Does your smartphone rely on Mobile Coverage or Wi-Fi for almost all of its data needs? Join me, Drew Lentz, the Wireless Nerd, on a journey through a week packed with family fun and cutting-edge tech insights. From DJing at a kids' party to crafting a homecoming float, my week was about more than just entertainment—it was also about bridging the gap between Wi-Fi and carrier networks with exciting innovations at SignalRoam. My visit to Corpus Christi wasn't just about work; it also brought a delightful culinary detour at a local Vietnamese eatery. Amid these adventures, I highlight the importance of early voting in Texas and the inspiring efforts of a local cybersecurity group in the Rio Grande Valley. Also, I talk about Wi-Fi! LOL.
As we look towards the future, AI is not just a buzzword; it's transforming programming and wireless networking as we know it. Wi-Fi 8 and private networks are leading to a new era of connectivity, potentially creating self-sustaining, efficient networks that will redefine our mobile infrastructure by 2030. The episode is a deep dive into how AI empowers professionals, paving the way for innovation through shared CBRS spectrum and revolutionizing our interaction with wireless systems.
From a significant rise in Wi-Fi data consumption to Google's bold move to retire its CBRS network planning tool, this episode is packed with insights and implications for major carriers and MVNOs. We also touch on the environmental concerns of LEO satellite launches and explore the intriguing possibilities of Li-Fi technology. Despite missing out on the recent WLPC event in Prague, I'm eagerly looking forward to the upcoming one in Phoenix. So, buckle up for a tech-filled adventure that navigates through the evolving landscape of communication networks, space technology challenges, and much more.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good morning, good morning, good morning, good
afternoon, wherever you are.
Hope everybody's doing okay.
I hope everybody's having afantastic Friday.
Hope you had a great week.
Hope you had a great Halloween.
It's me, drew Lentz, theWireless Nerd, and this is Waves
, on November 1st 2024.
You know I skipped last week onthe podcast.
I had every intention ofgetting it done, but you know
(00:21):
there was just a lot of familystuff going on and that's okay.
It done.
But you know there was just alot of family stuff going on,
and that's okay.
It's okay.
We had a float that we had tobuild for homecoming and I ended
up DJing on that float with abunch of second, third and
fourth and fifth graders and wehad just a bunch of family
activities and it was okay.
There's lots of fun stuffhappening.
It's been a tremendous week,such a good week of personal
(00:41):
growth and such a good week offun and excitement and family,
and I hope y'all are having asmuch fun this week as I am.
Let's get to some fun stuff.
There's some interesting thingsthat happened this week.
I feel like I use the wordinteresting a lot, but it's been
a really good week.
I got to get hands-on with somecustomers.
I got to get out and get infront of people and had a really
good time doing that,especially with the SignalRome
(01:04):
stuff.
So SignalRome as you know, ifyou've listened to this, what
we've done if you visitSignalRomecom, is we're working
with a Passpoint as a service.
We're acting as a Passpoint, asa service provider, so that we
can connect Wi-Fi networks tocarrier networks Right now,
t-mobile and AT&T and all theMVNOs that work with them and
basically you go and you make a10, 15 minute configuration
change on your wireless networkand once you do that, it
(01:28):
broadcasts a separate SSID andit ties it into the carriers and
it's awesome and it'seconomical and it's really cool.
And I got to spend some time insome old stomping grounds this
week back up to Corpus Christi,had some fun with the crews over
in Corpus, got to eat at anincredible Vietnamese restaurant
called Vietnam Restaurant indowntown Corpus Christi.
So if you find yourself in thehome of Farrah Fawcett, corpus
(01:50):
Christi, texas, and the home ofSelena, make sure you stop by
and eat at the Vietnamrestaurant.
It was incredible.
Their fried rice wasdelightfully magnificent.
Anyway, got to talk to themabout Signal Roam, got to talk
to them about Wi-Fi offloadingand Passpoint and help a lot of
(02:10):
these school districts in thestate of Texas leverage this
instead of having to spend awhole bunch of money on a DAS
system.
So it was really neat.
What else is going on?
Today is the last day of earlyvoting in the state of Texas, so
if you're in the United Statesand you're listening, don't
forget to vote early and geteverything done.
We've got a pretty incredibleelection coming up, so make sure
you get your voice heard andget that out there.
I had a really good time withour local cybersecurity group
(02:32):
down here in South Texas.
