Ever wondered how the future of network management is shaping up? Join me, Drew Lentz, your Wireless Nerd, as I recount my exhilarating experience at the Meter Up event in San Francisco, where technological innovation met collaboration in the most vibrant way. We mingled with industry veterans and tech enthusiasts alike. The event, filled with engaging presentations and hands-on technology demonstrations, provided a perfect platform to introduce Meter's groundbreaking technology, including their zero-code components driven by AI which is reshaping the role of engineers worldwide.
The synergy we witnessed between Meter and OpenAI’s ChatGPT integrations promises game-changing advancements in AI-integrated networking. This episode is brimming with highlights, from staying at the luxurious Luma Hotel to catching up with and finally meeting fellow nerds like Roy Chua. We celebrate significant industry news, like Oscium’s acquisition of MetaGeek, as well as the newly announced integrations of industry heavyweights Hamina and NetAlly. How are these dynamic shifts setting new standards in professional expectations across the IT landscape and what does that mean for IT education? Listen in!
Our conversation doesn't stop there; it ventures into the realm of emerging telecommunications technologies. Imagine Dish and DirecTV transforming into broadband providers or the possibility of achieving seamless network roaming with a single credential. We discuss intriguing projects like a Redditor's SDR satellite ground station and explore the potential of 6G technology and Terahertz communications. As we preview upcoming trade shows and events, this episode promises to keep you at the forefront of the latest developments in telecommunications, from SignalRoam's Passpoint Offload to Helium's partnership with American Bandwidth. Join us for an episode that promises insights, innovation, and a glimpse into the future of the tech world.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hey, what's up everybody?
It's Drew Lentz, the WirelessNerd.
Today is October 10th 2024.
If you have comments orquestions or whatever, please
feel free to jump in on theYouTube or jump in on Twitter or
X or LinkedIn or wherever.
You're listening to this.
Lots of crazy stuff happening.
You know, it was a pretty goodweek last week and the week
(00:24):
before.
I did skip the podcast lastweek.
I thought that I'd be able tocrank it out, but time was not
on my side in and out of SanFrancisco with the Meter Up
event, and that is where I wantto start today, specifically
with Meter Up.
So anyway, the Meter Up eventwas a lot of fun.
It took place last week andbasically it was a bit of a
(00:44):
coming out party, anannouncement party about who
Meter is and what they're doing,and it was attended by a number
of industry experts and bypanelists and by people like me
and people who've been in theindustry for a long time.
So you had all these crazycustomers there.
It was really weird to look atthe name badges of everybody,
because you would do a doubletake.
You'd be like whoa, what isthat person doing here?
(01:04):
And then, all of a sudden,you'd look to the other side and
be like, wow, that's okay,that's pretty cool.
They really had a great fieldof experts and analysts in the
audience, and I don't know how Igot on that guest list, but I
was there and it was a lot offun, as were a couple of friends
of mine, so we'll snap throughsome photos here real quick.
You can see that the eventitself took place at a place
(01:25):
called the Archery, I believe,and it was in the Mission area
of San Francisco.
First off, I do want to give ashout out to the team over at
Luma, the Luma Hotel in SanFrancisco.
This is the room that they putme up in.
You know, it never hurts, bythe way, it never hurts to ask
for an upgrade.
I called downstairs.
I said look, I know you have anupgrade.
I got a lot of friends that arehere and I need a better room
(01:46):
than all of them.
Can you help me out?
And they did, which was reallycool.
So shout out to the team overat Luma, san Francisco.
This was the balcony in my room, just a great view overlooking
everything.
So, if you happen to be in thatarea by the place where the
(02:10):
Golden State Warriors play overby the Meraki offices.
This is right across the waterright there.
It's a great little area and soI got to stay there.
That was pretty great.
Meter did go all out on thisevent.
So the name badges, first andforemost.
Lots of compliments.
I'm looking for it.
It's around here somewhere.
Lots of compliments on the namebadges.
These were really cool for whatit's worth.
So there were all these littledetails of things that just made
this a really great event toattend.
You could see Keith here andMark and there's Jerry everyone
having a good time.
It was great to see everybodyout there.
(02:30):
They started by asking why thecrowd that was in the audience,
why they chose this crowd, andthey did it because they wanted
feedback.
Right, they wanted truefeedback from people, and there
was no shortage of that.
They went on to explain howtheir system works and what it's
going to do, and they reallydrilled down into what makes
them different than everybodythat's out there Specifically
(02:52):
not even specifically theystarted from the traces on the
PCBs to the distance of thelights, to the way that they
build their entire networkoperating system, from top to
bottom.
It was really cool to learnabout what they're doing, and in
true meter fashion, they reallygave everybody the opportunity
to see everything that they weredoing.
There were parts where some ofthe product managers stood and
(03:14):
said, hey, I'm just going totell them, is that cool?
And then they went and talkedabout product.
It was unreleased.
They talked about somethingthat they were working on and it
was great to see just thatlevel of excitement from their
side, shared with everyone inthe audience.
They went into meticulousdetail about specifically Joshua
and talked about what he wasdoing on the hardware side and
(03:35):
everything from the knurling ofthe knobs to get into the
distance of the LEDs to theoffset, how they want to make
this one big push into doingthings the right way and being
absolutely careful to make surethat it looks the way it's
supposed to and it acts the wayit's supposed to, because the
hardware is a representation ofthe hardware.
That's inside of the PCB,that's inside, which is a
(03:56):
representation of the software,and a lot of thought went into
this y'all.
This wasn't something that theyjust popped up After being kind
of flying on their radar forabout 10 years.
They really wanted to come outand show everyone what they
could do, and those 10 yearsweren't spent with just one or
two customers.
They had a really cool logoslide that I'm showing here and
there were a lot of differentpeople, lots of logos on there
(04:17):
of people that have deployedthis and that went into the next
part of the seminar where theytalked about the people that had
deployed it, and they part ofthe seminar where they talked
about the people that haddeployed it and they put them up
on the stage.
They showed some really coolproduct.
They had a full rack ofequipment up on the stage, which
was really neat to see.
We could get hands-on witheverything that was there.
They gave out some really coolswag and it was fun.
The whole thing was lighthearted, right.
(04:37):
So here's, if you're listeningon the podcast, I have a picture
of Anil the CEO just laughingwith keith parsons having a
great time out.
There it was.
It was very light and fun.
And then they brought up thisis a, you know, a picture.
What you see here is roy chuo,who I finally got to meet.
Roy from avid thing.
Finally got to meet roy.
What a fun dude.
Way more like having never methim and only read all the
(04:58):
articles that he posted andseeing him on stage.
You know, with pictures likethis where he's pronouncing
something or talking aboutsomething, I didn't know that
he's just a really lighthearted,fun dude and he really is.
He's a.
What a great person.
I can see why everybody putshim on their panels now is what
I'm saying.
And so right beside him we'vegot Sean Morgan from Del Oro,
we've got Kerry Buckley fromGreylock Partners and then I
(05:21):
believe his name was Bruce, andthen we've got a perv from Meter
and they talked about what thismeans for the industry and it
was really great to see not justthe analyst side like the
analyst side that writes all thepapers and gets all this stuff
done but people who've actuallydeployed this and why they're
deploying it and what it meansfor them and for their customers
in the future.
So that was really great to see.
Then they took us on a fieldtrip.
(05:42):
We walked, we got out and wegot some fresh air and we walked
around the area.
