Get ready to unlock the future of networking technology with our guest, Anil Varanasi, CEO of Meter, as we promise to equip you with insights into their groundbreaking advancements in AI and wireless tech. Join me, Drew Lentz, the Wireless Nerd, along with special guest, fellow nerd, and friend Keith Parsons, as we explore how Meter is revolutionizing the networking landscape with their introduction of Command - a generative UI product that enables IT and Networking teams to query their network, take action, and create custom software fit to their specific needs – all in natural language. This AI powered network monitoring, administration, and configuration tool is powered by an AI engine that is trained and constantly updated and evolving based on YOUR network. To kick things off, discover how Meter simplifies the daunting tasks of ISP management and billing, offering users a seamless and efficient internet solution likened to a Kayak or Expedia for ISPs. Then get ready to interact with your network in ways previously unimaginable.
Ever wondered why IT infrastructure upgrades often stall due to emotional attachments and cognitive biases? We'll unravel the concept of sunk cost and share a strategic buyback program to ease the transition pains. Learn from our personal experiences and the expertise of Meter’s team as we emphasize the value of innovation and strategic planning in overcoming these hurdles - and discuss the buyback program that exists at Meter to help move you into the future be getting rid of your dead tech weight. Witness the practical application of Meter’s products, which highlight their impressive capabilities and the importance of hands-on problem-solving in refining technological solutions.
But that’s not all! Get an EXCLUSIVE live demonstration of how Command streamlines network management, making complex tasks a breeze with a user-centric approach. See how real-time network monitoring becomes as simple as typing a question, thanks to advanced AI and automation. Finally, we delve into the future of networking engineering and Meter’s innovative plans to maintain their mission of providing the fastest, most secure networks. Don’t miss this episode filled with insightful discussions and exciting sneak peeks into the future of networking technology. For more information, visit Meter’s website or follow them on LinkedIn - meter.com or https://www.linkedin.com/company/meter-com/
Experience Command at https://command.meter.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everybody, what's up?
It's Drew Lentz, the WirelessNerd, and today we have a really
special and fun episode.
There's been lots of talk aboutAI and what's going on in the
networking space and thewireless space, and you know all
the commotion that's going on.
And a couple of weeks back Iguess not weeks, a couple of
months back I got a chance to govisit the office at Meter in
San Francisco and I had afantastic time, got to meet the
(00:21):
whole team, but, moreimportantly, I got to see a
sneak peek of some reallyinteresting stuff and I've
talked a little bit about itwithout giving away any details.
But today we've got Mr Anil onthe line.
He's going to show us what heshowed me back then, except it's
going to be new and polishedand fun.
And I've got a special guest.
Mr Keith Parsons is on with usright now.
(00:41):
So Keith and I are going tohave a good time and we're going
to look at what Neil's got toshow us.
Oh, it's going to be great.
Keith, I'm assuming you haveseen some of this also.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
I have.
My job here is just to be colorcommentary.
You're the main broadcaster.
Sports coach.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Oh yeah, I'm just going to disappear from the
screen and I just want to kneelto show us what's going on,
because and I, I, agree withyour your excitement.
When I saw it, I was also veryexcited, so I'm looking forward
to seeing it again I, I, I feltlike and I think I shared this
when I was there in sanfrancisco I felt like we had
(01:21):
gone back to like a dot-com eraof innovation.
I felt like I'd walked intothis office, you know, and it's
the old school San Franciscostartup, like you know all the
nitty gritty and you know, peterthe chef was there and everyone
was chilling in the break roomand it was such a good time and
it wasn't.
(01:42):
I mean, there was that feeling.
But then when we started tolook at the innovation and you
were so cool man and I do Ialways appreciate that
hospitality where you were justlike just show them whatever,
whatever you want and you know,true to my word, you know we
didn't, we didn't sign anythingat the time, which was really
cool, but you didn't sayanything and I think that that
was more fun is understandingthat there was something coming
(02:02):
and you know you showed, youshowed me the whole suite of
hardware and software.
So if you could catch us up realquick, because there may be
some people listening orwatching that they don't know
who you are and what you'redoing.
So if you could just catch usup on on, on who you are and
where you're at now, and then Imean oh, then then show the
goods, man.
So what you got, you got Anil.
Who are you, sir, and what isyour company?
(02:24):
What do you do?
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Well, thank you first for having me.
I think you and Keith takingtime is amazing.
As I was saying before, we hitrecord wireless royalty, so I'm
really happy to be here.
I think you both know a littlebit, but maybe for listeners, I
work at a company called Meter.
I'm one of the people thathelped start it.
I'm an engineer here, and whatwe do is make networking much
(02:51):
better.
We think networking hardware andsoftware has gotten the love it
deserves over the last decade,and that's essentially all we
spent the last decade doing ishow do we make networking
hardware and software fast,secure, reliable?
And since this last decade we'vebeen doing it as a service, and
(03:13):
for us what networking as aservice really means is
combining great products, greatservice, together without
compromising any of the controland visibility customers not
only need but actually honestlyshould demand from vendors they
should have.
Somehow it's become that ifthis thing comes as a service,
(03:37):
it's a black box.
I can't touch it, I don't knowwhat it is, or it might not be
on par with the legacy vendorsas far as feature sets go.
We don't believe in that at all, so we've been really investing
in that.
So Meter makes it easy foranybody to get really great
internet infrastructure that'sboth customers and partners
across ISPs, routing, switching,wireless security, dns security
(04:03):
, sd-wan VPN all in a singleplatform that's tied across
hardware that we design,software that we build and
networks that we help make sureare fast, secure, reliable.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
So, and starting at the beginning of that, one of
the coolest tools is the abilityto choose your ISP and choose
your connection and choose yourmechanism on how you get to the
internet, and that's a softwareservice that you'll have.
Can you tell me just a littlebit about that, sure.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
I think.
Interestingly, that actuallywas a pain point my brother and
I had about 15 years ago.
We were running anotherbusiness and every time we moved
offices it was frustrating tous that we could buy everything
on the Internet except Internetitself.
We just didn't understand why,and that's where the kind of
(04:55):
core frustration came from, andwe spent about four or five
years actually wranglingdifferent APIs, manual data
processes, and today it's aproduct called Connect that's
been around for a while andgrowing really fast, and it's a
beloved product amongstcustomers.
Honestly, people really love itand the simplest way to think
(05:17):
about it is Kayak or Expedia forISPs, including ISP management
and billing, all in a singlespace.
So you just go to Connect andyou say I am moving to 123 Main
Street.
We go, bring back all the ISPsthat are available and we
partner with not just thelargest ones but also the small,
local ones as well, and we'llshow pricing and availability
(05:42):
all in a single place.
And not just that you can justbuy it and get a contract that's
landed in your inbox and allthat information is again fully
integrated into the entirenetwork.
So when you're looking at yoursecurity appliances, you know
what ISP, you know what speedsall of it.
But Connect is Kayak or Expediaand billing and management in a
(06:02):
single place and people can gouse it.
Today it's at metercom,m-e-t-e-rcom slash connect and
just go type in an address andgo use it.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
That's awesome and there's no strings attached to
that.
You can go, punch it in and youcan use it today.
It's such a fun product.
I've had a blast showing it offto people and just take a look
at this.
So that starts at the verybasic right and then starting to
move up the stack of what meteroffers.
You know there's, from acomparative perspective, there's
people that are moving into thespace and whether it's an
existing managed serviceprovider or it's an equipment
(06:37):
manufacturer that offers thesemanaged services or network as a
service.
I know that you all do things alittle bit differently and you
mentioned that where you, whereyou don't just want to say this
is what you, what you get, iswhat you get.
It is what it is like the worst, you know the worst four words
you can have there Um, but yougive people the option to.
This is how it should be.
But if you want to make tweaksand changes and whatever, you
(06:58):
have the ability to do that.
So, moving up the stack if wetake our internet service
provider, we plug into your what, your security appliance, your
router, your firewall.
What's the first step afterthat?
Speaker 3 (07:09):
It plugs into our security appliance that has full
, stateful firewall, highavailability monitoring,
including host monitoring,configuration of DNS, dhcp all
built in there directly.
From there it goes into ourswitching platform, and both the
(07:31):
security appliances andswitches are not just 1 gig but
10 gig as well.
Awesome, and the same thing onthe switches, too, being able to
change anything from broadcaststorms to where ingress and
ingress are going, power onparticular switch ports, all
full control that connects toour wireless access points.
Our wireless access points areindoor and outdoor, again fully
(07:55):
configurable, down to captiveportals that are built in radius
profiles, all of it.
And all of this is with ourdashboard today, with an
end-to-end platform where theISPs in there Connecto.
We talked about then securityappliances, switches, wireless
access points, and then SD-WAN,dns, security and VPN all in a
(08:17):
single platform.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
That's awesome, and that end-to-end infrastructure
is key in kind of your nextinnovations, right?
Being able to control thepacket from start to finish, all
the way from the ISP, all theway out to the wireless, you
know, to the person connected tothe Wi-Fi, from not just a
routing perspective but asecurity perspective and
everything in between.
(08:38):
And I think that there'ssomething to be said for that.
When you look at differentinfrastructure models and you
look at the way that people,what their networks are
comprised of, they have allthese different things that are
out there.
Being able to control thatpacket to start to finish is
important, but it's also to makesure that it's cost effective.
When you have the ability to dothat, you don't want to pay.
(08:59):
You don't want to get into amodel where it's like, okay,
well, I have this routerfirewall.
To get into a model where it'slike, okay, well, I have this
router firewall, I've got thissecurity appliance, so I might
as well get the AP from thismanufacturer, but then you're
paying out the nose for that APor I've got to get a service
contract on that switch in orderto maintain it.
Your structure for not justyour data model but the pricing
model as well, lends itself tobeing able to easily get
(09:21):
invested in an end-to-end meternetwork.
Is that a fair assumption?
Speaker 3 (09:25):
Yeah, absolutely, and we see this all the time.
That includes all of ourcustomers and partners and their
customers that might be dealingwith environments where there's
a bunch of legacy hardware.
On top of everything you said,we also have a buyback program
where we will buy out existinglegacy hardware, so there's no
(09:46):
sunk cost for our customers andswitching is easier into this
platform.
That's end to end.
And Drew, you know this, andKeith as well where we didn't
come out and say anything for along time about who we are.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
I mean only a decade right.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Because it's such a mature industry.
Right, networking is one of theoldest industries in all of
technology and if you go look atmarket caps of companies in
this, it's second or thirdlargest in the entire world and
it's one of the most coreunderpinnings of almost every
business.
So when we come out and showproducts, we didn't want it to
(10:25):
just be a point solution or wedidn't want it to be something
like oh cool, that's a nicelittle startup, you got there,
but it can't be X, y and Z rightwhen people see Meter.
We want it to be a substantialnew way of doing things that's
entirely end-to-end and itdoesn't matter if you're
somebody that's technical oryou're incredibly technical like
(10:47):
you and Keith, and reallycomplex environments with
hundreds of locations andmanufacturing or schools,
whatever.
We wanted you to have theentire control, the visibility
that you would expect and shoulddemand from enterprise networks
, that you would expect andshould demand from enterprise
networks, and that came acrossfrom the hardware that we built,
(11:07):
our architecture, our software,our services and then pricing
all together so that, as peoplecome onto the platform which is
why we're seeing such growth isbecause we think it's a mature
platform now rather thansomething that's just on the
(11:28):
margin yep, now, keith, you'veseen this, and you, you've seen
a lot of hardware and software.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Man, I mean, it's it, that's the beauty of being in
the industry saying I'm old, Iget it no, no, you.
You know, I was like I waswatching a trailer for a brand
new 2024 EGA-style game and mywife looks over at me and she
goes what are you watching?
I was like it's like CrystalPalace, but for 2024.
And she says what are youtalking about?
Or Crystal Caverns?
She says, what are you talkingabout?
(11:55):
I said, never mind, we're notgoing to talk about Apogee
software and Duke Nukem and anyof that.
But I know you know what I'mtalking about just by saying it,
but that, with that in mind,you've, you've seen iteration
after iteration, what I mean,what sticks out to you so far,
before you talk about the goodstuff, what sticks out to you so
far about the meters stuff?
Because it's, it's there's.
I mean, this isn't like afanboy thing.
(12:16):
I definitely.
I am a fan of what you're doing, but I I am critical also, and
I know keith is critical too.
So there's, there's things outthere like, okay, this is a big
plus and this is a big minus,aside from the minuses right,
let's leave those for anotherconversation what are the big
pluses?
You see, with Meter?
I mean, you've done this before.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Anything stick out way back machine.
The first time I took aaccounting 201 or something, I
failed my accounting classbecause I did not believe in
sunk cost.