The area that I live in isknown as the Rio Grande Valley,
the RGV, and in the RGV we havea cybersecurity group that
popped up a couple of weeks agoI guess maybe now a couple of
months ago and there's over 200members subscribed on our
Discord, which is really cool tosee people coming together as a
user group, and one of thethings that we're working on is
figuring out tasks that we canall do, where we can get
(02:55):
together and help each other outand try and do things for the
community, and I have a websitethat I've owned the domain for a
really long time it's calledPolitiquera,
p-o-l-i-t-i-q-u-e-r-a,politiqueracom, now Politiquera
is like it's someone.
A Politiquera or Politiquero issomeone who will go out and get
votes for people, who willencourage people to vote, who
(03:15):
will encourage people to comeshow up to the polls and vote in
the local elections.
And then, of course, it gets apretty bad name in South Texas,
which is part of the reason Ichose it.
To be honest, it gets a badname down here because it's
associated with people who arenot coercing, but trying
alternative ways to get votes,and so there's been a lot of
struggle with that down here inSouth Texas.
(03:35):
It's a fun area, so I figuredwhat better way to get attention
than an inflammatory name for awebsite?
And so what we did atpolitikeracom is we worked with
the local elections departments,we gathered their information
that's posted by Texas ElectionCode on their websites and
includes all this information,and we decided that we were just
going to start showing it off.
(03:57):
We're going to start chartingit, and the problem is that when
you look at numbers, it doesn'treally stand out in a way that
people can make sense of it.
So what I did was I decided toLet me see if I can show this.
Let's see if I can share myscreen here.
(04:18):
Window capture.
Give me just a second.
Let me open up the right window.
We decided to make a map out ofit and I'll show it here, if
you're watching live.
This is not where I want to go.
Give me a second here.
If you're watching live, you'llsee what we were able to do.
It was actually really coolbecause we took all this
(04:39):
information, we took all thesenumbers and we put it up on a
website.
Here we go.
We put it up on a website tomake it easily accessible for
people so that they could see it.
So here's the website.
It's up on the screen right nowand let me resize it and make
sure it looks okay.
But essentially, this is thewebsite and I'm going to hit
(04:59):
refresh and what it does is ittakes voting data from voter
rolls in the state of Texas andthe United States.
There's a lot of informationthat's made available when you
vote, such as the address ofwhoever voted.
Now, it doesn't tell you howthey voted.
It doesn't tell you you knowwhich party or affiliation they
voted for, but you can crunchdata together and look at that.
(05:20):
So what I did was I built thiswebsite and it's kind of neat.
It shows any second.
Now it's a database of over ahundred thousand entries that we
were using just strict JSON for.
Give me a second, let me try torestart the browser that we're
just using strict JSON for andwe're able to visualize the
votes that are taking place inour county and in some of the
(05:42):
sister counties that we havedown here in the Rio Grande
Valley, and you can zoom in on aneighborhood and you can see
who's voted in that neighborhood.
Now that's not the fun part tome.
The fun part to me, while thisloads way to go, drew, way to
get a good demo going what wewere able to do with it that was
really neat is we didn't wantto write any code and so we used
(06:04):
an AI tool to do all of thecode writing for us.
So AppAnthropic has a programcalled Claude Claudeai and
that's what we used, and we hadit write all of the code for us.
I'm sorry, not AppAnthropic,anthropic is the name of the
company.
So Anthropic has somethingcalled Claude anthropiccom it's
(06:24):
like Claudeai, c-l-a-u-d-e, andwe use it to write all of our
code in Python.
And it worked.
Man, it was the first time thatI've dug deep in having AI
write a whole lot of code for me.
If you listen to the pod, youknow that in the past I've done
some really fun projects where Iuse ChatGBT or I use some form
(06:45):
of AI to write the code for me,and now Claude has shown that
it's got a little bit betterproficiency.
I think it's got some reallyneat stuff there.
But GitHub just introduced theirnew solution and there's a beta
going on for it.
There's an open wait list.
It's called Spark, github Spark, and I've signed up for that.
(07:06):
Hopefully I'll get that,because then it's all integrated
.
Because what we did is we tookthe code, we generated the code
in Cloud, we dumped it intoGitHub, we put it out under GPL3
.
So if you want access to it,let me know.
I can share a link or I cansend it to you if you want to
see how we did what we did.
Unfortunately, I think we mighteven be updating it right now.
It's totally a work in progress.
It's not working the way it'ssupposed to.
(07:27):
But here you go, let me show itto you.
There you go.
So this is showing a heat mapof where voters are in our
specific area, and then we havevoting locations.
You can see where the votinglocation is, but if you zoom in,
you can see specificneighborhoods.