We walked to different parts oftheir buildings.
We walked to their Q&A lab,which you can see here.
They opened up the doors.
They let us go in and seeeverything that they were doing
and it was fantastic.
We walked into the lab andthere's some Wi-Fi stands
hanging out providingconnectivity for everyone in
there.
That was pretty cool.
(06:05):
I love seeing that, but it wasgreat to see them open their
doors and to really gatherfeedback from people that were
there.
There were things that theymentioned and then there were
things that they didn't mention,and I think that it's not an
oversight.
It's just that they stick soclose to it and they do it on a
day-to-day basis, so they're notreally looking.
I don't want to say they can'tsee the forest through the trees
(06:27):
, but they're so close to itthat sometimes some of the
things that the audience wasasking they're like oh yeah,
okay, you know, yes, we do dothat, but they hadn't mentioned
it.
So it was really neat to seethem being vocal and upfront and
honest about it.
I don't want to say to theextent that they forgot about
stuff, because they didn'tforget about stuff.
(06:47):
There's so much going on that Idon't think they could
encompass all of it in one show,in one sitting.
So I'm really looking forwardto more of these.
I'm looking forward to moremeter ups where people can ask
more questions, where they canreally hone in the story and
talk about what it is to a muchlarger, broader audience,
because part of the problem whenyou put so many people in the
room is everybody's coming froma different perspective.
(07:08):
That's a lot of questions tofield from a whole bunch of
different angles.
So I can't wait to see whatthey do.
And a big old shout out to Sarahthis is one of the Sarahs, this
is the Sarah.
This is Sarah Kwan.
Sarah was responsible, Ibelieve, for making this event
happen, and it's a team effortover there at METER, so everyone
puts in what they're supposedto do, but she was definitely
(07:29):
spearheading a lot of what washappening and there's a picture
of her like here.
I like this picture of herwhere she's like I hope
everything's going well.
So, sarah, much love foreverything that you did.
It was very warm, it was verywelcoming.
It was great to be there.
It was great to have us beingable to walk around.
We walked into the shippingcomponent.
We got to meet Michelle, whoselife's mission is to make it
(07:50):
easy to get equipment out thedoor.
We got to get hands-on witheverything and that was really
neat.
There's Michelle.
She's awesome.
We got to really see what wasgoing on.
It felt like we were on a tour.
We were following people aroundwith flags.
So it was pretty cool to bethere and they had some really
special guests that were in theaudience.
(08:11):
But I think, more than anything,what made me happy was to see
so many people that I know andso many people that I had heard
about or talked about, beingable to understand what this
product is and what it means forthe industry.
And so Keith Parsons led areally cool panel talking about
what this means for you, for meas an engineer, as an RF
engineer, as someone who workson these networks on a
(08:33):
day-to-day basis.
What is that going to mean forour jobs and what is that going
to mean in the future for CCIEsor for people that are the nerds
that bring crazy equipment outand try it?
And I think this is one ofthose things where it's like
this isn't so much aboutreplacing a job or replacing the
need for a job.
This is someone elevatingthemselves to have a full
(08:54):
understanding of the network,but understanding also that the
network can do a lot of thesefunctions on its own when it's
steered in the right directionand when you don't have to worry
about the small meticulousthings that you have to go in
and check every day.
When the network is able to doa lot of that by itself in an
automated fashion, with guidanceobviously, then that gives you
(09:15):
the ability to really start todo more with your time.
And I think that was one of thebig overtones was understanding.
Okay, this is that AI thateveryone's talking about, that
you can come in.
I don't have to know everycommand line on CLI anymore.
I don't have to know how towrite Python, I don't know.
I don't have to know how to usean API.
I can just ask the network howto do it, because literally
(09:36):
that's what it was.
That is actually what commandis is a zero code component
where you get in there and youjust tell it what you want and
it can do it for you.
But there has to be this firmunderstanding of knowing what to
tell the network to do.
I think that that's the biggestkey is having the underlying
knowledge of how networks work,how they function, how the data
flows and what to ask of thenetwork in order to get it to do
(09:59):
what you want.
Now it can talk to you in anative language, which was
totally incredible to see.
You know just in your language,but you have to know what to
ask of it.
You know you could say, hey,build a network, and it'll tell
you, okay, I built a network.
But if you be specific, say,build a network that's secure
and segments traffic betweenmanagement and users, well
(10:21):
that's a different thing and itcan do that.
You just have to know to tellit to do that.
And so there's going to be somechange, I think, in the way
that education takes place whenit comes to networking and IT.
But that's a really, really goodthing and I've said it over and
over again, I think the mostimportant thing to me, the most
impactful thing, is that thisisn't just a sign of what
Meter's doing.
This is a sign for the entireindustry.
(10:42):
This is such a cool place thatwe're in where industry, this is
such a cool place that we're inwhere these networks do what
they're supposed to do whenthey're supposed to do it, and
if we can embrace that, thenthat really blows the doors off
what the capability of our ITdirectors and our CIOs and the
network administrators andengineers have the ability to do
.
But now that bar has beenraised.
(11:02):
Meter has gone in and they'veraised that bar by introducing
things like this, by introducingthings like command and
introducing the what do theycall?
The thing right beside thecanvas, right beside command,
which was crazy.
And I caught that they wereshowing off canvas and we were
using it and then two days later, chatgpt publicly announced
canvas for ChatGPT and I waslike, wait a minute, we just saw
(11:26):
that.
If you know about theinvestment components in meter,
that is absolutely not asurprise.
But it's really neat to knowthat meter has that connection.
It seems and I'm not sayingthey do, but it seems like
they've got some really coolaccess to some really cool
technology that's helping themmove forward.
So very, very neat, very, veryneat.
(11:48):
Obviously I'm talking about thewhole Sam Altman, chat, gpt,
openai thing and the investmentthat they've made in Meter.
That goes without saying, but Isaid it.
So there's that.
But it was really neat to seeman.
Definitely cool, definitelyvery, very cool.
So thanks again to Meter forhosting me out at MeterUp.
I really appreciated beingthere.
It was great to see everybody.
You know Corey's mom, you knowMiss Rita was there, which was
(12:13):
fantastic.
I got some great selfies withsome friends.
Lance who works there, we evengot oh yeah, look at this Rocky,
where is it?
And this is the shout out rightto Lexi we almost got Rocky to
lick the AP Almost.
He couldn't do it, he couldn'tdo it.
So if you're watching track itPacer, maybe you need to pay a
visit to Meter and go see whattheir APs are made of.
(12:36):
Anyway, so that's what we hadgoing on last week at Meter.
It was very cool to see.
But while that was happening,there were some really cool
announcements in the industry.
Specifically, look at this OCMannounces that they've acquired
MetaGeek, expanding theirwireless network solutions
portfolio.
It comes as no surprise toanyone who's in the industry
that these two tools weredestined for each other, but it
(12:58):
does come as a surprise, right.
Metageek has been around for solong and done so many
incredible things, and we've allbeen users of it, even at the
very least Channelizer right.
But then, moving into WisePyand Insider, they've had so many
great products and so many goodcollaborations over time,
whether it's with NetAlly,whether it's with whoever it is,
we've all, I feel like, usedtheir products at one time or
(13:19):
another, and now to see themcoming to gear with Oseum,
another one of my favoritecompanies to work with, it's
really, really neat.