The instructor taught it and Ihad just bought a truck and he
(12:55):
used me as an example and saidyou know, that is that sunk cost
.
It doesn't matter.
On the next decision, your nextdecision is from now moving
forward.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
I could not get over it.
I wrote on the final a bigthree pages about how wrong he
was.
Next semester taking the courseagain, of course, the professor
a different professor of coursecalls my name out loud and
makes me stand up in class andhe goes you, you're the sunk
(13:27):
cost guy, like they'd obviouslytalked about it.
And he just goes, just cometalk to me and I go into his,
into his office, and he's likeyou think it's religion and you
think sunk cost?
Is this this thing?
You're?
You just don't get it religion.
And you think sunk cost is thisthis thing?
You're?
you just don't get it so just ifyou want to pass a class, just
(13:49):
give them my answer and I'm okay.
Well, I think a lot of peopleare are stuck when they're
looking at some of these, uh,managed services that they
believe in that religious belief.
But but I have all this money.
It's it's all sunk cost.
Some cost is not a real thing,it's an accounting thing and
there's a lot of emotion tied toit.
(14:09):
So I knew when you said youhave a way to do a buyback.
Really you're just loweringthat threshold of someone's pain
point because they think it'sreally bad.
And you know I'm sure you'recrying across this, true, drew,
I have people who are stillusing 802 live11b because they
believe that they have enoughdevices to justify that.
(14:29):
Until you, I've got aspreadsheet where I put in all
their numbers and I show them.
And the cost to upgrade yourinfrastructure to support B and
new clients at the same time isway higher than anything you'd
ever have to pay to upgrade yourclients, but it just hurts.
So, anil, thanks for evenmentioning that and having a
(14:50):
program that will help people,because that's a stumbling block
and I think those are whenpeople are thinking about
companies like Meter.
Where am I giving up all thecontrol?
Well, kind of.
Am I getting in bed with only asingle vendor?
Well, you probably are already.
So there's a lot of thoselittle bumps along the road.
(15:13):
But having a mature product andI've just got to congratulate
you.
You stayed stealth for a decadeyeah, that takes and I didn't
mean that as a joke.
I meant you had the ability tohold back and stay.
It's like a charging horsewants to go someplace and you're
(15:33):
like no, this is our plan, thisis where we roll out and we're
going to be ready, and so thattook some maturity to pull that
off.
So congrats.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
That's awesome.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
Yeah, so okay.
We would rather win the warthan the battle, oh man all
right.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Well, so, so you can.
You've got access to the isp,you've got access to what it
plugs into, you've got you'vegot a network that's running in
the end meter and it's it'sdoing all the things it's
supposed to do.
I you know, your team is askeith mentioned.
I mean, your team is top-notch,not only for being able to keep
a secret, but for where theycame from and what they've been
(16:09):
able to do and the innovationthat's come based on the
experience of the people on yourteam and what they've been
through.
Their battle scars have turnedinto your benefit.
You know, and and it's such agood team of people that are
there and you know all you gotto do is look at the website and
(16:30):
see who's behind you all, whoyour employees are, who your
investors are, and you go.
Man, these are people who'veseen a lot of it.
This is a great way to innovate, and so it doesn't stop with
what we're talking about.
It doesn't stop with thecircuits and doesn't stop with
the internet access and theability to control all of it and
top-notch hardware in a greatpackage at a great price.
What you showed me.
I had problems understandinghow I would use it.
(16:54):
It was so compelling that Icouldn't even think about a way
to use what you had just givenme the ability to do, and I
think that I think that that wasmy first and I think I told you
that that was like my firstconcern is, like, now that you
have all the power to doanything, this is like the
buffet mentality.
Well, now that you wanteverything, like where do you
(17:16):
start?
And so I hope you have someexamples of where to start for
feeble-minded people like me,because it's so much and I would
love for you to share that andit's been a while.
Can you talk a little bit aboutwhat brought it on?
You don't have to talk aboutwhen you broke it, you know, a
month or two ago, but you know Ilove it.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
I broke it last night too, so it's okay.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
I love it, but that's you know.
The whole thing that I think isbeautiful is that you're not
someone who's sitting back goingdo this, do that, do this, do
that.
You're actually breaking it andfixing it and breaking it, and
other people are fixing it andthey're breaking it and you're
fixing it to a point where youare so hands on with this
because you want it to solve theproblem.
So, if you can talk a littlebit about why you thought about
(18:02):
doing what you did and what wasthe path to get there, and what
in the world are we talkingabout?
Speaker 3 (18:08):
Yeah, Before I jump in, I do want to like nudge.
One thing here is I tend to geton a credit all the time
everywhere I go, but I'm justliterally a figurehead, honestly
, and I get to do the podcastwith you guys and you guys come
over, I'll hang out with you andit might seem like I'm the one
(18:30):
doing things.
But, like you mentioned, Ithink what we've been really
fortunate with is having peoplethat really care about building
great products and whatever theanalogy of standing on the
shoulders of giants.
It just turns out for me thegiants are my team, so I get to
like play with them and learnfrom them, and so whatever
(18:53):
credit we kind of get, I want tomake sure it's for the company.
You know there's there's thiskind of saying of you know you
should play for the front of theJersey, not the back of it.
I really believe in that.
So I'm yes, I'm deeply involvedand I care about products.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
You say that by the way, and just so anyone that's
listening or watching, there aretwo Sarahs on the line that are
hiding behind the scenes.
I'm sure they have hot pokers tostick a nail with if he says
anything he's not supposed to.
(19:31):
And I didn't realize, you know,just on that note before you
jump into it when I was there,when I was at the office, it was
just again, all I could thinkof was that whole early dot-com
stuff, not in a bad way, in agood way that young, innovative
fun where everyone is rowing atthe same time and you walk into
your office and it wasn't justthe aesthetic of it.
And it wasn't just theaesthetic of it, it was the
feeling of the employees andtheir excitement in sharing
things and how everyone justcompleted each other's sentences
as we moved across each productand platform.
(19:53):
And not to take credit awayfrom you, but really you are not
the only person there and yourteam is a phenomenal team.
And if anyone has had theopportunity to come by or visit
with some of the team at Meter,you'll know that each one of
them can carry their own weightmassively.
But there's also something tobe said for someone who can
(20:16):
congeal all of that and make itsomething.
So you and your brother aredoing some incredible stuff.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
Yeah, we both really deeply care about products.
We care about what we put ourname on and at the end of the
day, I hope you know wecontribute something to the
industry and we try to stayclose to everything that's going
on.
And to your question on what'sthe problems we're trying to
solve, you know I studiednetworking in college and you
know my kind of real deepjourney into networking started
(20:43):
about 20 years ago now.
The awesome thing was you cameinto the lab and you were
instantly given this power,which was like the command line,
and sit down and then they'relike type this and you kind of
learn, you know this command andthat command and you felt
really powerful because there'sthis like humming big machine in
(21:05):
front of you in the lab andyou're like I can control this
thing and as a young engineer,that's like really cool.
Yeah, I mean you get reallyexcited by it.
But, as I was kind of goingthrough learning, command lines
are complicated because you haveto learn different commands.
You have to remember them.
Are complicated because youhave to learn different commands
(21:26):
, you have to remember them andthen, as you go from vendor to
vendor and platform to platform,you have to learn the
shibboleths of each of those onwhat it takes to kind of get it
to do how you want.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
That's right, and some of the people you know it's
.
I think about hpe back in theday, where in in cisco, ios,
everything was one way and thenin hpe it was completely
backwards and then Xtreme didsomething different and then
each person had their own takeon it and you had to learn, like
you said, those very small,specific things about which way
to flip the command in order toget it done.
(21:57):
You're totally right, yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
And the other thing that was great about a lab back
then is you had people peeringover your shoulder that can help
you or say that's wrong, here'show you should do it.
And that was great too, becauseat the end of the day, you're
trying to learn and you'retrying to build better
infrastructure and support goodnetworks.
And then in the last decade,decade and a half, one of the
things that's amazing that'shappened is dashboards got built
, pulling real-time data intoweb apps, and that was also
(22:30):
fantastic.
You didn't have to go learn allof these different commands for
every different platform andevery vendor, but also even
forget that even if you had asingle vendor, there's so many
commands to learn for all thedifferent things you want to do.
Some you might be doing once amonth, some might be doing every
(22:51):
once in a while, some you'redoing at the nick of time when
you're trying to solve a problemor fix an issue, and you can't
remember all of them, even ifyou're a single vendor platform.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
There's nothing more frustrating than that nick of
time scenario when the onlything you can do is hit the tab
and try to learn, like right now.
That's just in time fixing andyou don't know the command, but
you can kind of figure it out onthe fly by just typing in and
fill it in for me something.
Tab question mark.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Yeah, that's exactly right.
And then the other thing withdashboards is like okay, you
want to make a feature requestand we all know how companies
work, right, you put in afeature request, it goes into
product teams, and it goes intodesign teams and engineering
teams, then QA teams and thenfull circle back, and in good
(23:44):
situations that might be days ormonths, but realistically it
takes like three to six monthsat least before you can get back
what you want.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Well, depending on what the you know, how much
money people are willing tospend on it and how big the
account is, or if you can getall your friends to check it and
say yes, I want it too.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
Yeah, do a community drive for product development.
But we've been really thinkingabout is that, especially as
software moved up the stackright it went from assembly to
then operating systems and localapplications and browsers and
applications in the browserWe've really felt software has
gotten very rigid, and rigidmeans is that you can't make it
(24:27):
your own.
And the other thing I've alwaysloved about technology, other
than just networking as a whole,is everything from HyperCard to
Visual Basic to.
All of these were incrediblebecause the promise of software
was here you go, young man, youcan make it whatever you want.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
That's right.
Absolute HyperCard he says it'sgreat and that was the promise
right.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
So what we're really thinking about is can we make
software soft again, really makeit be moldable and malleable
around the user, while takingthe best parts of the command
line, best parts of dashboardsinto a single place?
And that's what we're kind ofannouncing now is the product is
(25:13):
called command and we hope it'sthe best of that, and what we
hope even more is the future ofsoftware in general, that's,
around the user yeah, and that'sI think you know, and that's a
tall order, right?
Speaker 1 (25:27):
because when you start to think about the
commands and and the theprogramming if you will
necessary to configure router,to configure bgp, to you know,
uh, install a security applianceor to set up a wireless network
, that's tied to an acl, that'stied to a specific port, that's
tied to a profile, that's tiedto a vlan, on and on and on.
(25:50):
There is a lot of complexitythere and a lot of the devil
there is in the details of howyou do it.
One tiny mistype, onemisconfiguration can cost you a
whole lot of stuff.
Look at what's happenedrecently with AT&T, you know, or
you know any of these bigorganizations where something
simple has caused an issue.
(26:10):
Something simple has caused anissue and in that is like you
mentioned at the beginning, it'snot just understanding what you
need to do, but how you need todo it and being able to do that
across multiple products, evenin the same family.
I ran into an issue two days agowhere I was configuring a set
of VLANs on an access point andI was configuring them on a
(26:32):
switch, but I forgot toconfigure the VLANs to be passed
through on the securityappliance and I couldn't get on
for some reason.
It was like wow, this is stilla thing in 2024.
What have you done with commandto alleviate some of that
hassle?
And what is that?
I don't know if you havesomething you can show us or not
, but what does that look likefrom an I, from your perspective
(26:53):
of what?
What do you?
I guess we've established whatyou're trying to solve.
How are you solving that?
What does command do?
Speaker 3 (27:00):
yeah, uh, I think it's better showing rather than
telling, and then what maybe thethree of us can do is, uh, play
subtitles for the folks thatare just gonna listen, rather
than also that sounds good to meand neil is sitting behind a
white brick background.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Currently has on a tan polo shirt keith is looking
intently through his blackframed glasses.
Oh, spectacles would have beena better word there anyway.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
Um, so this is command um, but I can start
there through if you want to gofirst, or Keith.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
This is the best.
This is where you screenshotand you go this is command, and
it's just a blank canvas, whichis awesome and terrifying at the
same time.
I mean, so what can I?
It does have two sides.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
It does have two sides.
It does have two sides.
That has command and thenanother side and it looks like
it's going to have.
You know, do this on one sideand we'll show you what it works
on the other.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
It just says what would you like to see?
Well, what would we like to see?
I mean, yeah, let me start off.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
So the challenges we're trying to solve is exactly
that right.
You don't have to remembercommands and you want to have
software that's yours.
That's the challenge we'retrying to solve.
Underneath is huge amounts ofarchitecture and infrastructure
investments we've made over theyears.
Where is that?
That's across operating systems, that's across our firmware,
(28:29):
that's across how we send databack, our backend and our APIs.
We made these investments thelast few years that put us in a
position to build somethingthat's actually valuable.
