere I really fell down the
rabbit hole looking up cyclicprefix, ofdm and Nearlink.
But I just wanted to mentionthose real quick because I
(07:07):
thought that those werefascinating to learn about.
But on to what happened today atUbiquity World Conference.
So to start off the day, youknow we got a couple of us
invited to come out here.
We came out, we had a good time.
There was about 400 people theysaid that were registered for
it.
It was a packed house.
I posted some pictures on myTwitter or my ex-account at
Wireless Nerd so you can seewhat was going on.
(07:28):
We had a really cool Redditthread going also, but
essentially about 400 peopleshowed up and they were invited
to come out and be a part of theUnify World Conference and it
was just a run-through of whatthey're doing with Unify where
it's headed.
They started off the day with akeynote from Robert Pera, which
is really cool because that'snot someone who makes a lot of
media appearances.
So having him come out waspretty fantastic.
(07:49):
You know he's a tall guy as Iam, and it was funny.
He had two little microphoneson the podium.
He was like leaning over halfthe time talking into the podium
and then someone walked outwith a handheld mic and looks at
him and says where'd you guysget that mic?
But other than that, no bigtechnical troubles to report,
but it was really good.
It was great to hear from himand I'll tell you, having having
(08:09):
attended HP discover and havingattended Cisco live and a lot
of these big polished, you knowcorporate things, the ubiquity
one was different.
It was refreshingly different.
Lots of candid conversationinstead of saying, you know,
instead of the marketing hype ofthis is what we do and how we
do it.
There was a lot of our stuff'spretty good, it's working the
(08:29):
way that we expected it to.
We've had some hiccups.
He even made one comment aboutyou know how a certain product
had taken years off of his life.
There was lots of fun banterback and forth about what the
company is doing and wherethey're going and where they're
going, the vision that was setwas definitely in the enterprise
space, definitely coming afterenterprise from a product
perspective, from a softwareperspective, from a support
perspective, there's a lot ofmoves that they're making.
(08:50):
Some new products were announced.
We were asked not to talk aboutthem and definitely don't
photograph them.
I did get permission to takephotographs.
That was pretty cool, but Idon't want to talk about them.
We'll let those come out.
Q3, some of those products aregoing to come out, so we're
going to come out in the nexttwo weeks, which is pretty cool,
but lots of really coolproducts that they're coming out
with to push into theenterprise market, which is good
, and then they drilled downinto that.
(09:12):
So then we had Tom come out anda lot of y'all met Tom at WLPC
when Ubiquity was out there.
So he came out and gave arundown of Wi-Fi 7, but
basically explained what Wi-Fi 7was to a group of people that
weren't familiar with Wi-Fi.
So I was hoping that that wasrecorded, because he did a
really, really good job ofbreaking down some of the most
basic and common things in Wi-Fi7 and why it makes a difference
(09:34):
overall for businesses.
So that was really good to hear.
Talked about some new productlines, talked about launching 10
or 11, I can't remember if itwas 10 or 11, I think it was 11
new access points in 2024.
Is 10 or 11, I think it was 11new access points in 2024.
That's pretty cool.
There's a lot there it talkedabout you know.
Then they moved in and theytalked about the gateway devices
, the unified gateway devices.
(09:57):
They talked about what they'redoing for enterprise there,
because they basically had theUDM that sits in the middle.
They needed something a littlebit lower end, and then they
definitely needed somethinghigher end, if that's where the
aspirations were to go into.
Enterprise Moved on to talkabout physical security.
They talked about theirsecurity camera systems, their
identity systems.
Then they went in and theytalked about the support and the
structure for pre-sale support,all the tools that are
currently available, includingtheir chat, gpt, clone, unified
(10:20):
GPT, and then they went on totalk about the post support,
some of the new things that werejust announced about after the
install is done.
How do you make sure that?
If you need that higher levelof support, how is that done?
The one thing that they didn'ttouch on was the channel model,
and that was important to mebecause, as much as they talked
about all the products beingenterprise ready, which it seems
(10:41):
like they are third generationon APs, or fourth generation APs
, third generation on switching,you know, second generation on
gateways.
They're really moving forward.
They've learned a lot oflessons, knowing I mean, they
were quite bluntly honest aboutknowing where those pitfalls
were, but moving into where theyare now and getting the
equipment at a place where theyfeel like it's enterprise ready,
(11:02):
I think that's where they'restanding.
They're standing right on theedge of that.
And now it's how do they makethe organization more enterprise
ready?
We didn't hear a lot about that.
When asked if there was, youknow, if there's going to be a
partner program or a channelprogram, they said yeah, we've
heard the feedback that that'ssomething that people want, but
it's not something we'rediscussing right now.
That was like a kick in thepants for everyone who was
sitting in there, who was from aVAR, from a disty Lots of VARs,
(11:24):
lots of distys, lots of endusers here.
So when you have 400 people whorepresent every group that you
can possibly imagine, hearingthat was a little bit of like oh
okay, you're not ready.
So that's what led me to sayearlier, and I'll say it again
is that I think that, from aproduct perspective, they are
getting enterprise ready.
They are making those moves.
We've seen their marketinguptick with those hilarious
(11:44):
videos that they're posting.
We're seeing more engagementthat they have.
Now we're seeing them going outon a road show with the
Ubiquity World Conference andthey're going to be taking that
in April to a whole bunch ofdifferent countries.
We're seeing this movement tobuild momentum to get them
enterprise ready.