Now, oseum has always been very,very kind to me.
I don't know how I got on theirmailing list, but I've always
been appreciative.
Shirts will show up, t-shirtswill show up and hardware will
show up and test equipment willshow up, and it's just so cool.
I don't know that I've ever metanyone from Oseum and shook
(13:41):
their hand, but if I ever getthe chance I would love to.
Because If I ever get thechance I would love to, because
now seeing this just makes me sohappy, and it makes me so happy
for a couple different reasons.
Number one seeing that they'removing in the direction of
grabbing another wirelesscompany to combine forces is
very, very cool.
But if you take into accountwhat they just did with Hamina
(14:02):
and the Nomad, how now you havean OCM hardware platform working
with Hamina and you canconverge those two together.
And now, knowing that MediGeekis part of that and it's all
coming together, I love what'shappening in the industry where
these vendors are workingtogether.
And one of the things that Ithink is so fantastic and I
brought this up yesterday isthat and I'm going to sing the
(14:23):
praises, I'm going to sing thepraises again just in case you
didn't hear enough about ityesterday and I didn't get any
bad text messages, so it's allgood.
But one of the people I feellike that has been absolutely
imperative in this is this guy,mr Yussi Yussi.
What a fun guy to be around andwhat a dear friend to so many
people.
What a fun guy to be around andwhat a dear friend to so many
(14:46):
people.
And what he's been able to doas the spearhead, I mean, has
not only been to make itphenomenal, but to start to work
across the industry.
And when you go back, if youfollow his LinkedIn page, you
know what he posted, and if youdon't, you should really follow
it.
Here's the headline they'regoing to be talking about
wireless banter from the lastepisode.
(15:08):
Oh, next episode, wednesday,october 16th.
I would definitely encourage youto tune in and listen to these
knuckleheads bant back and forthabout NetAlly, because that, to
me, is one of the absolutecoolest things.
If you scroll down on this pagehere, somewhere, you can see
that they made an announcementthat NetAlly now works with
(15:29):
Hamina and you can go in.
I might have passed it.
You can go in and you can do asite survey with your AirCheck
and once you do that site survey, I'm looking for it.
I'm looking for it.
It's here somewhere.
Here it is Site survey withNetAlly G3, nxg or G2, importing
it into Hamina.
How awesome is that?
I mean, it wasn't that long agothat people were getting in a
(15:52):
whole lot of trouble in theindustry for posting two tools
on the exact same page, and whatyou have now is you have two
companies that are behemoths inthe industry.
If you will, working togetherfor the good of the network
engineer, for people like youand I, for people who do this
every day, and we make our moneydoing these things, knowing
that you have link livecapability, this is just, man.
(16:16):
This is so awesome.
I'm so excited to see this.
You go, you do the survey withyour G3 or your G2, and you take
that and you pop it into LinkLive and from there you go into
Hamina.
I mean, I love the idea thatwhat's happening in our industry
is some of these manufacturersand providers are coming
together Because, at the end ofthe day, that helps us, right.
(16:37):
That helps us, that helps me,because I've got all these tool
sets and I want to be able touse them.
And, man, I'm telling you, twoweeks ago, when I was using the
NetAlly, I was using theCyberscope, I logged into Link
Live and their dashboards arejust like insanely cool.
Now, knowing that I can use theRF component and pipe it into
one of my favorite RF tools isawesome.
I love to see this convergencein the industry.
(16:57):
I think a lot of us have beenasking for it and it definitely
doesn't fall on deaf ears.
So last week UC announced that,which is really great.
So big shout out to the team atNetAlly.
Julio and Dan and the team overthere have always just done a
bang up job with their tool sets, and now, working side by side
with groups like Hamina, this isso exciting.
I'm very, very excited.
I'm excited for our industry.
(17:17):
I'm excited where we're going.
And then the OCM and theMedigig thing is pretty neat.
In other news, what else ishappening?
Directv is acquiring DishNetwork, and this is for a
dollar, right Along with all theother stuff.
But it's more than a buck.
But what I'm interested to seehere is not just the DirecTV and
Dish Network satellite TVcomponents.
(17:37):
I don't subscribe to TV reallyanymore.
I mean, I've got like all thestreaming services, but it's
been a long time since I'vesubscribed to anything and so
I'm not.
That's not where my interest is.
My interest is in the spectrum.
My interest is in what thismeans for broadband and what
they're trying to do with it,because satellite broadband,
satellite communications rightnow there's so much happening.
(18:00):
I mean what a weird, what a fun, not weird, what a fun space,
fun space, he says, what a funspace to be in.
But Dish has all this spectrum.
They have all this spectrum.
What are they going to do withit?
Are they going to hang on to it?
Is that in the interest ofDirecTV?
Is DirecTV interested in beinga broadband provider?
Are they going to sell off thatspectrum?
(18:20):
I mean, verizon's probablyfirst in line to buy it.
They're always first in linebut T-Mobile's doing so many
amazing things.
Maybe T-Mobile picks up thespectrum.
I don't know.
There's a lot of stuffhappening there.
But seeing these two cometogether, not just for the world
of TV but for communications,is going to be interesting to
watch.
Obviously, 19 million combinedsubscribers man, that's a whole
(18:43):
lot.
Comcast has 13.2, and you guysknow I love Comcast, but 13.2
compared to the 19.
Ooh, that's crazy, man, that'sa lot of people.
So we'll see if the mergerhappens, we'll see if the
federal government allows thatto happen, but either way,
that's definitely news that'sgoing on In more news.
Let's see what else ishappening.
(19:03):
Lots of satellite stuff.
I saw this on LinkedIn.
I'm going to go ahead and postthis up real quick.
I saw this on, not on LinkedIn.
I saw this on Reddit, which waspretty cool.
Let me see if I can load thisup here.
There was there's an individualthat made a SDR satellite ground
station, so this is pretty coolto see, built using the Intel
(19:23):
NUC and various hardwarecomponents to support SDR
communications.
The NUC is imaged with DragonOS Distro and a parabolic
antenna behind the groundstation, using an umbrella and
conductive paint mixed with ironpowder to act as a reflective
material.
So says the user.
Ewarfare Love it.
The antenna is directional longperiodic UWB antenna, so this
(19:46):
is pretty cool to see.
I mean, look at that thing.
So they're using the HackRFover there on the right hand
side.
They got the keyboard, the nookand everything in there to talk
using an umbrella.
That's pretty awesome, man.
What will they think of next?
You know there's also a new I'mgoing to punch this in there
and see if it comes up the newHackRF ham version.
(20:07):
There's a very cool video thathas popped up and I've watched
some of it.
Whoa way to just bloweverybody's eardrums out.
So this is the Portapak andthis is a great video.
So Snorren has this thingposted up online.
He does a really good review ofit and if you cycle through you
can see how it was made andwhat the difference is between
this and the other ones.
(20:27):
If you're thinking about buyinga HackRF and you're thinking
about buying the Portapak, makesure you choose the right one.
There's lots of knockoffs thatare out there.
Go check out this link atSnorren.
The new HackRF, portapak, h4mor HAM it pretty cool, man,
pretty cool piece of uh piece ofhardware there.
Let's see what else do we havegoing on terahertz
(20:48):
communications.
This was pretty neat, checkthis out.
So china achieves the world'sfirst long distance terahertz
communication that can boost 6g.
Now this has been done in thepast and in the past they did it
, but I believe I gotta find thelink here.