But without any of that, fromour hardware on up, what I'm
about to show you, and the speedof it and the accuracy of it,
(28:49):
just isn't possible.
So you mentioned ISPs just a fewminutes ago on.
You're trying to understandwhat's happening with an ISP or
something like that.
So I'm here in San Francisco atour office and I'm connected to
our lab network here.
One of the first things you cando in command is similar to
Slack or Teams.
(29:10):
You can just hit at to getstarted.
Slack or Teams, you can just hitat to get started and when you
do, you can like scope it downto a particular piece of
hardware, particular network, aparticular client.
But why don't we select thenetwork here?
That's our primary test networkand you know, maybe you want to
say something like when was thelast time ISP quality was below
(29:32):
95% or something, and you canjust like type it out as I'm
just exactly as I'm speaking,and the cool thing about command
what it's going to go do, thatwill seem very simple is it just
went and combed through all ofthe logs on this ISP and
actually just gave an answerback and here the answer is just
(29:53):
saying hey, this was thisparticular time it was below 95%
.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
And it has to know what 95% is also, so it has to
understand and be able tointerpret what you mean, how you
mean it, and then apply that tothe network.
And I mean, it took what?
Three seconds maybe, to respond.
No, no, no, it did not takethree seconds.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
It took three seconds to render.
No, it didn't this one.
It took about 560 milliseconds.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
If it took three seconds, I wouldn't even be here
.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
I would never show it to the world.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
That's so great, that is so great man 560
milliseconds.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
But after that you were kind of saying something
about you know switches early,right, You're kind of looking at
particular switch.
So let's say, today your jobwas to add a bunch of things to
switch ports, because maybeyou're adding security cameras
or maybe you're adding accesscontrol or something like that
and there's a particular switchyou care about.
Right, you can just go to thatswitch.
(30:51):
I'll pick a random one, you tapon switch and then you which
you care about.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
Right, you can just go to that switch.
I'll pick a random one.
So you tap on switch and thenyou choose.
Yeah, I just hit add and I justselected.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
I'll just select to that switch one of our test
racks and I can actually justsay, like show me a port diagram
.
And again what will happen thatwill seem innocuous is it went
and actually just wrote softwareentirely on the fly for a port
diagram for that switch in line.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
It didn't have that the picture that we're staring
at wasn't.
That's not some pre-made photo,that's not.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
Oh this is real life software that you can switch,
just like you can.
I just switched it to anotherswitch.
Right now it's fully usable.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
This is a unique piece of code that's only
running right now inside thiscommand.
That's right, and yet it'sstill.
It's workable.
You drop down to a differentswitch.
It's a different switch.
It does look like your otherdashboards.
Speaker 3 (31:55):
I'm guessing.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Since you already had the code, you could reuse some
of that code.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Yeah, so what's happening underneath actually is
really interesting.
One part of command is a modelthat understands our hardware,
our architecture and kind of ourentire system our architecture
and kind of our entire system.
Another model that actuallyunderstands how we write
software and how we designsoftware.
And, keith, that's where ourdesign system is, what you're
(32:26):
seeing here, because we have adesign system that we try to
maintain consistency.
Where a table is a table, aport is designed a certain way,
we use certain colors, and soit's trained on our design
system as well, so it knows thatit should look like meter
software.
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
But it's not just meter software because as you
switched, it's getting live datafrom each of those ports on the
new switch.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
Yes, that's exactly right, and that's the other
really amazing thing that ourteam ended up building.
As far as the architecture isconcerned, the software that's
written is like an engineerwould write.
That's fully configurable andyou can kind of have dropdowns
and filter and search and allthese different things, but it's
also pulling real time datafrom every piece of hardware,
(33:12):
all at the same time, all thesame time all the same.
So maybe this is what you careabout, because you're adding a
bunch of um, you know, securitycameras or something um.
If you remember earlier I wasmentioning one of the awesome
things about working in thenetworking lab is people peering
over your shoulder, whether youwant.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
That is such a just such a kick-ass way to say that,
because now I I mean, I knowwhere you're going with this,
right, but it's like that's all.
I mean this, keep going, that'sawesome to have that visual of
someone peering over yourshoulder and realizing that you
do not need that anymore becauseyou're that's incredible
breathing down your neck youjust feel it right, as you said,
(33:52):
that yeah, so so maybe you knowyou just want to care about,
just feel it right, as you said,that, yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
So maybe you just want to care about this one
switch right now.
You can just actually pick itup and drop it here in the green
zone here, and this is a fullmultiplayer area and
collaborative.
Speaker 2 (34:09):
So Anil just moved the port diagram that he made in
the previous step over to theright side of his screen.
A little worksheet, a littleempty area and it's now sitting
over there in a shared area andit's just going to live there.
Speaker 3 (34:23):
Yeah, it's going to live there, no-transcript, and
you're at work and do your workis some SEV1 issue comes along.
As you know, at Meter, if anyof the Sarahs say anything, it's
(34:45):
SEV1 all the time.
That's all they hold the powerthey do.
So maybe we'll go like aparticular client, as we go to
like actually like Sarah'sMacBook Pro, yep, and she's
saying something's going on,things are not working.
So you can literally just actand get to Sarah's MacBook Pro
and say tell me about the helpof this client and give me a
(35:14):
five-bullet summary.
What's going to happen is twothings.
One is it's going to combthrough all of the data about
Sarah's MacBook Pro and give asummary again at the speed of a
Google search, not three seconds.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
Yeah, it's not three seconds y'all.
That was a terriblemiscalculation on my behalf.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
And it just gave a summary about hey, for this
MacBook Pro, this is the Macaddress and this is what I'm
seeing across signal strength,noise level, usage data rates
and SNR.
So you start and then it wrotesoftware that gives the entire
help and, similarly, you canpick it up and drop it here.
Because you can pick it up anddrop it here?
Because you know Sarah'sMacBook Pro is the most
important MacBook Pro at meter,absolutely.
(35:58):
You're always paying attentionto it.
So that's the other reallyinteresting part is making
debugging easier, gettinginformation really fast, but
really what?
The underlying truth of this isthat it saves time, right?
Normally, if I'm going to golook at all these logs, it's
going to take some time for meto understand what's actually
(36:20):
happening.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
Well, the other thing that I've been a little bit
vocal about is that there's allthese ideas of what AI can look
like and chatbots and all thesethings of ways to interact with
the system, and my biggest boneto pick has always been but you
have to learn how to talk to it.
You have to learn how to ask ita very specific question.
(36:42):
You have to understand thesyntax that it uses, because you
can't just have a conversationwith it.
What you're showing is that youcan just have a conversation
with your network in whateverway that makes the most sense to
you.
It can be as technical as youwant or it can be absolutely as
(37:03):
non-technical as you want, andit's going to give you
information that I wasn't readyfor it to show SNR.
I thought maybe it showed datarate or you know, last time it
went down, I wasn't ready forsomething that was actually
important to be shown, becauseit's a lot of times people don't
think about that.
It's you're showing off a waythat allows us to truly interact
(37:27):
with a network on our terms,our terms, and this is this is
incredible to me um, and it'sthere's so many shock waves of
this that I'm looking at and I'mthinking about that as this
ripples further out.
These are the things thatpeople in, at least in my mind,
(37:47):
these are the things that Ithought.
This is what that ai revolutionin networking is supposed to
look like.
You're showing it to me, andit's the first time second time
that I've seen this because youshowed it to me a few months ago
.
That's the first time that I'mactually seeing this, and this
isn't some canned demo.
This isn't some.
(38:08):
This is real life.
Asking functionality of anetwork and having it display
information, information to you.
What were you gonna say, keith?
Speaker 2 (38:15):
I.
I think the beauty of this itis that Anil's and his team have
trained their model on theirstuff.
It doesn't have to be a chatGPT that takes anything from the
internet.
It's you know your own software, you know your own firmware,
you know your own coding, youknow the data that's included
and where the where all thepackets are going on the network
(38:36):
.
You don't have to train it toanswer.
You know what's the height ofKilimanjaro.
You can let it focus and Ithink that might be a part of
the speed process.
But I think it's answering whatDrew was looking for.
It's valuable because it'sanswering my question about the
things I care about.
Yeah, contextual, I think ithelps that it was trained
(38:57):
specific to do this one thingand not just to do anything.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
But it's not so and, anil, maybe you can answer that
question from a quote-unquotetraining perspective.
It's not.
I don't feel like this isnecessarily trained.
I think this is a constantlyevolving thing as your network
grows.
Is that fair?
Speaker 3 (39:13):
So it's a combination of both right, it's built and
trained and the models on ourarchitecture, how we write
software, how we design software, our backend, those things but
at the same time, it goes andgets real-time data about all
the clients and all the piece ofhardware, because what you want
(39:35):
is the real time data.
And the architecture where weended up with command is super
interesting because we didn'ttake any customer data and train
it on that, because we reallycare about privacy.
We think it's incrediblyimportant, especially in
enterprises.
It's only trained on, as Keithwas saying, our architecture,
our software, our design andwhat it does is goes and grabs
(39:57):
real-time data about each ofthese clients and each of these
devices on the network.
So both of those is thecombination where we ended up.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
It also means it has to have some other extra
intelligence.
I don't know where it's comingfrom, but it had to assume.
For signal strength you give arange, which means that was the
range over some period of time.
So you had to put a timevariable into the equation
without me specifically sayingover the last three hours.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
Neil is smiling and grinning from ear to ear,
showing off his I just like heneeds to ask the question.
Speaker 3 (40:36):
It's Keith, because he can see everything right.
He's been around for so long.
So, yeah, keith, it knows somany things about time.
It knows things To give you alittle bit more under the
curtain too.
It has its own calculator too.
That we built under the curtaintoo is like it.
(40:56):
Um, it has its own calculatortoo, that we built a bunch of
things that are happening in thebackground so that it can
actually do things, and so, fromtime to calculators, to
understanding even how to write,write markdown there's a lot of
things that are going on uh, inhere, okay, so so then step two
, right, yeah, you've shown usinformation about the network.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
That's awesome.
What can I do with thatinformation?
Can I configure devices?
Can I?
Speaker 3 (41:20):
Exactly, exactly.
So, okay, you solved Sarah'sproblem, because, again, that's
the number one MacBook.
Now you're getting back to yourwork and maybe to your earlier
(41:40):
example, drew.
The next thing you're doingafter you these security cameras
and these action controlsystems, is you have to go
configure VLANs, and there's aprompt that I'll use that's
already been typed because it'sbeen part of the testing since
we started, so now it's like afunny prompt that I use at every
demo.
This is for Peter, this is forPeter, your chef.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (41:57):
I wish it was for Peter.
He was one of our researchersthat I think was hungry at that
time because he'd been workingall day and all night.
So maybe you're sayingsomething like create a VLAN,
call it Lobster, say it's forcooking, enable it and give it a
certain VLAN ID, and when youhit enter, there's some
interesting things that arehappening here.
(42:17):
Command will go understand thatquery that we're saying, and
actually it just wrote out anentire form that's been filled
out.
So what you're seeing here is aform that normally would be in
one of our dashboards whereit'll just fill out entirely and
you can go look at it and editit.
(42:37):
You know, you can kind of say,like it's not for lobster or
whatever the case might be.
You're kind of editing it andthen you can confirm by saying I
actually want to submit this.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
There you go, okay.
Speaker 3 (42:48):
And then there's another step, because we believe
mutations are expensive and wewant to make sure the users
understand what they're doing,just like you would anywhere
else.
You want to have a Of courseYou're going to see how it's
going to impact the network andthen, when you execute it, it
will actually go create thatVLAN, and it was that fast
across the entire platform.
You just said what you want.
(43:09):
So getting information and thentaking action as well, and
again, those are the two greatpowers of a command line.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
So to go off script, then would it be possible for
you to type in create an SSIDcalled Lobster and tie it to the
VLAN Lobster?
Is that something that you cando and press?
Speaker 3 (43:28):
it.
Yeah, you can.
I just want to make sure I'mnot bringing down the network.
But yes, you can.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
Well, yeah, I don't want to ask because I know
you're actually on your network,but if you get a thumbs up back
there, I'd love to see that.
Speaker 3 (43:39):
Yeah, it can do SSIDs , firewall rules, dns security,
port forwarding, rate limiting.
Just, it understands our entirearchitecture and I think it's
an important point to reiteratehere is you, uh, open with
asking us about our architectureand our stack?
Speaker 1 (43:59):
absolutely, that's what command understands every
okay, okay, I mean every bit ofyour architecture, or like 90 of
it or 60.
I mean, what are we talking?
I mean, is this every bit of it?
And Is this the real deal?
That's what I'm trying tofigure out.
Speaker 3 (44:17):
Yeah, yeah, every bit of it.