But it still feels like there'ssomething lacking.
So it still feels like withinthe organization that maybe
(12:05):
they're not enterprise ready yetfrom a corporate perspective.
And I say that because therestill is no established channel.
There still is no Sparing Depotprogram.
There still is no partnerprogram in place.
There's lots of training andthey've got a lot of really cool
call center things going on.
But I think over the next sixto 12 months we might start to
see that change a little bit andthat's when they're going to
(12:27):
start really making that push.
I think, being a technicallyoriented company, an engineering
strong company, that camethrough.
We joked, we were sitting thereand it was like there were a
lot of great presenters thatwere on the stage, but what you
didn't have was that polishedcorporate event feel, which was
good, but also, at the same time, it left something to be wanted
(12:48):
, something to be desired, rightwhen it was.
Like you're used to seeing thatand this was, you know.
Granted, this is their firstevent, so I'm not being hard on
them at all.
I think that they're thatthey've got a lot of ways to
move into that and I think thatit's going to be really, really
cool to see them move into that,especially with everything
that's going on the turmoil inthe marketplace right now,
(13:09):
layoffs at Cisco and Aruba andJuniper getting together and not
knowing which directionwireless is going left or right,
or who's really taking thereins.
And then here comes Ubiquiti,up from the bottom, going, hey,
we're gonna make a strong pushinto enterprise.
It's gonna be reallyinteresting to see how the
market reacts to that,especially when I don't know
that everyone's.
They did, speaking of gettingit in people's hands and showing
(13:32):
them that they're enterpriseready.
They gave everybody a U7 Pro toshow off some of new SKUs that
they're going to come out withover the next.
You know, over the next yearare going to be.
(14:00):
The customer support on theforums is not the best.
That's what Jorge says overthere.
You know, on X he's commenting.
They mentioned that, you know.
Someone from the crowd saidyeah, you know, when I want
support I've got to go to theforums.
And if I go to the forums, well, sometimes it takes a while for
someone to respond, which theywere shocked to hear, which was
interesting, because I really Ifeel like that's kind of
(14:22):
commonplace.
Anyway, I think that's all Ireally got on what's going on.
It was a good day.
I'm trying to collect mythoughts, to do a write-up and
see, you know, to really putdown what I think overall of
what's going on.
But I think the short hot take,as Keith Townsend would say,
the hot take is that whileUbiquity is getting ready to
(14:42):
present themselves as anenterprise-ready competitor from
a hardware perspective, theorganization still needs a
little bit of work to instillthat faith in the industry that
they are enterprise ready.
I think that about sums it up.
Now they did have some reallyneat stuff that showed off some
deeper, not necessarily packetinspection, but SSL inspection.
(15:04):
If you're familiar with Gigamon, they talked about some new
features.
They're very Gigamon-like wherethey break the SSL so you can
see all those search queries andeverything else that are going
on.
These are new features thatthey hinted at becoming
available, but only once thatnew hardware is available, if
you like, their camera systemsand their identity stuff.
There was lots of talk there,lots of movement there, lots of
(15:24):
applause surrounding that.
They talked about some new NVRfeatures and some new ways that
they can aggregate storageacross multiple sites to like.
Thunderous applause, lots ofpeople.
It seems that there are a lotmore people here interested in
the cameras and the NVR thanspecifically they were in the
wireless or you know, or on theon the gateway side.
(15:45):
But it really did feel likethey were.
They were getting poised toreally enter the like, taking
seriously their entrance intothe enterprise market.
So I'll be interested to seewhat they do over the next six
to 12 months.
It's going to be.
It's going to be interesting.
I'll also be interested to seewhat they do over the next month
and a half, as they do more ofthese ubiquity world conferences
(16:07):
.
So I appreciate them extendingthe invite to me to come out and
see what what's going on.
You know, uh, it's always greatto to be around.
Fellow nerd, saw some peoplefrom wlpc here, saw some faces I
hadn't seen in a while.
If you ever get a chance to,you know, to be invited to
something like this, don't everpass it up.
It's always more fun toparticipate.
That being said, that wraps itup for the week.
(16:28):
I've got dinner to get totonight.
I'm gonna go enjoy chicago herefor a minute before I get back
home and I look forward toseeing you next week.
If you have any questions aboutany of this stuff, just feel
free to drop me a line, ask meanything, and myself, daryl
DeRogia, sean Bender, my buddyHerschel we were all here
sitting in the audience, sothere's some resources too.
Go look at the thread on Reddit.
(16:48):
There were some questions thatwere answered on there, but if
you have questions about it,please let us know.
We'll be happy to communicatethat back.
Anyhow, that does it for thisweek's Waves.
With Wireless Nerd, we have somereally cool stuff coming up.
I've been doing some interviewswith other people, so be on the
lookout.
What I'm going to start doingis not just this, but I
mentioned before, I'm going tocrank out a Patreon and throw
(17:09):
some of the stuff behind apaywall.
Hopefully it'll help me out andmaybe I can buy a new lens or a
better camera or some betterlighting or something.
But I'm gonna be doing that andthen I'm gonna be appending
some of those interviews as wemove forward.
I had a really cool time twodays ago standing on rooftops
doing some private LTE.
I'll be talking more about thatin the future with some of the
sponsors that are on there.
So if you want to sponsor,please drop me a line, also
(17:30):
trueatruelenscom, or hit me upat Wireless Nerd.
Anyway, you all have awonderful week.
We'll see you next week, seeyou later.
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