It was sub-millimeter waves andit was done a while back at
like where was it?
It was done very like you'retalking within a box, right,
(21:12):
just a couple millimeters awayfrom each other, but now this is
1.2 kilometers.
So terahertz communications at1.2 kilometers, that's three
quarters of a mile.
It doesn't say what frequency,but it just says above 0.5
terahertz.
The research was conductedSeptember 27th through October
1st, exceeding 4,000 metersPretty awesome.
(21:33):
Now wavelengths ranging from3,000 to 30 micrometers Think
about that.
And then there was somethingthat people were talking about
in this where it talked aboutbeing able to bend, being able
to curve terahertz communication.
There's a whole article on itthat I found curving the signal,
and this was published by theIEEE in the IEEE Spectrum and
this goes back April 23rdcurving terahertz signals around
(21:56):
obstacles for 6G.
The first curved terahertz datalink could boost faster data
beyond 5G and this is a reallyinteresting article.
We're not making photons travelon curved trajectory, says Dan
Middleman, but what they'redoing?
He talks about how it's able toslowly curve not bend, but
slowly curve RF signals.
(22:20):
So anyway, roughly 3 gigafrequencies 10 centimeters
across.
So there's a lot of stuffthat's going into this.
For the whole, 6g push.
What's going on in 6G?
What does that mean?
There's already some groupsthat are out there talking about
6G.
Fierce Wireless, I think, had aseminar where they talked about
it.
So never too early to startlearning about what 6G means for
everybody here and howterahertz communication
(22:42):
specifically plays into that.
There's another article that waspublished this from a site
called science direct, whereit's a whole review of 6g mobile
communications for requirements, targets, challenges,
opportunities.
This was a fun little read, sosomething to start off here.
Or just go follow my buddy,dean bubbly online and dean
always has a like a phenomenalview on what's happening on the
(23:05):
industry.
They're over at WBA right nowand so he's posting a lot of
really good content there.
But 6G mobile technology andwhat it means look at this peak
data rate one terabyte persecond for 6G latency, 0.1
milliseconds on there.
100 bits per hertz for maximumspectral efficiency, satellite
(23:25):
integration, fully AI, fullyautonomous vehicle, fully
supported terahertzcommunication, widely supported
man, I mean.
Maximum frequency 10 terahertz.
Let's go.
What does that antenna looklike?
What is that?
How does that get through walls?
I'm curious what that's goingto look like.
But something to read here.
If you'd like a link to this,please just let me know.
This is the science directcomlookup 6G mobile communications
(23:49):
technology.
It's a very cool article toread.
All right, let's see Lots ofother stuff happening.
Right now there's a new CTO atVerizon and the reason I bring
this up is.
This was a table sideconversation that we had last
week at MeterUp where we weretalking about the implications
of having a new CTO at Verizon,what that means for everyone,
not just on the RAN side,because he is very supportive of
(24:11):
O-RAN, which is great, becausethat hopefully will drive costs
down for Verizon, which maybemight end up affecting all of us
and giving us lower costs.
That would be great.
But ex-Vodafone executiveSantiago Yago Tenorio is the new
CTO, and why I'm interested inthis is because it's not just
(24:31):
the O-RAN component of it thathe's excited about.
Apparently he's a proponent ofopening up the network to do
more in general, and to me Ithink that that's really neat.
We've been doing a lot of workwith SignalRome Passpoint
Offload as a service, and Ireally am a fan of what
Passpoint is doing to get peopleonto networks quicker.
(24:52):
There was a big announcementyesterday Helium announced a new
partnership with AmericanBandwidth, who we use at
SignalRome, and AmericanBandwidth now supporting Helium
means that their hotspots willsupport Helium as well, and so
now you have the ability forpeople to just jump on networks
using Passpoint and authenticateusing Wi-Fi networks, which is
phenomenal.
But what does that mean in thebigger picture.
(25:12):
And how do we get down to asingle credential that allows us
to roam, whether it's Wi-Fi,whether it's CBRS or whether
it's moving into basic cellularcommunications?
How do we get down to onecredential to allow us to move
across those networks?
And I think that that's reallyneat.
Now, at this point, I want to goback and talk a little bit
about MeterUp again, because, inthat same regard, one of the
(25:33):
key announcements that they hadwas their addition of CBRS and
cellular to their productportfolio.
To me, this was huge,absolutely huge.
We've always talked aboutwireless with Wi-Fi and wireless
with point-to-point multipoint,and we've talked about
point-to-point communications.
We've talked about everythingon the show, right, but there
(25:54):
has never been a single vendorthat has everything on one
screen, on one stack, as oneequipment manufacturer, all in
one house.
Now HPE did acquire Athonet andyou can load Athonet
configuration on and you canhave a command center to do all
of that, but it just doesn'tseem the same as what we're
looking at with Meter, becausenot only is it all in that
(26:14):
single pane of glass from top tobottom, but with all of the
inclusion of AI that they'redoing on the back end, that is
really getting me excited,thinking about what this means
for us in the industry overall,because if we get to that point,
then now we have some way tocommand and control our entire
network without having to learneverything behind it, just
(26:35):
understanding how it works.
And to me that's where that AIpiece comes in.
I want to be able to walk insomewhere and my phone just work
, no matter if it's on Wi-Fi, nomatter if it's on CBRS, no
matter if it's on LTE or 5G or6G or whatever it is, and I want
the services delivered to me inthe best way, shape or form,
using the best frequencypossible for me to be able to
(26:56):
consume the services and get thequality of experience that I'm
looking for.
And the conversation of QOE isa big conversation.
How do we make QOE the definingmetric for the way that people
use networks?
And you can only do that if youcan wrangle in all of the
capability to deliver that QOE.
If you're pulling cellular fromone provider and Wi-Fi from
(27:18):
another provider and IoT fromanother provider, there's no
orchestration there that allowsme to have a true quality of
experience.
You've got to do a lot of workto figure out how to get those
packets to me in the best waypossible, but when you have the
entire stack and you've got AIfeeding into the entire thing,
that's helping optimize it atevery level.
And this could even be saidabout down to the PCB level,
(27:40):
where the circuits are designedthe way specifically to move as
much data as possible.
When you have one vendor, onemanufacturer, that combines all
of this.
That's one of the most excitingthings that Meter announced
last week, not just because it'sCBRS, but because what that
means to me and my QOE, so Iwanted to talk about that.
(28:00):
And also Federated Wireless QOE, so I wanted to talk about that
.
And also, you know, federatedWireless on the road with CBRS
or on the conversation with CBRS.
Federated Wireless hasintroduced a new CBRS planning
tool which is going to beprobably phenomenal.
I would love to get them on andhave a demo of that.
And I do want to cover one morething before I end, and that's
that TauGlass has a new RJ45antenna.
That really threw me for a loopwhen I saw this.
(28:22):
So this loaded up and I waslike what in the world is this?
I thought it was April Fool's.
I thought they were talkingabout just plugging in an RJ45
jack and having it shoot all thedata out, like there was a mini
radio or AP or something builtin there.
But you can see it's just anantenna.
There's a mini MCX connector onthe end of it that probably
snaps right into the board.
The key here is that it fitsright on top of that RJ45 jack,
(28:44):
so it saves a lot of space forany of your design, any of your
components that you're doing.
So shout out to Tileglass forbeing creative and putting that
in there.
I think that that's really nice.