And there's two times itcontinuously updates itself.
One is when we change thatarchitecture, there's a CICD
pipeline that gets kicked off.
Okay.
Same is when we change ourdesign, then our CIC CD pipeline
also gets kicked off, so thecommand can actually learn those
new things.
So maybe I'll say like there'susually some gap there somewhere
(44:38):
between 24 to 48 hours so thenew model comes out, so that
understands as we make changes.
So let's say, you know,recently we announced a bunch of
stuff around multi-WAN and highavailability and all these
things.
As that feature goes in and itgets tested and pushed out,
there's a gap of 24 to 48 hoursbefore command knows all of it,
(44:59):
because the models have to gettrained again.
But that's a CICD pipeline thatgets kicked off.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
We've been waiting 10 years to see this, anil, and
you're telling me we got to waitan extra 24 hours.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
I don't know if that's going to be acceptable or
not.
I have a question for you, neilSure.
Could you ask command the samekind of thing but say I would
like to do these things, buttell me if it's going to break
anything.
Ooh, nice.
So yes, you had an executebutton there.
(45:28):
By the way I wanted to say makeit so, but execute works.
But can I have command help menot make boo-boos.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
And if you're listening to this Anil's typing
I would like to add 10 VLANs.
Is that going to break anything?
And that's literally what youwrote and it responded.
Adding 10 VLANs to the networkprimary should not break
anything.
The current networkconfiguration supports
additional VLANs.
There are no existinglimitations or constraints that
would prevent you from addingmore.
The network's current load andperformance metrics indicate
(45:59):
that it is operating well withincapacity data.
Eat your heart out, man.
This is like wow, what?
Okay, so this is the problemthat I had before.
Speaker 3 (46:14):
If you can do anything like we're, you know, I
do want to I do want to answerthat a little bit.
So, um, one of the greatinventions that happened in the
last 15, 20 years that's notthat noticed is actually when
you used to go to google andtype something in.
It would say did you mean, yeah, and there's this great
(46:38):
engineer at Google that actuallyjust came back after leaving
for a few years.
His name is Noam Shazir andShazir and his team built, did
you mean?
And it's one of the really hardproblems to solve, because not
only are you saying here's whatI can understand, what you asked
, but did you actually mean this?
And so that's actually what'scoming with command.
(47:02):
Next is taking some of that workand how do we apply that to
networking?
So, totally, here you drew that.
The blank canvas is scary andnot that inviting.
So we're actually going to dotwo things.
One is, when you open withcommand soon is that we'll
actually give you queries thatyou should be asking, and then,
(47:24):
when you do ask a query, we'reactually going to try to suggest
a better query to get to thething we think you're trying to
get to.
That's awesome so we arebuilding on that.
We totally hear you.
We don't think what you'resaying is like to that's awesome
.
So we are building on that.
We totally hear you.
Uh, we don't think what you'resaying is, um, like anything out
of the ordinary.
We think it's an importantthing.
Uh, we want to make it reallygreat before releasing it, but
we'll fast follow that intocommand so okay, so so where
(47:48):
does this leave the elephant?
Speaker 1 (47:51):
the elephant in the room question where does this
leave the current status ofnetwork engineers who have
shelves full of books and wallsfull of certifications that
they've spent so much timelearning, I mean, and I think
about programming, I think aboutyou know, I think about lawyers
(48:12):
and tax code and everythingelse, and we're at this turning
point where anything thatinvolves a whole lot of existing
knowledge based on libraries ofbooks and understanding is now
quickly catching up to a pointwhere I don't want to say you
don't need it anymore, butyou're not going to need it soon
(48:34):
anymore.
But you're not going to need itsoon.
You can.
It's great to have, say, thepeople that are fighting back
against it.
But you're entering this timewhere this is like the Google
scenario.
It's like, well, you need tolearn all of the knowledge and
the younger generation says, no,you can just Google it.
And you say, yeah, but what ifyou need it when you don't have
access to Google?
And they say you will alwayshave access to Google.
But you know, we're at thispoint where where the network
(48:56):
engineering teams have looked at, have thought about things like
this and they've thought how isthis going to change our jobs?
What?
What's the answer there?
I mean cause, this is the.
That's the tricky question.
It's not.
It's not replacing people'sjobs, that's not what I'm
getting at, but it's replacingthe need for knowledge.
What effect does that have oncertifications and understanding
and things like that?
(49:16):
And, keith, I want thatquestion to go to you too.
What do you think about that?
Speaker 2 (49:20):
I mean, I've been in the certification game, I
collect them.
I have like 115 now.
It's just a hobby, but I thinkit means we need more education
because you need to understandthe concepts.
You might not have to have theskills.
I don't need the muscle memoryon the command line, but I do
(49:42):
need to understand how BGP runson a router.
I can't.
The base knowledge hasn't goneaway.
Speaker 1 (49:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:48):
I think that the keystroking I don't have to know
, that I don't have to rememberthings.
I can look those up.
It reminds me of my teacher inseventh grade said what do you
mean?
Use a calculator?
Are you going to have acalculator in your pocket your
whole life?
Yes, I do.
So.
There are that whole.
You can Google it forinformation.
(50:09):
I don't think you can Googleknowledge.
Speaker 1 (50:11):
I think that's the difference.
Speaker 2 (50:15):
I have the knowledge but, we just have some tools to
help us go a little better I, I100 agree with keith.
Speaker 3 (50:20):
Uh, our goal with command is to make it easy to
get information and faster totake action.
I think of it a lot like um.
You know you brought upcertifications, both of you, I.
I think of it a lot like youbrought up certifications, both
of you.
I think of it like an open booktest, whereas when you're in
school it's closed, but in reallife it's open book, and we're
(50:43):
hoping to open all the books forour customers and network
engineers.
But you still need to know whatto do.
And will we make it easier?
Will we help you get therefaster, and should it be exactly
what you want?
Absolutely, but real-worldnetworks are open book tests and
(51:06):
hopefully, with Meter, yourbooks are even better.
Speaker 1 (51:09):
Yeah, and I think this goes back to I love it as
soon as you said when you talkedabout either the proctor, the
lab assistant or the personstanding over your shoulder
watching you do something.
You have that.
Now you have some.
You have a tool that gives youthe ability to not just be that
open book but to deliver theinformation to you when you need
(51:29):
it the most.
It's just, it seems like thisis going to from a revolutionary
perspective in where we arewith networking.
This is such a great way thatpeople who have the
understanding but maybe don'thave the memory retention of all
the key codes and the lineitems in CLI, this is going to
(51:50):
enable so many people to do somuch more.
Um, and then with the you know,with the bumpers or the
guidelines that are set up tomake sure that, well, if you do
this, it's gonna break this andthis and this.
It's such, a, such a neat way.
So so you've showed us that youknow you guys have access to
the software, or you know, toeverything up and down the meter
stack.
You show us that we can receiveinformation using command.
(52:10):
You show us that we canconfigure the network and to
what, to what that, that extentis and those limitations are.
I'm not even sure yet, becauseit's this is.
It's continuing to evolve.
What else about command?
You know in the in the nextcouple of minutes, what else
about command are you looking at?
Because you mentioned somethingabout building your own
software and I know that was keywith this.
(52:32):
This it's.
This isn't just a tool to tellyour network what to do and
receive information.
This is a tool that's muchbigger than that.
Can you talk about that alittle bit?
Speaker 3 (52:42):
Yeah, absolutely so.
There's three important partsof command, like you mentioned.
One is getting informationreally fast and that can be
across any part of the stack ISP, security, firewall rules,
whatever.
You're just trying to getinformation.
Second, is you want to takeaction.
That might be somethingcomplicated saying create this
as this ID, make sure it has anauto-rotating password and
(53:04):
rotates every day at 2 am andmake sure it's WPA2 PSK.
Speaker 1 (53:10):
Prioritize traffic, for whatever it is, you can say
that it takes action.
Prioritize traffic for whateverit is, you can say that it
takes action, the last part ofwhat's command.
Speaker 3 (53:16):
what's important for us is tying back to what I
mentioned earlier on theevolution from CLI to dashboards
to where we think is the futureis having software written for
you entirely on the fly.
So we saw some components right.
(53:55):
So we saw it build switchboarddiagrams for you on the fly
health software forms.
But to show the power of it, Iwant to go all the way through
so maybe you say something likeI am a network engineer, give me
a dashboard I can share with myCTO, and what it's actually
going to go do in earnest iswrite out an entire dashboard
just the way you want it.
Speaker 1 (54:06):
Just the way your CTO wants it.
Speaker 3 (54:07):
Yeah.
So topologies, uptime, networkthroughput devices that are
connected, youlans for security,error rates report and channel
utilization all fully written atthe speed of a Google search.
Wow, and those are clickable,clickable, searchable,
everything, everything here.
(54:28):
I'm searching this thing righthere.
We can search for appliance,whatever.
I can then drag these overentirely and start building out
how I want it to be.
And this software that we havehere is when you're in canvas
mode.
That's where everybody can jumpin and you're all collaborating
and maybe Keith will drag inwireless and you know you're
(54:49):
going to drag in some networkthroughput stuff.
And then, when you go intodashboard mode, we can actually
just start configuring what wewant the dashboard to look like.
And it's actually just going tobe full dashboards that you
essentially have a softwareengineer sitting next to you and
you can just share this out.
You'll get a link.
It's all behind SSO androle-based access control and in
(55:12):
our case it'll say hey, onlypeople in meter will be able to
view this canvas.
You can just copy that link.
But you can create any numberof them.
You know you can say Drew'sdashboard and create that and
share it out.
So get information, take actionand have entire software
written for you on the fly, justthe way you want it every time.
Speaker 1 (55:37):
I'm sorry.
I didn't think I was going tobe shocked again.
Speaker 2 (55:40):
I didn't think I was going to be true, but I just
seen you do it.
Speaker 1 (55:45):
This is nuts, man.
Where do you go from here, anil?
I mean, it's just like it's.
This is great, I mean, andagain I'm trying to, I'm trying
to go back.
Speaker 2 (55:57):
You made Drew stop talking.
That's really hard to do.
Speaker 1 (56:02):
I just you know he's at a loss for words you start
with the ISP.
You get the ability to pick andchoose the ISP that you want to
be a part of.
Then you get to you know,select the network components,
or the network components areselected based on your needs and
what you do and how you'redoing it.
It ships, it's installed,everything's working, and then
you've got this ability tointeract with your network
(56:23):
unlike anything we have everseen before, and it's taken the
complexity out of it and givenit to you as simple as you need
it, but still has all the bit ofcomplexity underneath it,
should you want to go in andmake changes.
I mean, and the reporting side,and I really I I don't know
(56:44):
where you go from here, and I'msure you do.
I mean that's in another twomonths.
You, you're going to havesomething to show off, I'm sure.
But this is, you know, this isreally, this is dude.
This is really great.
I mean, from friend to friend,this is so badass.
Like I am, I am so happy foryou, but I'm so happy for our
industry that somethingincredibly innovative like this
(57:07):
is is becoming available.
Man, and if you look at, if youlook at what's happening in the
market.
You look at what's happening inthe industry and you look at
everyone trying to figure outhow to.
What are we going to do?
Where are we going to go?
How are we going to shift themoney?
How are we going to shift thefocus?
How is it going to go to ai?
What does that even mean?
You are showing us somethingright now that I have that I.
(57:30):
I can't imagine the look somepeople's faces when they start
to see and understand what thisis.
So kudos to you and the entireteam at Meter.
This is insane.
I love it I love it.
Speaker 2 (57:39):
I think what you're trying to say, Drew, is you
didn't know you wanted it untilyou saw it, but now you have to
have it.
Speaker 1 (57:45):
You have to have it.
I mean, this is like it'sincredible, man.
I think about the simplefunctions of configuring a
network.
I think about the advancedfunctions of configuring a
network.
I think about everything thatI've had to learn to do what it
(58:05):
is that I'm trying to do andbeing able to not automate isn't
the right word but I'm able touse a tool that just makes it so
much quicker for me that it'sgoing to allow me to focus on
other things that are important,and I think about CTOs and CIOs
and the staff that they have,being able to interact with this
and truly start to focus oninformation technology, not on
(58:32):
configuring devices andsupporting devices and
administering devices.
I mean, this is an incredibleshift and I'm so happy that you
let us talk to you about it.
This is really cool.
Speaker 3 (58:41):
Yeah, I mean I just think you know the
infrastructure decisions we made, the alternative choices that
we took and the paths and thepain to build good products led
us down here, and we really wantnetworking to have the best
tools in the world and not lookover and look at other
industries and be like, whydon't we have something cool?
(59:03):
We should have the things thatare at the forefront and, at the
end of the day, we hope ourcustomers and our partners can
see the value of meter even moreand, like you said, I do know
where we're going and we willcome back and show you more.