The FXM100 antenna mountsdirectly on a standard RJ45.
So, that being said, that'sWaves for this week.
That's a little bit of what'snew.
What's now?
What's next?
We've got a lot of trade showsgoing on.
National Association ofBroadcasters is happening in
(29:05):
Vegas, wispapalooza, mobileWorld Congress, wba and of
course, we've got WLPC andPrague coming up, looking
forward to the content comingout of that, which means WLPC in
Phoenix is right around thecorner, which means to me that
CES is happening in January,right before that.
If you're going to be at any ofthese shows, please feel free,
reach out, let me know, give mea hello.
I'll probably be doing somepodcasts live from each one of
(29:26):
them and I hope to see you allthere.
But for now, for this week, Iappreciate you tuning in again
and I look forward to talking toyou.
Hey, what's up everybody?
It's Drew Lentz, the WirelessNerd.
Today is October 10th 2024.
If you have comments orquestions or whatever, please
feel free to jump in on theYouTube or jump in on Twitter or
X or LinkedIn or wherever.
You're listening to this.
Lots of crazy stuff happening.
You know, it was a pretty goodweek last week and the week
(00:24):
before.
I did skip the podcast lastweek.
I thought that I'd be able tocrank it out, but time was not
on my side in and out of SanFrancisco with the Meter Up
event, and that is where I wantto start today, specifically
with Meter Up.
So anyway, the Meter Up eventwas a lot of fun.
It took place last week andbasically it was a bit of a
(00:44):
coming out party, anannouncement party about who
Meter is and what they're doing,and it was attended by a number
of industry experts and bypanelists and by people like me
and people who've been in theindustry for a long time.
So you had all these crazycustomers there.
It was really weird to look atthe name badges of everybody,
because you would do a doubletake.
You'd be like whoa, what isthat person doing here?
(01:04):
And then, all of a sudden,you'd look to the other side and
be like, wow, that's okay,that's pretty cool.
They really had a great fieldof experts and analysts in the
audience, and I don't know how Igot on that guest list, but I
was there and it was a lot offun, as were a couple of friends
of mine, so we'll snap throughsome photos here real quick.
You can see that the eventitself took place at a place
(01:25):
called the Archery, I believe,and it was in the Mission area
of San Francisco.
First off, I do want to give ashout out to the team over at
Luma, the Luma Hotel in SanFrancisco.
This is the room that they putme up in.
You know, it never hurts, bythe way, it never hurts to ask
for an upgrade.
I called downstairs.
I said look, I know you have anupgrade.
I got a lot of friends that arehere and I need a better room
(01:46):
than all of them.
Can you help me out?
And they did, which was reallycool.
So shout out to the team overat Luma, san Francisco.
This was the balcony in my room, just a great view overlooking
everything.
So, if you happen to be in thatarea by the place where the
(02:10):
Golden State Warriors play overby the Meraki offices.
This is right across the waterright there.
It's a great little area and soI got to stay there.
That was pretty great.
Meter did go all out on thisevent.
So the name badges, first andforemost.
Lots of compliments.
I'm looking for it.
It's around here somewhere.
Lots of compliments on the namebadges.
These were really cool for whatit's worth.
So there were all these littledetails of things that just made
this a really great event toattend.
You could see Keith here andMark and there's Jerry everyone
having a good time.
It was great to see everybodyout there.
(02:30):
They started by asking why thecrowd that was in the audience,
why they chose this crowd, andthey did it because they wanted
feedback.
Right, they wanted truefeedback from people, and there
was no shortage of that.
They went on to explain howtheir system works and what it's
going to do, and they reallydrilled down into what makes
them different than everybodythat's out there Specifically
(02:52):
not even specifically theystarted from the traces on the
PCBs to the distance of thelights, to the way that they
build their entire networkoperating system, from top to
bottom.
It was really cool to learnabout what they're doing, and in
true meter fashion, they reallygave everybody the opportunity
to see everything that they weredoing.
There were parts where some ofthe product managers stood and
(03:14):
said, hey, I'm just going totell them, is that cool?
And then they went and talkedabout product.
It was unreleased.
They talked about somethingthat they were working on and it
was great to see just thatlevel of excitement from their
side, shared with everyone inthe audience.
They went into meticulousdetail about specifically Joshua
and talked about what he wasdoing on the hardware side and
(03:35):
everything from the knurling ofthe knobs to get into the
distance of the LEDs to theoffset, how they want to make
this one big push into doingthings the right way and being
absolutely careful to make surethat it looks the way it's
supposed to and it acts the wayit's supposed to, because the
hardware is a representation ofthe hardware.
That's inside of the PCB,that's inside, which is a
(03:56):
representation of the software,and a lot of thought went into
this y'all.
This wasn't something that theyjust popped up After being kind
of flying on their radar forabout 10 years.
They really wanted to come outand show everyone what they
could do, and those 10 yearsweren't spent with just one or
two customers.
They had a really cool logoslide that I'm showing here and
there were a lot of differentpeople, lots of logos on there
(04:17):
of people that have deployedthis and that went into the next
part of the seminar where theytalked about the people that had
deployed it, and they part ofthe seminar where they talked
about the people that haddeployed it and they put them up
on the stage.
They showed some really coolproduct.
They had a full rack ofequipment up on the stage, which
was really neat to see.
We could get hands-on witheverything that was there.
They gave out some really coolswag and it was fun.
The whole thing was lighthearted, right.
(04:37):
So here's, if you're listeningon the podcast, I have a picture
of Anil the CEO just laughingwith keith parsons having a
great time out.
There it was.
It was very light and fun.
And then they brought up thisis a, you know, a picture.
What you see here is roy chuo,who I finally got to meet.
Roy from avid thing.
Finally got to meet roy.
What a fun dude.
Way more like having never methim and only read all the
(04:58):
articles that he posted andseeing him on stage.
You know, with pictures likethis where he's pronouncing
something or talking aboutsomething, I didn't know that
he's just a really lighthearted,fun dude and he really is.
He's a.
What a great person.
I can see why everybody putshim on their panels now is what
I'm saying.
And so right beside him we'vegot Sean Morgan from Del Oro,
we've got Kerry Buckley fromGreylock Partners and then I
(05:21):
believe his name was Bruce, andthen we've got a perv from Meter
and they talked about what thismeans for the industry and it
was really great to see not justthe analyst side like the
analyst side that writes all thepapers and gets all this stuff
done but people who've actuallydeployed this and why they're
deploying it and what it meansfor them and for their customers
in the future.
So that was really great to see.
Then they took us on a fieldtrip.
(05:42):
We walked, we got out and wegot some fresh air and we walked
around the area.
We walked to different parts oftheir buildings.
We walked to their Q&A lab,which you can see here.
They opened up the doors.
They let us go in and seeeverything that they were doing
and it was fantastic.
We walked into the lab andthere's some Wi-Fi stands
hanging out providingconnectivity for everyone in
there.
That was pretty cool.
(06:05):
I love seeing that, but it wasgreat to see them open their
doors and to really gatherfeedback from people that were
there.
There were things that theymentioned and then there were
things that they didn't mention,and I think that it's not an
oversight.
It's just that they stick soclose to it and they do it on a
day-to-day basis, so they're notreally looking.
I don't want to say they can'tsee the forest through the trees
(06:27):
, but they're so close to itthat sometimes some of the
things that the audience wasasking they're like oh yeah,
okay, you know, yes, we do dothat, but they hadn't mentioned
it.