But this is just the start ofwhat we're doing.
But it's a culmination of manyyears of work and what we think
(59:25):
we can do in a different,special way that currently I
don't think the industry is setup to do, for a myriad of
reasons.
Currently I don't think theindustry is set up to do for a
myriad of reasons.
But these are the things wewant as well and ultimately,
faster, secure, better networksfor our customers, but also, at
the end of the day, really greatproducts.
We just think networking shouldhave the best products in the
(59:48):
world.
Speaker 1 (59:49):
What you've just seen is an incredible sneak peek of
what's coming up with Meter aswe come up to the top of the
hour.
I appreciate everybody who'slistening and tuning in such
fantastic guests.
Keith, it's always good to seeyou, and Neil it's.
This is just so innovative andfun.
Can't wait to see what comesnext.
If you need more information,visit metercom.
Look for one of the Sarah's onLinkedIn.
They'll be happy to help you.
Look for Mr.
Hey everybody, what's up?
It's Drew Lentz, the WirelessNerd, and today we have a really
special and fun episode.
There's been lots of talk aboutAI and what's going on in the
networking space and thewireless space, and you know all
the commotion that's going on.
And a couple of weeks back Iguess not weeks, a couple of
months back I got a chance to govisit the office at Meter in
San Francisco and I had afantastic time, got to meet the
(00:21):
whole team, but, moreimportantly, I got to see a
sneak peek of some reallyinteresting stuff and I've
talked a little bit about itwithout giving away any details.
But today we've got Mr Anil onthe line.
He's going to show us what heshowed me back then, except it's
going to be new and polishedand fun.
And I've got a special guest.
Mr Keith Parsons is on with usright now.
(00:41):
So Keith and I are going tohave a good time and we're going
to look at what Neil's got toshow us.
Oh, it's going to be great.
Keith, I'm assuming you haveseen some of this also.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
I have.
My job here is just to be colorcommentary.
You're the main broadcaster.
Sports coach.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Oh yeah, I'm just going to disappear from the
screen and I just want to kneelto show us what's going on,
because and I, I, agree withyour your excitement.
When I saw it, I was also veryexcited, so I'm looking forward
to seeing it again I, I, I feltlike and I think I shared this
when I was there in sanfrancisco I felt like we had
(01:21):
gone back to like a dot-com eraof innovation.
I felt like I'd walked intothis office, you know, and it's
the old school San Franciscostartup, like you know all the
nitty gritty and you know, peterthe chef was there and everyone
was chilling in the break roomand it was such a good time and
it wasn't.
(01:42):
I mean, there was that feeling.
But then when we started tolook at the innovation and you
were so cool man and I do Ialways appreciate that
hospitality where you were justlike just show them whatever,
whatever you want and you know,true to my word, you know we
didn't, we didn't sign anythingat the time, which was really
cool, but you didn't sayanything and I think that that
was more fun is understandingthat there was something coming
(02:02):
and you know you showed, youshowed me the whole suite of
hardware and software.
So if you could catch us up realquick, because there may be
some people listening orwatching that they don't know
who you are and what you'redoing.
So if you could just catch usup on on, on who you are and
where you're at now, and then Imean oh, then then show the
goods, man.
So what you got, you got Anil.
Who are you, sir, and what isyour company?
(02:24):
What do you do?
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Well, thank you first for having me.
I think you and Keith takingtime is amazing.
As I was saying before, we hitrecord wireless royalty, so I'm
really happy to be here.
I think you both know a littlebit, but maybe for listeners, I
work at a company called Meter.
I'm one of the people thathelped start it.
I'm an engineer here, and whatwe do is make networking much
(02:51):
better.
We think networking hardware andsoftware has gotten the love it
deserves over the last decade,and that's essentially all we
spent the last decade doing ishow do we make networking
hardware and software fast,secure, reliable?
And since this last decade we'vebeen doing it as a service, and
(03:13):
for us what networking as aservice really means is
combining great products, greatservice, together without
compromising any of the controland visibility customers not
only need but actually honestlyshould demand from vendors they
should have.
Somehow it's become that ifthis thing comes as a service,
(03:37):
it's a black box.
I can't touch it, I don't knowwhat it is, or it might not be
on par with the legacy vendorsas far as feature sets go.
We don't believe in that at all, so we've been really investing
in that.
So Meter makes it easy foranybody to get really great
internet infrastructure that'sboth customers and partners
across ISPs, routing, switching,wireless security, dns security
(04:03):
, sd-wan VPN all in a singleplatform that's tied across
hardware that we design,software that we build and
networks that we help make sureare fast, secure, reliable.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
So, and starting at the beginning of that, one of
the coolest tools is the abilityto choose your ISP and choose
your connection and choose yourmechanism on how you get to the
internet, and that's a softwareservice that you'll have.
Can you tell me just a littlebit about that, sure.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
I think.
Interestingly, that actuallywas a pain point my brother and
I had about 15 years ago.
We were running anotherbusiness and every time we moved
offices it was frustrating tous that we could buy everything
on the Internet except Internetitself.
We just didn't understand why,and that's where the kind of
(04:55):
core frustration came from, andwe spent about four or five
years actually wranglingdifferent APIs, manual data
processes, and today it's aproduct called Connect that's
been around for a while andgrowing really fast, and it's a
beloved product amongstcustomers.
Honestly, people really love itand the simplest way to think
(05:17):
about it is Kayak or Expedia forISPs, including ISP management
and billing, all in a singlespace.
So you just go to Connect andyou say I am moving to 123 Main
Street.
We go, bring back all the ISPsthat are available and we
partner with not just thelargest ones but also the small,
local ones as well, and we'llshow pricing and availability
(05:42):
all in a single place.
And not just that you can justbuy it and get a contract that's
landed in your inbox and allthat information is again fully
integrated into the entirenetwork.
So when you're looking at yoursecurity appliances, you know
what ISP, you know what speedsall of it.
But Connect is Kayak or Expediaand billing and management in a
(06:02):
single place and people can gouse it.
Today it's at metercom,m-e-t-e-rcom slash connect and
just go type in an address andgo use it.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
That's awesome and there's no strings attached to
that.
You can go, punch it in and youcan use it today.
It's such a fun product.
I've had a blast showing it offto people and just take a look
at this.
So that starts at the verybasic right and then starting to
move up the stack of what meteroffers.
You know there's, from acomparative perspective, there's
people that are moving into thespace and whether it's an
existing managed serviceprovider or it's an equipment
(06:37):
manufacturer that offers thesemanaged services or network as a
service.
I know that you all do things alittle bit differently and you
mentioned that where you, whereyou don't just want to say this
is what you, what you get, iswhat you get.
It is what it is like the worst, you know the worst four words
you can have there Um, but yougive people the option to.
This is how it should be.
But if you want to make tweaksand changes and whatever, you
(06:58):
have the ability to do that.
So, moving up the stack if wetake our internet service
provider, we plug into your what, your security appliance, your
router, your firewall.
What's the first step afterthat?
Speaker 3 (07:09):
It plugs into our security appliance that has full
, stateful firewall, highavailability monitoring,
including host monitoring,configuration of DNS, dhcp all
built in there directly.
From there it goes into ourswitching platform, and both the
(07:31):
security appliances andswitches are not just 1 gig but
10 gig as well.
Awesome, and the same thing onthe switches, too, being able to
change anything from broadcaststorms to where ingress and
ingress are going, power onparticular switch ports, all
full control that connects toour wireless access points.
Our wireless access points areindoor and outdoor, again fully
(07:55):
configurable, down to captiveportals that are built in radius
profiles, all of it.
And all of this is with ourdashboard today, with an
end-to-end platform where theISPs in there Connecto.
We talked about then securityappliances, switches, wireless
access points, and then SD-WAN,dns, security and VPN all in a
(08:17):
single platform.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
That's awesome, and that end-to-end infrastructure
is key in kind of your nextinnovations, right?
Being able to control thepacket from start to finish, all
the way from the ISP, all theway out to the wireless, you
know, to the person connected tothe Wi-Fi, from not just a
routing perspective but asecurity perspective and
everything in between.
(08:38):
And I think that there'ssomething to be said for that.
When you look at differentinfrastructure models and you
look at the way that people,what their networks are
comprised of, they have allthese different things that are
out there.
Being able to control thatpacket to start to finish is
important, but it's also to makesure that it's cost effective.
When you have the ability to dothat, you don't want to pay.
(08:59):
You don't want to get into amodel where it's like, okay,
well, I have this routerfirewall.
To get into a model where it'slike, okay, well, I have this
router firewall, I've got thissecurity appliance, so I might
as well get the AP from thismanufacturer, but then you're
paying out the nose for that APor I've got to get a service
contract on that switch in orderto maintain it.
Your structure for not justyour data model but the pricing
model as well, lends itself tobeing able to easily get
(09:21):
invested in an end-to-end meternetwork.
Is that a fair assumption?
Speaker 3 (09:25):
Yeah, absolutely, and we see this all the time.
That includes all of ourcustomers and partners and their
customers that might be dealingwith environments where there's
a bunch of legacy hardware.
On top of everything you said,we also have a buyback program
where we will buy out existinglegacy hardware, so there's no
(09:46):
sunk cost for our customers andswitching is easier into this
platform.
That's end to end.
And Drew, you know this, andKeith as well where we didn't
come out and say anything for along time about who we are.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
I mean only a decade right.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Because it's such a mature industry.
Right, networking is one of theoldest industries in all of
technology and if you go look atmarket caps of companies in
this, it's second or thirdlargest in the entire world and
it's one of the most coreunderpinnings of almost every
business.
So when we come out and showproducts, we didn't want it to
(10:25):
just be a point solution or wedidn't want it to be something
like oh cool, that's a nicelittle startup, you got there,
but it can't be X, y and Z rightwhen people see Meter.
We want it to be a substantialnew way of doing things that's
entirely end-to-end and itdoesn't matter if you're
somebody that's technical oryou're incredibly technical like
(10:47):
you and Keith, and reallycomplex environments with
hundreds of locations andmanufacturing or schools,
whatever.
We wanted you to have theentire control, the visibility
that you would expect and shoulddemand from enterprise networks
, that you would expect andshould demand from enterprise
networks, and that came acrossfrom the hardware that we built,
(11:07):
our architecture, our software,our services and then pricing
all together so that, as peoplecome onto the platform which is
why we're seeing such growth isbecause we think it's a mature
platform now rather thansomething that's just on the
(11:28):
margin yep, now, keith, you'veseen this, and you, you've seen
a lot of hardware and software.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Man, I mean, it's it, that's the beauty of being in
the industry saying I'm old, Iget it no, no, you.
You know, I was like I waswatching a trailer for a brand
new 2024 EGA-style game and mywife looks over at me and she
goes what are you watching?
I was like it's like CrystalPalace, but for 2024.
And she says what are youtalking about?
Or Crystal Caverns?
She says, what are you talkingabout?
(11:55):
I said, never mind, we're notgoing to talk about Apogee
software and Duke Nukem and anyof that.
But I know you know what I'mtalking about just by saying it,
but that, with that in mind,you've, you've seen iteration
after iteration, what I mean,what sticks out to you so far,
before you talk about the goodstuff, what sticks out to you so
far about the meters stuff?
Because it's, it's there's.
I mean, this isn't like afanboy thing.
(12:16):
I definitely.
I am a fan of what you're doing, but I I am critical also, and
I know keith is critical too.
So there's, there's things outthere like, okay, this is a big
plus and this is a big minus,aside from the minuses right,
let's leave those for anotherconversation what are the big
pluses?
You see, with Meter?
I mean, you've done this before.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Anything stick out way back machine.
The first time I took aaccounting 201 or something, I
failed my accounting classbecause I did not believe in
sunk cost.
The instructor taught it and Ihad just bought a truck and he
(12:55):
used me as an example and saidyou know, that is that sunk cost
.
It doesn't matter.
On the next decision, your nextdecision is from now moving
forward.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
I could not get over it.
I wrote on the final a bigthree pages about how wrong he
was.
Next semester taking the courseagain, of course, the professor
a different professor of coursecalls my name out loud and
makes me stand up in class andhe goes you, you're the sunk
(13:27):
cost guy, like they'd obviouslytalked about it.
And he just goes, just cometalk to me and I go into his,
into his office, and he's likeyou think it's religion and you
think sunk cost?
Is this this thing?
You're?
You just don't get it religion.
And you think sunk cost is thisthis thing?
You're?
you just don't get it so just ifyou want to pass a class, just
(13:49):
give them my answer and I'm okay.
Well, I think a lot of peopleare are stuck when they're
looking at some of these, uh,managed services that they
believe in that religious belief.
But but I have all this money.
It's it's all sunk cost.