So it was really neat to seethem being vocal and upfront and
honest about it.
I don't want to say to theextent that they forgot about
stuff, because they didn'tforget about stuff.
(06:47):
There's so much going on that Idon't think they could
encompass all of it in one show,in one sitting.
So I'm really looking forwardto more of these.
I'm looking forward to moremeter ups where people can ask
more questions, where they canreally hone in the story and
talk about what it is to a muchlarger, broader audience,
because part of the problem whenyou put so many people in the
room is everybody's coming froma different perspective.
(07:08):
That's a lot of questions tofield from a whole bunch of
different angles.
So I can't wait to see whatthey do.
And a big old shout out to Sarahthis is one of the Sarahs, this
is the Sarah.
This is Sarah Kwan.
Sarah was responsible, Ibelieve, for making this event
happen, and it's a team effortover there at METER, so everyone
puts in what they're supposedto do, but she was definitely
(07:29):
spearheading a lot of what washappening and there's a picture
of her like here.
I like this picture of herwhere she's like I hope
everything's going well.
So, sarah, much love foreverything that you did.
It was very warm, it was verywelcoming.
It was great to be there.
It was great to have us beingable to walk around.
We walked into the shippingcomponent.
We got to meet Michelle, whoselife's mission is to make it
(07:50):
easy to get equipment out thedoor.
We got to get hands-on witheverything and that was really
neat.
There's Michelle.
She's awesome.
We got to really see what wasgoing on.
It felt like we were on a tour.
We were following people aroundwith flags.
So it was pretty cool to bethere and they had some really
special guests that were in theaudience.
(08:11):
But I think, more than anything,what made me happy was to see
so many people that I know andso many people that I had heard
about or talked about, beingable to understand what this
product is and what it means forthe industry.
And so Keith Parsons led areally cool panel talking about
what this means for you, for meas an engineer, as an RF
engineer, as someone who workson these networks on a
(08:33):
day-to-day basis.
What is that going to mean forour jobs and what is that going
to mean in the future for CCIEsor for people that are the nerds
that bring crazy equipment outand try it?
And I think this is one ofthose things where it's like
this isn't so much aboutreplacing a job or replacing the
need for a job.
This is someone elevatingthemselves to have a full
(08:54):
understanding of the network,but understanding also that the
network can do a lot of thesefunctions on its own when it's
steered in the right directionand when you don't have to worry
about the small meticulousthings that you have to go in
and check every day.
When the network is able to doa lot of that by itself in an
automated fashion, with guidanceobviously, then that gives you
(09:15):
the ability to really start todo more with your time.
And I think that was one of thebig overtones was understanding.
Okay, this is that AI thateveryone's talking about, that
you can come in.
I don't have to know everycommand line on CLI anymore.
I don't have to know how towrite Python, I don't know.
I don't have to know how to usean API.
I can just ask the network howto do it, because literally
(09:36):
that's what it was.
That is actually what commandis is a zero code component
where you get in there and youjust tell it what you want and
it can do it for you.
But there has to be this firmunderstanding of knowing what to
tell the network to do.
I think that that's the biggestkey is having the underlying
knowledge of how networks work,how they function, how the data
flows and what to ask of thenetwork in order to get it to do
(09:59):
what you want.
Now it can talk to you in anative language, which was
totally incredible to see.
You know just in your language,but you have to know what to
ask of it.
You know you could say, hey,build a network, and it'll tell
you, okay, I built a network.
But if you be specific, say,build a network that's secure
and segments traffic betweenmanagement and users, well
(10:21):
that's a different thing and itcan do that.
You just have to know to tellit to do that.
And so there's going to be somechange, I think, in the way
that education takes place whenit comes to networking and IT.
But that's a really, really goodthing and I've said it over and
over again, I think the mostimportant thing to me, the most
impactful thing, is that thisisn't just a sign of what
Meter's doing.
This is a sign for the entireindustry.
(10:42):
This is such a cool place thatwe're in where industry, this is
such a cool place that we're inwhere these networks do what
they're supposed to do whenthey're supposed to do it, and
if we can embrace that, thenthat really blows the doors off
what the capability of our ITdirectors and our CIOs and the
network administrators andengineers have the ability to do
.
But now that bar has beenraised.
(11:02):
Meter has gone in and they'veraised that bar by introducing
things like this, by introducingthings like command and
introducing the what do theycall?
The thing right beside thecanvas, right beside command,
which was crazy.
And I caught that they wereshowing off canvas and we were
using it and then two days later, chatgpt publicly announced
canvas for ChatGPT and I waslike, wait a minute, we just saw
(11:26):
that.
If you know about theinvestment components in meter,
that is absolutely not asurprise.
But it's really neat to knowthat meter has that connection.
It seems and I'm not sayingthey do, but it seems like
they've got some really coolaccess to some really cool
technology that's helping themmove forward.
So very, very neat, very, veryneat.
(11:48):
Obviously I'm talking about thewhole Sam Altman, chat, gpt,
openai thing and the investmentthat they've made in Meter.
That goes without saying, but Isaid it.
So there's that.
But it was really neat to seeman.
Definitely cool, definitelyvery, very cool.
So thanks again to Meter forhosting me out at MeterUp.
I really appreciated beingthere.
It was great to see everybody.
You know Corey's mom, you knowMiss Rita was there, which was
(12:13):
fantastic.
I got some great selfies withsome friends.
Lance who works there, we evengot oh yeah, look at this Rocky,
where is it?
And this is the shout out rightto Lexi we almost got Rocky to
lick the AP Almost.
He couldn't do it, he couldn'tdo it.
So if you're watching track itPacer, maybe you need to pay a
visit to Meter and go see whattheir APs are made of.
(12:36):
Anyway, so that's what we hadgoing on last week at Meter.
It was very cool to see.
But while that was happening,there were some really cool
announcements in the industry.
Specifically, look at this OCMannounces that they've acquired
MetaGeek, expanding theirwireless network solutions
portfolio.
It comes as no surprise toanyone who's in the industry
that these two tools weredestined for each other, but it
(12:58):
does come as a surprise, right.
Metageek has been around for solong and done so many
incredible things, and we've allbeen users of it, even at the
very least Channelizer right.
But then, moving into WisePyand Insider, they've had so many
great products and so many goodcollaborations over time,
whether it's with NetAlly,whether it's with whoever it is,
we've all, I feel like, usedtheir products at one time or
(13:19):
another, and now to see themcoming to gear with Oseum,
another one of my favoritecompanies to work with, it's
really, really neat.
Now, oseum has always been very,very kind to me.
I don't know how I got on theirmailing list, but I've always
been appreciative.
Shirts will show up, t-shirtswill show up and hardware will
show up and test equipment willshow up, and it's just so cool.
I don't know that I've ever metanyone from Oseum and shook
(13:41):
their hand, but if I ever getthe chance I would love to.
Because If I ever get thechance I would love to, because
now seeing this just makes me sohappy, and it makes me so happy
for a couple different reasons.
Number one seeing that they'removing in the direction of
grabbing another wirelesscompany to combine forces is
very, very cool.
But if you take into accountwhat they just did with Hamina
(14:02):
and the Nomad, how now you havean OCM hardware platform working
with Hamina and you canconverge those two together.
And now, knowing that MediGeekis part of that and it's all
coming together, I love what'shappening in the industry where
these vendors are workingtogether.