Some cost is not a real thing,it's an accounting thing and
there's a lot of emotion tied toit.
(14:09):
So I knew when you said youhave a way to do a buyback.
Really you're just loweringthat threshold of someone's pain
point because they think it'sreally bad.
And you know I'm sure you'recrying across this, true, drew,
I have people who are stillusing 802 live11b because they
believe that they have enoughdevices to justify that.
(14:29):
Until you, I've got aspreadsheet where I put in all
their numbers and I show them.
And the cost to upgrade yourinfrastructure to support B and
new clients at the same time isway higher than anything you'd
ever have to pay to upgrade yourclients, but it just hurts.
So, anil, thanks for evenmentioning that and having a
(14:50):
program that will help people,because that's a stumbling block
and I think those are whenpeople are thinking about
companies like Meter.
Where am I giving up all thecontrol?
Well, kind of.
Am I getting in bed with only asingle vendor?
Well, you probably are already.
So there's a lot of thoselittle bumps along the road.
(15:13):
But having a mature product andI've just got to congratulate
you.
You stayed stealth for a decadeyeah, that takes and I didn't
mean that as a joke.
I meant you had the ability tohold back and stay.
It's like a charging horsewants to go someplace and you're
(15:33):
like no, this is our plan, thisis where we roll out and we're
going to be ready, and so thattook some maturity to pull that
off.
So congrats.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
That's awesome.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
Yeah, so okay.
We would rather win the warthan the battle, oh man all
right.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Well, so, so you can.
You've got access to the isp,you've got access to what it
plugs into, you've got you'vegot a network that's running in
the end meter and it's it'sdoing all the things it's
supposed to do.
I you know, your team is askeith mentioned.
I mean, your team is top-notch,not only for being able to keep
a secret, but for where theycame from and what they've been
(16:09):
able to do and the innovationthat's come based on the
experience of the people on yourteam and what they've been
through.
Their battle scars have turnedinto your benefit.
You know, and and it's such agood team of people that are
there and you know all you gotto do is look at the website and
(16:30):
see who's behind you all, whoyour employees are, who your
investors are, and you go.
Man, these are people who'veseen a lot of it.
This is a great way to innovate, and so it doesn't stop with
what we're talking about.
It doesn't stop with thecircuits and doesn't stop with
the internet access and theability to control all of it and
top-notch hardware in a greatpackage at a great price.
What you showed me.
I had problems understandinghow I would use it.
(16:54):
It was so compelling that Icouldn't even think about a way
to use what you had just givenme the ability to do, and I
think that I think that that wasmy first and I think I told you
that that was like my firstconcern is, like, now that you
have all the power to doanything, this is like the
buffet mentality.
Well, now that you wanteverything, like where do you
(17:16):
start?
And so I hope you have someexamples of where to start for
feeble-minded people like me,because it's so much and I would
love for you to share that andit's been a while.
Can you talk a little bit aboutwhat brought it on?
You don't have to talk aboutwhen you broke it, you know, a
month or two ago, but you know Ilove it.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
I broke it last night too, so it's okay.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
I love it, but that's you know.
The whole thing that I think isbeautiful is that you're not
someone who's sitting back goingdo this, do that, do this, do
that.
You're actually breaking it andfixing it and breaking it, and
other people are fixing it andthey're breaking it and you're
fixing it to a point where youare so hands on with this
because you want it to solve theproblem.
So, if you can talk a littlebit about why you thought about
(18:02):
doing what you did and what wasthe path to get there, and what
in the world are we talkingabout?
Speaker 3 (18:08):
Yeah, Before I jump in, I do want to like nudge.
One thing here is I tend to geton a credit all the time
everywhere I go, but I'm justliterally a figurehead, honestly
, and I get to do the podcastwith you guys and you guys come
over, I'll hang out with you andit might seem like I'm the one
(18:30):
doing things.
But, like you mentioned, Ithink what we've been really
fortunate with is having peoplethat really care about building
great products and whatever theanalogy of standing on the
shoulders of giants.
It just turns out for me thegiants are my team, so I get to
like play with them and learnfrom them, and so whatever
(18:53):
credit we kind of get, I want tomake sure it's for the company.
You know there's there's thiskind of saying of you know you
should play for the front of theJersey, not the back of it.
I really believe in that.
So I'm yes, I'm deeply involvedand I care about products.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
You say that by the way, and just so anyone that's
listening or watching, there aretwo Sarahs on the line that are
hiding behind the scenes.
I'm sure they have hot pokers tostick a nail with if he says
anything he's not supposed to.
(19:31):
And I didn't realize, you know,just on that note before you
jump into it when I was there,when I was at the office, it was
just again, all I could thinkof was that whole early dot-com
stuff, not in a bad way, in agood way that young, innovative
fun where everyone is rowing atthe same time and you walk into
your office and it wasn't justthe aesthetic of it.
And it wasn't just theaesthetic of it, it was the
feeling of the employees andtheir excitement in sharing
things and how everyone justcompleted each other's sentences
as we moved across each productand platform.
(19:53):
And not to take credit awayfrom you, but really you are not
the only person there and yourteam is a phenomenal team.
And if anyone has had theopportunity to come by or visit
with some of the team at Meter,you'll know that each one of
them can carry their own weightmassively.
But there's also something tobe said for someone who can
(20:16):
congeal all of that and make itsomething.
So you and your brother aredoing some incredible stuff.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
Yeah, we both really deeply care about products.
We care about what we put ourname on and at the end of the
day, I hope you know wecontribute something to the
industry and we try to stayclose to everything that's going
on.
And to your question on what'sthe problems we're trying to
solve, you know I studiednetworking in college and you
know my kind of real deepjourney into networking started
(20:43):
about 20 years ago now.
The awesome thing was you cameinto the lab and you were
instantly given this power,which was like the command line,
and sit down and then they'relike type this and you kind of
learn, you know this command andthat command and you felt
really powerful because there'sthis like humming big machine in
(21:05):
front of you in the lab andyou're like I can control this
thing and as a young engineer,that's like really cool.
Yeah, I mean you get reallyexcited by it.
But, as I was kind of goingthrough learning, command lines
are complicated because you haveto learn different commands.
You have to remember them.
Are complicated because youhave to learn different commands
(21:26):
, you have to remember them andthen, as you go from vendor to
vendor and platform to platform,you have to learn the
shibboleths of each of those onwhat it takes to kind of get it
to do how you want.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
That's right, and some of the people you know it's
.
I think about hpe back in theday, where in in cisco, ios,
everything was one way and thenin hpe it was completely
backwards and then Xtreme didsomething different and then
each person had their own takeon it and you had to learn, like
you said, those very small,specific things about which way
to flip the command in order toget it done.
(21:57):
You're totally right, yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
And the other thing that was great about a lab back
then is you had people peeringover your shoulder that can help
you or say that's wrong, here'show you should do it.
And that was great too, becauseat the end of the day, you're
trying to learn and you'retrying to build better
infrastructure and support goodnetworks.
And then in the last decade,decade and a half, one of the
things that's amazing that'shappened is dashboards got built
, pulling real-time data intoweb apps, and that was also
(22:30):
fantastic.
You didn't have to go learn allof these different commands for
every different platform andevery vendor, but also even
forget that even if you had asingle vendor, there's so many
commands to learn for all thedifferent things you want to do.
Some you might be doing once amonth, some might be doing every
(22:51):
once in a while, some you'redoing at the nick of time when
you're trying to solve a problemor fix an issue, and you can't
remember all of them, even ifyou're a single vendor platform.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
There's nothing more frustrating than that nick of
time scenario when the onlything you can do is hit the tab
and try to learn, like right now.
That's just in time fixing andyou don't know the command, but
you can kind of figure it out onthe fly by just typing in and
fill it in for me something.
Tab question mark.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Yeah, that's exactly right.
And then the other thing withdashboards is like okay, you
want to make a feature requestand we all know how companies
work, right, you put in afeature request, it goes into
product teams, and it goes intodesign teams and engineering
teams, then QA teams and thenfull circle back, and in good
(23:44):
situations that might be days ormonths, but realistically it
takes like three to six monthsat least before you can get back
what you want.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Well, depending on what the you know, how much
money people are willing tospend on it and how big the
account is, or if you can getall your friends to check it and
say yes, I want it too.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
Yeah, do a community drive for product development.
But we've been really thinkingabout is that, especially as
software moved up the stackright it went from assembly to
then operating systems and localapplications and browsers and
applications in the browserWe've really felt software has
gotten very rigid, and rigidmeans is that you can't make it
(24:27):
your own.
And the other thing I've alwaysloved about technology, other
than just networking as a whole,is everything from HyperCard to
Visual Basic to.
All of these were incrediblebecause the promise of software
was here you go, young man, youcan make it whatever you want.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
That's right.
Absolute HyperCard he says it'sgreat and that was the promise
right.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
So what we're really thinking about is can we make
software soft again, really makeit be moldable and malleable
around the user, while takingthe best parts of the command
line, best parts of dashboardsinto a single place?
And that's what we're kind ofannouncing now is the product is
(25:13):
called command and we hope it'sthe best of that, and what we
hope even more is the future ofsoftware in general, that's,
around the user yeah, and that'sI think you know, and that's a
tall order, right?
Speaker 1 (25:27):
because when you start to think about the
commands and and the theprogramming if you will
necessary to configure router,to configure bgp, to you know,
uh, install a security applianceor to set up a wireless network
, that's tied to an acl, that'stied to a specific port, that's
tied to a profile, that's tiedto a vlan, on and on and on.
(25:50):
There is a lot of complexitythere and a lot of the devil
there is in the details of howyou do it.
One tiny mistype, onemisconfiguration can cost you a
whole lot of stuff.
Look at what's happenedrecently with AT&T, you know, or
you know any of these bigorganizations where something
simple has caused an issue.
(26:10):
Something simple has caused anissue and in that is like you
mentioned at the beginning, it'snot just understanding what you
need to do, but how you need todo it and being able to do that
across multiple products, evenin the same family.
I ran into an issue two days agowhere I was configuring a set
of VLANs on an access point andI was configuring them on a
(26:32):
switch, but I forgot toconfigure the VLANs to be passed
through on the securityappliance and I couldn't get on
for some reason.
It was like wow, this is stilla thing in 2024.
What have you done with commandto alleviate some of that
hassle?
And what is that?
I don't know if you havesomething you can show us or not
, but what does that look likefrom an I, from your perspective
(26:53):
of what?
What do you?
I guess we've established whatyou're trying to solve.
How are you solving that?
What does command do?
Speaker 3 (27:00):
yeah, uh, I think it's better showing rather than
telling, and then what maybe thethree of us can do is, uh, play
subtitles for the folks thatare just gonna listen, rather
than also that sounds good to meand neil is sitting behind a
white brick background.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Currently has on a tan polo shirt keith is looking
intently through his blackframed glasses.
Oh, spectacles would have beena better word there anyway.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
Um, so this is command um, but I can start
there through if you want to gofirst, or Keith.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
This is the best.
This is where you screenshotand you go this is command, and
it's just a blank canvas, whichis awesome and terrifying at the
same time.
I mean, so what can I?
It does have two sides.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
It does have two sides.
It does have two sides.
That has command and thenanother side and it looks like
it's going to have.
You know, do this on one sideand we'll show you what it works
on the other.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
It just says what would you like to see?
Well, what would we like to see?
I mean, yeah, let me start off.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
So the challenges we're trying to solve is exactly
that right.
You don't have to remembercommands and you want to have
software that's yours.
That's the challenge we'retrying to solve.
Underneath is huge amounts ofarchitecture and infrastructure
investments we've made over theyears.
Where is that?
That's across operating systems, that's across our firmware,
(28:29):
that's across how we send databack, our backend and our APIs.
We made these investments thelast few years that put us in a
position to build somethingthat's actually valuable.
But without any of that, fromour hardware on up, what I'm
about to show you, and the speedof it and the accuracy of it,
(28:49):
just isn't possible.
So you mentioned ISPs just a fewminutes ago on.
You're trying to understandwhat's happening with an ISP or
something like that.
So I'm here in San Francisco atour office and I'm connected to
our lab network here.
One of the first things you cando in command is similar to
Slack or Teams.
(29:10):
You can just hit at to getstarted.
Slack or Teams, you can just hitat to get started and when you
do, you can like scope it downto a particular piece of
hardware, particular network, aparticular client.
But why don't we select thenetwork here?
That's our primary test networkand you know, maybe you want to
say something like when was thelast time ISP quality was below
(29:32):
95% or something, and you canjust like type it out as I'm
just exactly as I'm speaking,and the cool thing about command
what it's going to go do, thatwill seem very simple is it just
went and combed through all ofthe logs on this ISP and
actually just gave an answerback and here the answer is just
(29:53):
saying hey, this was thisparticular time it was below 95%
.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
And it has to know what 95% is also, so it has to
understand and be able tointerpret what you mean, how you
mean it, and then apply that tothe network.
And I mean, it took what?
Three seconds maybe, to respond.
No, no, no, it did not takethree seconds.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
It took three seconds to render.
No, it didn't this one.
It took about 560 milliseconds.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
If it took three seconds, I wouldn't even be here
.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
I would never show it to the world.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
That's so great, that is so great man 560
milliseconds.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
But after that you were kind of saying something
about you know switches early,right, You're kind of looking at
particular switch.
So let's say, today your jobwas to add a bunch of things to
switch ports, because maybeyou're adding security cameras
or maybe you're adding accesscontrol or something like that
and there's a particular switchyou care about.
Right, you can just go to thatswitch.
(30:51):
I'll pick a random one, you tapon switch and then you which
you care about.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
Right, you can just go to that switch.
I'll pick a random one.
So you tap on switch and thenyou choose.
Yeah, I just hit add and I justselected.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
I'll just select to that switch one of our test
racks and I can actually justsay, like show me a port diagram
.
And again what will happen thatwill seem innocuous is it went
and actually just wrote softwareentirely on the fly for a port
diagram for that switch in line.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
It didn't have that the picture that we're staring
at wasn't.
That's not some pre-made photo,that's not.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
Oh this is real life software that you can switch,
just like you can.
I just switched it to anotherswitch.
Right now it's fully usable.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
This is a unique piece of code that's only
running right now inside thiscommand.
That's right, and yet it'sstill.
It's workable.
You drop down to a differentswitch.
It's a different switch.
It does look like your otherdashboards.
Speaker 3 (31:55):
I'm guessing.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Since you already had the code, you could reuse some
of that code.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Yeah, so what's happening underneath actually is
really interesting.
One part of command is a modelthat understands our hardware,
our architecture and kind of ourentire system our architecture
and kind of our entire system.
Another model that actuallyunderstands how we write
software and how we designsoftware.
And, keith, that's where ourdesign system is, what you're
(32:26):
seeing here, because we have adesign system that we try to
maintain consistency.
Where a table is a table, aport is designed a certain way,
we use certain colors, and soit's trained on our design
system as well, so it knows thatit should look like meter
software.
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
But it's not just meter software because as you
switched, it's getting live datafrom each of those ports on the
new switch.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
Yes, that's exactly right, and that's the other
really amazing thing that ourteam ended up building.
As far as the architecture isconcerned, the software that's
written is like an engineerwould write.
That's fully configurable andyou can kind of have dropdowns
and filter and search and allthese different things, but it's
also pulling real time datafrom every piece of hardware,
(33:12):
all at the same time, all thesame time all the same.
So maybe this is what you careabout, because you're adding a
bunch of um, you know, securitycameras or something um.
If you remember earlier I wasmentioning one of the awesome
things about working in thenetworking lab is people peering
over your shoulder, whether youwant.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
That is such a just such a kick-ass way to say that,
because now I I mean, I knowwhere you're going with this,
right, but it's like that's all.
I mean this, keep going, that'sawesome to have that visual of
someone peering over yourshoulder and realizing that you
do not need that anymore becauseyou're that's incredible
breathing down your neck youjust feel it right, as you said,
(33:52):
that yeah, so so maybe you knowyou just want to care about,
just feel it right, as you said,that, yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
So maybe you just want to care about this one
switch right now.
You can just actually pick itup and drop it here in the green
zone here, and this is a fullmultiplayer area and
collaborative.
Speaker 2 (34:09):
So Anil just moved the port diagram that he made in
the previous step over to theright side of his screen.
A little worksheet, a littleempty area and it's now sitting
over there in a shared area andit's just going to live there.
Speaker 3 (34:23):
Yeah, it's going to live there, no-transcript, and
you're at work and do your workis some SEV1 issue comes along.
As you know, at Meter, if anyof the Sarahs say anything, it's
(34:45):
SEV1 all the time.
That's all they hold the powerthey do.
So maybe we'll go like aparticular client, as we go to
like actually like Sarah'sMacBook Pro, yep, and she's
saying something's going on,things are not working.
So you can literally just actand get to Sarah's MacBook Pro
and say tell me about the helpof this client and give me a
(35:14):
five-bullet summary.
What's going to happen is twothings.
One is it's going to combthrough all of the data about
Sarah's MacBook Pro and give asummary again at the speed of a
Google search, not three seconds.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
Yeah, it's not three seconds y'all.
That was a terriblemiscalculation on my behalf.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
And it just gave a summary about hey, for this
MacBook Pro, this is the Macaddress and this is what I'm
seeing across signal strength,noise level, usage data rates
and SNR.
So you start and then it wrotesoftware that gives the entire
help and, similarly, you canpick it up and drop it here.
Because you can pick it up anddrop it here?
Because you know Sarah'sMacBook Pro is the most
important MacBook Pro at meter,absolutely.
(35:58):
You're always paying attentionto it.
So that's the other reallyinteresting part is making
debugging easier, gettinginformation really fast, but
really what?
The underlying truth of this isthat it saves time, right?
Normally, if I'm going to golook at all these logs, it's
going to take some time for meto understand what's actually
(36:20):
happening.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
Well, the other thing that I've been a little bit
vocal about is that there's allthese ideas of what AI can look
like and chatbots and all thesethings of ways to interact with
the system, and my biggest boneto pick has always been but you
have to learn how to talk to it.
You have to learn how to ask ita very specific question.
(36:42):
You have to understand thesyntax that it uses, because you
can't just have a conversationwith it.
What you're showing is that youcan just have a conversation
with your network in whateverway that makes the most sense to
you.
It can be as technical as youwant or it can be absolutely as
(37:03):
non-technical as you want, andit's going to give you
information that I wasn't readyfor it to show SNR.
I thought maybe it showed datarate or you know, last time it
went down, I wasn't ready forsomething that was actually
important to be shown, becauseit's a lot of times people don't
think about that.
It's you're showing off a waythat allows us to truly interact
(37:27):
with a network on our terms,our terms, and this is this is
incredible to me um, and it'sthere's so many shock waves of
this that I'm looking at and I'mthinking about that as this
ripples further out.
These are the things thatpeople in, at least in my mind,
(37:47):
these are the things that Ithought.
This is what that ai revolutionin networking is supposed to
look like.
You're showing it to me, andit's the first time second time
that I've seen this because youshowed it to me a few months ago
.
That's the first time that I'mactually seeing this, and this
isn't some canned demo.
This isn't some.
(38:08):
This is real life.
Asking functionality of anetwork and having it display
information, information to you.
What were you gonna say, keith?
Speaker 2 (38:15):
I.
I think the beauty of this itis that Anil's and his team have
trained their model on theirstuff.
It doesn't have to be a chatGPT that takes anything from the
internet.
It's you know your own software, you know your own firmware,
you know your own coding, youknow the data that's included
and where the where all thepackets are going on the network
(38:36):
.
You don't have to train it toanswer.
You know what's the height ofKilimanjaro.
You can let it focus and Ithink that might be a part of
the speed process.
But I think it's answering whatDrew was looking for.
It's valuable because it'sanswering my question about the
things I care about.
Yeah, contextual, I think ithelps that it was trained
(38:57):
specific to do this one thingand not just to do anything.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
But it's not so and, anil, maybe you can answer that
question from a quote-unquotetraining perspective.
It's not.
I don't feel like this isnecessarily trained.
I think this is a constantlyevolving thing as your network
grows.
Is that fair?
Speaker 3 (39:13):
So it's a combination of both right, it's built and
trained and the models on ourarchitecture, how we write
software, how we design software, our backend, those things but
at the same time, it goes andgets real-time data about all
the clients and all the piece ofhardware, because what you want
(39:35):
is the real time data.
And the architecture where weended up with command is super
interesting because we didn'ttake any customer data and train
it on that, because we reallycare about privacy.
We think it's incrediblyimportant, especially in
enterprises.
It's only trained on, as Keithwas saying, our architecture,
our software, our design andwhat it does is goes and grabs
(39:57):
real-time data about each ofthese clients and each of these
devices on the network.
So both of those is thecombination where we ended up.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
It also means it has to have some other extra
intelligence.
I don't know where it's comingfrom, but it had to assume.
For signal strength you give arange, which means that was the
range over some period of time.
So you had to put a timevariable into the equation
without me specifically sayingover the last three hours.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
Neil is smiling and grinning from ear to ear,
showing off his I just like heneeds to ask the question.
Speaker 3 (40:36):
It's Keith, because he can see everything right.
He's been around for so long.
So, yeah, keith, it knows somany things about time.
It knows things To give you alittle bit more under the
curtain too.
It has its own calculator too.
That we built under the curtaintoo is like it.
(40:56):
Um, it has its own calculatortoo, that we built a bunch of
things that are happening in thebackground so that it can
actually do things, and so, fromtime to calculators, to
understanding even how to write,write markdown there's a lot of
things that are going on uh, inhere, okay, so so then step two
, right, yeah, you've shown usinformation about the network.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
That's awesome.
What can I do with thatinformation?
Can I configure devices?
Can I?
Speaker 3 (41:20):
Exactly, exactly.
So, okay, you solved Sarah'sproblem, because, again, that's
the number one MacBook.
Now you're getting back to yourwork and maybe to your earlier
(41:40):
example, drew.
The next thing you're doingafter you these security cameras
and these action controlsystems, is you have to go
configure VLANs, and there's aprompt that I'll use that's
already been typed because it'sbeen part of the testing since
we started, so now it's like afunny prompt that I use at every
demo.
This is for Peter, this is forPeter, your chef.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (41:57):
I wish it was for Peter.
He was one of our researchersthat I think was hungry at that
time because he'd been workingall day and all night.
So maybe you're sayingsomething like create a VLAN,
call it Lobster, say it's forcooking, enable it and give it a
certain VLAN ID, and when youhit enter, there's some
interesting things that arehappening here.
(42:17):
Command will go understand thatquery that we're saying, and
actually it just wrote out anentire form that's been filled
out.
So what you're seeing here is aform that normally would be in
one of our dashboards whereit'll just fill out entirely and
you can go look at it and editit.
(42:37):
You know, you can kind of say,like it's not for lobster or
whatever the case might be.
You're kind of editing it andthen you can confirm by saying I
actually want to submit this.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
There you go, okay.
Speaker 3 (42:48):
And then there's another step, because we believe
mutations are expensive and wewant to make sure the users
understand what they're doing,just like you would anywhere
else.
You want to have a Of courseYou're going to see how it's
going to impact the network andthen, when you execute it, it
will actually go create thatVLAN, and it was that fast
across the entire platform.
You just said what you want.
(43:09):
So getting information and thentaking action as well, and
again, those are the two greatpowers of a command line.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
So to go off script, then would it be possible for
you to type in create an SSIDcalled Lobster and tie it to the
VLAN Lobster?
Is that something that you cando and press?
Speaker 3 (43:28):
it.
Yeah, you can.
I just want to make sure I'mnot bringing down the network.
But yes, you can.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
Well, yeah, I don't want to ask because I know
you're actually on your network,but if you get a thumbs up back
there, I'd love to see that.
Speaker 3 (43:39):
Yeah, it can do SSIDs , firewall rules, dns security,
port forwarding, rate limiting.
Just, it understands our entirearchitecture and I think it's
an important point to reiteratehere is you, uh, open with
asking us about our architectureand our stack?
Speaker 1 (43:59):
absolutely, that's what command understands every
okay, okay, I mean every bit ofyour architecture, or like 90 of
it or 60.
I mean, what are we talking?
I mean, is this every bit of it?
And Is this the real deal?
That's what I'm trying tofigure out.
Speaker 3 (44:17):
Yeah, yeah, every bit of it.
And there's two times itcontinuously updates itself.
One is when we change thatarchitecture, there's a CICD
pipeline that gets kicked off.
Okay.
Same is when we change ourdesign, then our CIC CD pipeline
also gets kicked off, so thecommand can actually learn those
new things.
So maybe I'll say like there'susually some gap there somewhere
(44:38):
between 24 to 48 hours so thenew model comes out, so that
understands as we make changes.
So let's say, you know,recently we announced a bunch of
stuff around multi-WAN and highavailability and all these
things.
As that feature goes in and itgets tested and pushed out,
there's a gap of 24 to 48 hoursbefore command knows all of it,
(44:59):
because the models have to gettrained again.
But that's a CICD pipeline thatgets kicked off.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
We've been waiting 10 years to see this, anil, and
you're telling me we got to waitan extra 24 hours.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
I don't know if that's going to be acceptable or
not.
I have a question for you, neilSure.
Could you ask command the samekind of thing but say I would
like to do these things, buttell me if it's going to break
anything.