And one of the things that Ithink is so fantastic and I
brought this up yesterday isthat and I'm going to sing the
(14:23):
praises, I'm going to sing thepraises again just in case you
didn't hear enough about ityesterday and I didn't get any
bad text messages, so it's allgood.
But one of the people I feellike that has been absolutely
imperative in this is this guy,mr Yussi Yussi.
What a fun guy to be around andwhat a dear friend to so many
people.
What a fun guy to be around andwhat a dear friend to so many
(14:46):
people.
And what he's been able to doas the spearhead, I mean, has
not only been to make itphenomenal, but to start to work
across the industry.
And when you go back, if youfollow his LinkedIn page, you
know what he posted, and if youdon't, you should really follow
it.
Here's the headline they'regoing to be talking about
wireless banter from the lastepisode.
(15:08):
Oh, next episode, wednesday,october 16th.
I would definitely encourage youto tune in and listen to these
knuckleheads bant back and forthabout NetAlly, because that, to
me, is one of the absolutecoolest things.
If you scroll down on this pagehere, somewhere, you can see
that they made an announcementthat NetAlly now works with
(15:29):
Hamina and you can go in.
I might have passed it.
You can go in and you can do asite survey with your AirCheck
and once you do that site survey, I'm looking for it.
I'm looking for it.
It's here somewhere.
Here it is Site survey withNetAlly G3, nxg or G2, importing
it into Hamina.
How awesome is that?
I mean, it wasn't that long agothat people were getting in a
(15:52):
whole lot of trouble in theindustry for posting two tools
on the exact same page, and whatyou have now is you have two
companies that are behemoths inthe industry.
If you will, working togetherfor the good of the network
engineer, for people like youand I, for people who do this
every day, and we make our moneydoing these things, knowing
that you have link livecapability, this is just, man.
(16:16):
This is so awesome.
I'm so excited to see this.
You go, you do the survey withyour G3 or your G2, and you take
that and you pop it into LinkLive and from there you go into
Hamina.
I mean, I love the idea thatwhat's happening in our industry
is some of these manufacturersand providers are coming
together Because, at the end ofthe day, that helps us, right.
(16:37):
That helps us, that helps me,because I've got all these tool
sets and I want to be able touse them.
And, man, I'm telling you, twoweeks ago, when I was using the
NetAlly, I was using theCyberscope, I logged into Link
Live and their dashboards arejust like insanely cool.
Now, knowing that I can use theRF component and pipe it into
one of my favorite RF tools isawesome.
I love to see this convergencein the industry.
(16:57):
I think a lot of us have beenasking for it and it definitely
doesn't fall on deaf ears.
So last week UC announced that,which is really great.
So big shout out to the team atNetAlly.
Julio and Dan and the team overthere have always just done a
bang up job with their tool sets, and now, working side by side
with groups like Hamina, this isso exciting.
I'm very, very excited.
I'm excited for our industry.
(17:17):
I'm excited where we're going.
And then the OCM and theMedigig thing is pretty neat.
In other news, what else ishappening?
Directv is acquiring DishNetwork, and this is for a
dollar, right Along with all theother stuff.
But it's more than a buck.
But what I'm interested to seehere is not just the DirecTV and
Dish Network satellite TVcomponents.
(17:37):
I don't subscribe to TV reallyanymore.
I mean, I've got like all thestreaming services, but it's
been a long time since I'vesubscribed to anything and so
I'm not.
That's not where my interest is.
My interest is in the spectrum.
My interest is in what thismeans for broadband and what
they're trying to do with it,because satellite broadband,
satellite communications rightnow there's so much happening.
(18:00):
I mean what a weird, what a fun, not weird, what a fun space,
fun space, he says, what a funspace to be in.
But Dish has all this spectrum.
They have all this spectrum.
What are they going to do withit?
Are they going to hang on to it?
Is that in the interest ofDirecTV?
Is DirecTV interested in beinga broadband provider?
Are they going to sell off thatspectrum?
(18:20):
I mean, verizon's probablyfirst in line to buy it.
They're always first in linebut T-Mobile's doing so many
amazing things.
Maybe T-Mobile picks up thespectrum.
I don't know.
There's a lot of stuffhappening there.
But seeing these two cometogether, not just for the world
of TV but for communications,is going to be interesting to
watch.
Obviously, 19 million combinedsubscribers man, that's a whole
(18:43):
lot.
Comcast has 13.2, and you guysknow I love Comcast, but 13.2
compared to the 19.
Ooh, that's crazy, man, that'sa lot of people.
So we'll see if the mergerhappens, we'll see if the
federal government allows thatto happen, but either way,
that's definitely news that'sgoing on In more news.
Let's see what else ishappening.
(19:03):
Lots of satellite stuff.
I saw this on LinkedIn.
I'm going to go ahead and postthis up real quick.
I saw this on, not on LinkedIn.
I saw this on Reddit, which waspretty cool.
Let me see if I can load thisup here.
There was there's an individualthat made a SDR satellite ground
station, so this is pretty coolto see, built using the Intel
(19:23):
NUC and various hardwarecomponents to support SDR
communications.
The NUC is imaged with DragonOS Distro and a parabolic
antenna behind the groundstation, using an umbrella and
conductive paint mixed with ironpowder to act as a reflective
material.
So says the user.
Ewarfare Love it.
The antenna is directional longperiodic UWB antenna, so this
(19:46):
is pretty cool to see.
I mean, look at that thing.
So they're using the HackRFover there on the right hand
side.
They got the keyboard, the nookand everything in there to talk
using an umbrella.
That's pretty awesome, man.
What will they think of next?
You know there's also a new I'mgoing to punch this in there
and see if it comes up the newHackRF ham version.
(20:07):
There's a very cool video thathas popped up and I've watched
some of it.
Whoa way to just bloweverybody's eardrums out.
So this is the Portapak andthis is a great video.
So Snorren has this thingposted up online.
He does a really good review ofit and if you cycle through you
can see how it was made andwhat the difference is between
this and the other ones.
(20:27):
If you're thinking about buyinga HackRF and you're thinking
about buying the Portapak, makesure you choose the right one.
There's lots of knockoffs thatare out there.
Go check out this link atSnorren.
The new HackRF, portapak, h4mor HAM it pretty cool, man,
pretty cool piece of uh piece ofhardware there.
Let's see what else do we havegoing on terahertz
(20:48):
communications.
This was pretty neat, checkthis out.
So china achieves the world'sfirst long distance terahertz
communication that can boost 6g.
Now this has been done in thepast and in the past they did it
, but I believe I gotta find thelink here.
It was sub-millimeter waves andit was done a while back at
like where was it?
It was done very like you'retalking within a box, right,
(21:12):
just a couple millimeters awayfrom each other, but now this is
1.2 kilometers.
So terahertz communications at1.2 kilometers, that's three
quarters of a mile.
It doesn't say what frequency,but it just says above 0.5
terahertz.
The research was conductedSeptember 27th through October
1st, exceeding 4,000 metersPretty awesome.
(21:33):
Now wavelengths ranging from3,000 to 30 micrometers Think
about that.
And then there was somethingthat people were talking about
in this where it talked aboutbeing able to bend, being able
to curve terahertz communication.
There's a whole article on itthat I found curving the signal,
and this was published by theIEEE in the IEEE Spectrum and
this goes back April 23rdcurving terahertz signals around
(21:56):
obstacles for 6G.
The first curved terahertz datalink could boost faster data
beyond 5G and this is a reallyinteresting article.
We're not making photons travelon curved trajectory, says Dan
Middleman, but what they'redoing?
He talks about how it's able toslowly curve not bend, but
slowly curve RF signals.
(22:20):
So anyway, roughly 3 gigafrequencies 10 centimeters
across.
So there's a lot of stuffthat's going into this.
For the whole, 6g push.
What's going on in 6G?
What does that mean?
There's already some groupsthat are out there talking about
6G.
Fierce Wireless, I think, had aseminar where they talked about
it.
So never too early to startlearning about what 6G means for
everybody here and howterahertz communication
(22:42):
specifically plays into that.
There's another article that waspublished this from a site
called science direct, whereit's a whole review of 6g mobile
communications for requirements, targets, challenges,
opportunities.
This was a fun little read, sosomething to start off here.
Or just go follow my buddy,dean bubbly online and dean
always has a like a phenomenalview on what's happening on the
(23:05):
industry.
They're over at WBA right nowand so he's posting a lot of
really good content there.
But 6G mobile technology andwhat it means look at this peak
data rate one terabyte persecond for 6G latency, 0.1
milliseconds on there.
100 bits per hertz for maximumspectral efficiency, satellite
(23:25):
integration, fully AI, fullyautonomous vehicle, fully
supported terahertzcommunication, widely supported
man, I mean.
Maximum frequency 10 terahertz.
Let's go.
What does that antenna looklike?
What is that?
How does that get through walls?
I'm curious what that's goingto look like.
But something to read here.
If you'd like a link to this,please just let me know.
This is the science directcomlookup 6G mobile communications
(23:49):
technology.
It's a very cool article toread.
All right, let's see Lots ofother stuff happening.
Right now there's a new CTO atVerizon and the reason I bring
this up is.
This was a table sideconversation that we had last
week at MeterUp where we weretalking about the implications
of having a new CTO at Verizon,what that means for everyone,
not just on the RAN side,because he is very supportive of
(24:11):
O-RAN, which is great, becausethat hopefully will drive costs
down for Verizon, which maybemight end up affecting all of us
and giving us lower costs.
That would be great.
But ex-Vodafone executiveSantiago Yago Tenorio is the new
CTO, and why I'm interested inthis is because it's not just
(24:31):
the O-RAN component of it thathe's excited about.
Apparently he's a proponent ofopening up the network to do
more in general, and to me Ithink that that's really neat.
We've been doing a lot of workwith SignalRome Passpoint
Offload as a service, and Ireally am a fan of what
Passpoint is doing to get peopleonto networks quicker.
(24:52):
There was a big announcementyesterday Helium announced a new
partnership with AmericanBandwidth, who we use at
SignalRome, and AmericanBandwidth now supporting Helium
means that their hotspots willsupport Helium as well, and so
now you have the ability forpeople to just jump on networks
using Passpoint and authenticateusing Wi-Fi networks, which is
phenomenal.
But what does that mean in thebigger picture.
(25:12):
And how do we get down to asingle credential that allows us
to roam, whether it's Wi-Fi,whether it's CBRS or whether
it's moving into basic cellularcommunications?
How do we get down to onecredential to allow us to move
across those networks?
And I think that that's reallyneat.
Now, at this point, I want to goback and talk a little bit
about MeterUp again, because, inthat same regard, one of the
(25:33):
key announcements that they hadwas their addition of CBRS and
cellular to their productportfolio.
To me, this was huge,absolutely huge.
We've always talked aboutwireless with Wi-Fi and wireless
with point-to-point multipoint,and we've talked about
point-to-point communications.
We've talked about everythingon the show, right, but there
(25:54):
has never been a single vendorthat has everything on one
screen, on one stack, as oneequipment manufacturer, all in
one house.
Now HPE did acquire Athonet andyou can load Athonet
configuration on and you canhave a command center to do all
of that, but it just doesn'tseem the same as what we're
looking at with Meter, becausenot only is it all in that
(26:14):
single pane of glass from top tobottom, but with all of the
inclusion of AI that they'redoing on the back end, that is
really getting me excited,thinking about what this means
for us in the industry overall,because if we get to that point,
then now we have some way tocommand and control our entire
network without having to learneverything behind it, just
(26:35):
understanding how it works.
And to me that's where that AIpiece comes in.
I want to be able to walk insomewhere and my phone just work
, no matter if it's on Wi-Fi, nomatter if it's on CBRS, no
matter if it's on LTE or 5G or6G or whatever it is, and I want
the services delivered to me inthe best way, shape or form,
using the best frequencypossible for me to be able to
(26:56):
consume the services and get thequality of experience that I'm
looking for.
And the conversation of QOE isa big conversation.
How do we make QOE the definingmetric for the way that people
use networks?
And you can only do that if youcan wrangle in all of the
capability to deliver that QOE.
If you're pulling cellular fromone provider and Wi-Fi from
(27:18):
another provider and IoT fromanother provider, there's no
orchestration there that allowsme to have a true quality of
experience.
You've got to do a lot of workto figure out how to get those
packets to me in the best waypossible, but when you have the
entire stack and you've got AIfeeding into the entire thing,
that's helping optimize it atevery level.
And this could even be saidabout down to the PCB level,
(27:40):
where the circuits are designedthe way specifically to move as
much data as possible.
When you have one vendor, onemanufacturer, that combines all
of this.
That's one of the most excitingthings that Meter announced
last week, not just because it'sCBRS, but because what that
means to me and my QOE, so Iwanted to talk about that.
(28:00):
And also Federated Wireless QOE, so I wanted to talk about that
.
And also, you know, federatedWireless on the road with CBRS
or on the conversation with CBRS.
Federated Wireless hasintroduced a new CBRS planning
tool which is going to beprobably phenomenal.
I would love to get them on andhave a demo of that.
And I do want to cover one morething before I end, and that's
that TauGlass has a new RJ45antenna.
That really threw me for a loopwhen I saw this.
(28:22):
So this loaded up and I waslike what in the world is this?
I thought it was April Fool's.
I thought they were talkingabout just plugging in an RJ45
jack and having it shoot all thedata out, like there was a mini
radio or AP or something builtin there.
But you can see it's just anantenna.
There's a mini MCX connector onthe end of it that probably
snaps right into the board.
The key here is that it fitsright on top of that RJ45 jack,
(28:44):
so it saves a lot of space forany of your design, any of your
components that you're doing.
So shout out to Tileglass forbeing creative and putting that
in there.
I think that that's really nice.
The FXM100 antenna mountsdirectly on a standard RJ45.
So, that being said, that'sWaves for this week.
That's a little bit of what'snew.
What's now?
What's next?
We've got a lot of trade showsgoing on.
National Association ofBroadcasters is happening in
(29:05):
Vegas, wispapalooza, mobileWorld Congress, wba and of
course, we've got WLPC andPrague coming up, looking
forward to the content comingout of that, which means WLPC in
Phoenix is right around thecorner, which means to me that
CES is happening in January,right before that.
If you're going to be at any ofthese shows, please feel free,
reach out, let me know, give mea hello.
I'll probably be doing somepodcasts live from each one of
(29:26):
them and I hope to see you allthere.
But for now, for this week, Iappreciate you tuning in again
and I look forward to talking toyou.
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