Ooh, nice.
So yes, you had an executebutton there.
(45:28):
By the way I wanted to say makeit so, but execute works.
But can I have command help menot make boo-boos.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
And if you're listening to this Anil's typing
I would like to add 10 VLANs.
Is that going to break anything?
And that's literally what youwrote and it responded.
Adding 10 VLANs to the networkprimary should not break
anything.
The current networkconfiguration supports
additional VLANs.
There are no existinglimitations or constraints that
would prevent you from addingmore.
The network's current load andperformance metrics indicate
(45:59):
that it is operating well withincapacity data.
Eat your heart out, man.
This is like wow, what?
Okay, so this is the problemthat I had before.
Speaker 3 (46:14):
If you can do anything like we're, you know, I
do want to I do want to answerthat a little bit.
So, um, one of the greatinventions that happened in the
last 15, 20 years that's notthat noticed is actually when
you used to go to google andtype something in.
It would say did you mean, yeah, and there's this great
(46:38):
engineer at Google that actuallyjust came back after leaving
for a few years.
His name is Noam Shazir andShazir and his team built, did
you mean?
And it's one of the really hardproblems to solve, because not
only are you saying here's whatI can understand, what you asked
, but did you actually mean this?
And so that's actually what'scoming with command.
(47:02):
Next is taking some of that workand how do we apply that to
networking?
So, totally, here you drew that.
The blank canvas is scary andnot that inviting.
So we're actually going to dotwo things.
One is, when you open withcommand soon is that we'll
actually give you queries thatyou should be asking, and then,
(47:24):
when you do ask a query, we'reactually going to try to suggest
a better query to get to thething we think you're trying to
get to.
That's awesome so we arebuilding on that.
We totally hear you.
We don't think what you'resaying is like to that's awesome
.
So we are building on that.
We totally hear you.
Uh, we don't think what you'resaying is, um, like anything out
of the ordinary.
We think it's an importantthing.
Uh, we want to make it reallygreat before releasing it, but
we'll fast follow that intocommand so okay, so so where
(47:48):
does this leave the elephant?
Speaker 1 (47:51):
the elephant in the room question where does this
leave the current status ofnetwork engineers who have
shelves full of books and wallsfull of certifications that
they've spent so much timelearning, I mean, and I think
about programming, I think aboutyou know, I think about lawyers
(48:12):
and tax code and everythingelse, and we're at this turning
point where anything thatinvolves a whole lot of existing
knowledge based on libraries ofbooks and understanding is now
quickly catching up to a pointwhere I don't want to say you
don't need it anymore, butyou're not going to need it soon
(48:34):
anymore.
But you're not going to need itsoon.
You can.
It's great to have, say, thepeople that are fighting back
against it.
But you're entering this timewhere this is like the Google
scenario.
It's like, well, you need tolearn all of the knowledge and
the younger generation says, no,you can just Google it.
And you say, yeah, but what ifyou need it when you don't have
access to Google?
And they say you will alwayshave access to Google.
But you know, we're at thispoint where where the network
(48:56):
engineering teams have looked at, have thought about things like
this and they've thought how isthis going to change our jobs?
What?
What's the answer there?
I mean cause, this is the.
That's the tricky question.
It's not.
It's not replacing people'sjobs, that's not what I'm
getting at, but it's replacingthe need for knowledge.
What effect does that have oncertifications and understanding
and things like that?
(49:16):
And, keith, I want thatquestion to go to you too.
What do you think about that?
Speaker 2 (49:20):
I mean, I've been in the certification game, I
collect them.
I have like 115 now.
It's just a hobby, but I thinkit means we need more education
because you need to understandthe concepts.
You might not have to have theskills.
I don't need the muscle memoryon the command line, but I do
(49:42):
need to understand how BGP runson a router.
I can't.
The base knowledge hasn't goneaway.
Speaker 1 (49:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:48):
I think that the keystroking I don't have to know
, that I don't have to rememberthings.
I can look those up.
It reminds me of my teacher inseventh grade said what do you
mean?
Use a calculator?
Are you going to have acalculator in your pocket your
whole life?
Yes, I do.
So.
There are that whole.
You can Google it forinformation.
(50:09):
I don't think you can Googleknowledge.
Speaker 1 (50:11):
I think that's the difference.
Speaker 2 (50:15):
I have the knowledge but, we just have some tools to
help us go a little better I, I100 agree with keith.
Speaker 3 (50:20):
Uh, our goal with command is to make it easy to
get information and faster totake action.
I think of it a lot like um.
You know you brought upcertifications, both of you, I.
I think of it a lot like youbrought up certifications, both
of you.
I think of it like an open booktest, whereas when you're in
school it's closed, but in reallife it's open book, and we're
(50:43):
hoping to open all the books forour customers and network
engineers.
But you still need to know whatto do.
And will we make it easier?
Will we help you get therefaster, and should it be exactly
what you want?
Absolutely, but real-worldnetworks are open book tests and
(51:06):
hopefully, with Meter, yourbooks are even better.
Speaker 1 (51:09):
Yeah, and I think this goes back to I love it as
soon as you said when you talkedabout either the proctor, the
lab assistant or the personstanding over your shoulder
watching you do something.
You have that.
Now you have some.
You have a tool that gives youthe ability to not just be that
open book but to deliver theinformation to you when you need
(51:29):
it the most.
It's just, it seems like thisis going to from a revolutionary
perspective in where we arewith networking.
This is such a great way thatpeople who have the
understanding but maybe don'thave the memory retention of all
the key codes and the lineitems in CLI, this is going to
(51:50):
enable so many people to do somuch more.
Um, and then with the you know,with the bumpers or the
guidelines that are set up tomake sure that, well, if you do
this, it's gonna break this andthis and this.
It's such, a, such a neat way.
So so you've showed us that youknow you guys have access to
the software, or you know, toeverything up and down the meter
stack.
You show us that we can receiveinformation using command.
(52:10):
You show us that we canconfigure the network and to
what, to what that, that extentis and those limitations are.
I'm not even sure yet, becauseit's this is.
It's continuing to evolve.
What else about command?
You know in the in the nextcouple of minutes, what else
about command are you looking at?
Because you mentioned somethingabout building your own
software and I know that was keywith this.
(52:32):
This it's.
This isn't just a tool to tellyour network what to do and
receive information.
This is a tool that's muchbigger than that.
Can you talk about that alittle bit?
Speaker 3 (52:42):
Yeah, absolutely so.
There's three important partsof command, like you mentioned.
One is getting informationreally fast and that can be
across any part of the stack ISP, security, firewall rules,
whatever.
You're just trying to getinformation.
Second, is you want to takeaction.
That might be somethingcomplicated saying create this
as this ID, make sure it has anauto-rotating password and
(53:04):
rotates every day at 2 am andmake sure it's WPA2 PSK.
Speaker 1 (53:10):
Prioritize traffic, for whatever it is, you can say
that it takes action.
Prioritize traffic for whateverit is, you can say that it
takes action, the last part ofwhat's command.
Speaker 3 (53:16):
what's important for us is tying back to what I
mentioned earlier on theevolution from CLI to dashboards
to where we think is the futureis having software written for
you entirely on the fly.
So we saw some components right.
(53:55):
So we saw it build switchboarddiagrams for you on the fly
health software forms.
But to show the power of it, Iwant to go all the way through
so maybe you say something likeI am a network engineer, give me
a dashboard I can share with myCTO, and what it's actually
going to go do in earnest iswrite out an entire dashboard
just the way you want it.
Speaker 1 (54:06):
Just the way your CTO wants it.
Speaker 3 (54:07):
Yeah.
So topologies, uptime, networkthroughput devices that are
connected, youlans for security,error rates report and channel
utilization all fully written atthe speed of a Google search.
Wow, and those are clickable,clickable, searchable,
everything, everything here.
(54:28):
I'm searching this thing righthere.
We can search for appliance,whatever.
I can then drag these overentirely and start building out
how I want it to be.
And this software that we havehere is when you're in canvas
mode.
That's where everybody can jumpin and you're all collaborating
and maybe Keith will drag inwireless and you know you're
(54:49):
going to drag in some networkthroughput stuff.
And then, when you go intodashboard mode, we can actually
just start configuring what wewant the dashboard to look like.
And it's actually just going tobe full dashboards that you
essentially have a softwareengineer sitting next to you and
you can just share this out.
You'll get a link.
It's all behind SSO androle-based access control and in
(55:12):
our case it'll say hey, onlypeople in meter will be able to
view this canvas.
You can just copy that link.
But you can create any numberof them.
You know you can say Drew'sdashboard and create that and
share it out.
So get information, take actionand have entire software
written for you on the fly, justthe way you want it every time.
Speaker 1 (55:37):
I'm sorry.
I didn't think I was going tobe shocked again.
Speaker 2 (55:40):
I didn't think I was going to be true, but I just
seen you do it.
Speaker 1 (55:45):
This is nuts, man.
Where do you go from here, anil?
I mean, it's just like it's.
This is great, I mean, andagain I'm trying to, I'm trying
to go back.
Speaker 2 (55:57):
You made Drew stop talking.
That's really hard to do.
Speaker 1 (56:02):
I just you know he's at a loss for words you start
with the ISP.
You get the ability to pick andchoose the ISP that you want to
be a part of.
Then you get to you know,select the network components,
or the network components areselected based on your needs and
what you do and how you'redoing it.
It ships, it's installed,everything's working, and then
you've got this ability tointeract with your network
(56:23):
unlike anything we have everseen before, and it's taken the
complexity out of it and givenit to you as simple as you need
it, but still has all the bit ofcomplexity underneath it,
should you want to go in andmake changes.
I mean, and the reporting side,and I really I I don't know
(56:44):
where you go from here, and I'msure you do.
I mean that's in another twomonths.
You, you're going to havesomething to show off, I'm sure.
But this is, you know, this isreally, this is dude.
This is really great.
I mean, from friend to friend,this is so badass.
Like I am, I am so happy foryou, but I'm so happy for our
industry that somethingincredibly innovative like this
(57:07):
is is becoming available.
Man, and if you look at, if youlook at what's happening in the
market.
You look at what's happening inthe industry and you look at
everyone trying to figure outhow to.
What are we going to do?
Where are we going to go?
How are we going to shift themoney?
How are we going to shift thefocus?
How is it going to go to ai?
What does that even mean?
You are showing us somethingright now that I have that I.
(57:30):
I can't imagine the look somepeople's faces when they start
to see and understand what thisis.
So kudos to you and the entireteam at Meter.
This is insane.
I love it I love it.
Speaker 2 (57:39):
I think what you're trying to say, Drew, is you
didn't know you wanted it untilyou saw it, but now you have to
have it.
Speaker 1 (57:45):
You have to have it.
I mean, this is like it'sincredible, man.
I think about the simplefunctions of configuring a
network.
I think about the advancedfunctions of configuring a
network.
I think about everything thatI've had to learn to do what it
(58:05):
is that I'm trying to do andbeing able to not automate isn't
the right word but I'm able touse a tool that just makes it so
much quicker for me that it'sgoing to allow me to focus on
other things that are important,and I think about CTOs and CIOs
and the staff that they have,being able to interact with this
and truly start to focus oninformation technology, not on
(58:32):
configuring devices andsupporting devices and
administering devices.
I mean, this is an incredibleshift and I'm so happy that you
let us talk to you about it.
This is really cool.
Speaker 3 (58:41):
Yeah, I mean I just think you know the
infrastructure decisions we made, the alternative choices that
we took and the paths and thepain to build good products led
us down here, and we really wantnetworking to have the best
tools in the world and not lookover and look at other
industries and be like, whydon't we have something cool?
(59:03):
We should have the things thatare at the forefront and, at the
end of the day, we hope ourcustomers and our partners can
see the value of meter even moreand, like you said, I do know
where we're going and we willcome back and show you more.
But this is just the start ofwhat we're doing.
But it's a culmination of manyyears of work and what we think
(59:25):
we can do in a different,special way that currently I
don't think the industry is setup to do, for a myriad of
reasons.
Currently I don't think theindustry is set up to do for a
myriad of reasons.
But these are the things wewant as well and ultimately,
faster, secure, better networksfor our customers, but also, at
the end of the day, really greatproducts.
We just think networking shouldhave the best products in the
(59:48):
world.
Speaker 1 (59:49):
What you've just seen is an incredible sneak peek of
what's coming up with Meter aswe come up to the top of the
hour.
I appreciate everybody who'slistening and tuning in such
fantastic guests.
Keith, it's always good to seeyou, and Neil it's.
This is just so innovative andfun.
Can't wait to see what comesnext.
If you need more information,visit metercom.
Look for one of the Sarah's onLinkedIn.
They'll be happy to help you.
Look for Mr.
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