I'm just zooming, I'm notpicking on any one in particular
, I'm just zooming, but you cansee.
If you get in there, you cansee all the different addresses
(07:49):
and the street-level data ofwhere people are voting and from
a larger perspective, you canzoom out and you can say, hey,
you know what thisneighborhood's not doing as well
as this neighborhood, and thatmight be a place where you
encourage people to go get outto vote.
And it's also been reallyfascinating because you get to
look at by visualizing data.
You get to see some prettyinteresting stuff, like which
(08:09):
areas of the city are showing upversus which other areas of the
city, and it's prettyfascinating.
But it doesn't have anything todo with wireless, but it does
have everything to do with usingAI to do tasks that may have
seemed insurmountable or wouldhave taken a lot longer to
accomplish than before.
(08:30):
And so now, if you'restruggling with using Python for
automation or you're strugglingwith any type of programming or
trying to figure out how tomake your network work better,
dude, just turn to AI.
I mean, honestly, it's a toolthat's out there, that's meant
to be used and it's phenomenal.
And when you think about theimpact that that's going to have
on our industry and what we doon a day-to-day basis, you can
(08:53):
look at groups like Meter andyou can look at groups like
anyone that's really leveragingAI.
I know that at WLPC in Praguethere was, I think, tani gave
talk and they haven't beenposted.
The videos haven't been postedyet, but Tony gave a talk
talking about AI and you knowit's making its way in, not just
with Cisco but, you know,obviously with Juniper Mist and
(09:15):
into the HPE thing.
There's a lot more conversationabout AI and how AI is going to
play a larger role, and I thinkthat you have to think about two
different sides of that coinright.
One of it is using AI toautomate all of the things and
make our jobs easier by takingcare of the little tasks that
take up a whole lot of time orinforming us.
(09:36):
You know Mince and the teamover at Cisco has done some
incredible work on the Merakiside of being able to do, you
know, like automated packetcaptures, bring that information
in, do diagnosis, understandwhat's happening and then make
recommendations that you canclick on or even get to the
point of self-driving that justfix themselves.
That's really neat.
But then there's also thesupport component of it, where
handling support for networksand automating a lot of those
(10:02):
support tasks can be key.
So it's not just about networkconfiguration and RM and
identifying which channels, butunderstanding why things are
happening when they're happening, what's happening in real time,
and being able to solve thoseissues.
That's where I'm excited withsome of the AI stuff that's
happening that we're seeing.
We see it with Meter, we see itwith Meraki, we see it with
Juniper.
Yeah, it's really cool and Ithink that there's a lot
(10:26):
happening there that's going tomake our lives easier.
And I think that there's a lothappening there that's going to
change the scope in which we dothings.
In the programming example, itwasn't necessarily about not
having to write code.
It was understanding the syntax, understanding the way that the
code flows, understanding howto construct something, how to
construct a program, but usingit to do the lifting for us.
(10:49):
Right, it wasn't a replacement.
I'm not just going to jump inand say build me an app that
does this.
It's understanding how that appis built, understanding how
that web application is builtand understanding what needs to
take place that provides thatfunctionality and knowing how to
talk to it.
And this is that thing thateveryone keeps saying, which is
it's not AI that's going to takethe jobs.
(11:09):
It's people who know how to useAI that are going to take the
jobs.
So there's a lot happening inthat space and I think it's fun
and it's critical to watch.
I'm really keen on understandinghow this is going to play into
Wi-Fi 8.
You know, mlo is thatintroduction of multi-link
optimization and aggregation,and that's really cool.
(11:31):
You know Radio A communicatingon the downlink, Radio B bonding
channels, or you know, using adifferent uplink.
There's a lot of really funthings that are happening there.
Tarana is doing some reallygreat stuff with bringing
frequencies together,frequencies from different
pieces of the spectrum together,and so understanding that
(11:52):
component of it and how supportplays into that, I think AI is
going to be very helpful.
But then moving into Wi-Fi 8,where you have multiple access
points and you're receiving onone frequency from one AP and
you're transmitting to anotherAP on two separately bonded
frequencies, and how thatcoordination works and how to
troubleshoot that it's gettingto that point, I feel that we're
(12:15):
going to need tools thatunderstand everything that's
happening and can break it downfor us so that we can minimize
the time that we spend doing thetroubleshooting.
Because to do that on multipleAPs and multiple frequencies,
multiple APs, multiple packetcaptures, bringing all those
together in one area tounderstand what's happening
(12:35):
there's a lot to doing that, andI know some of the smartest
people in wireless and I lovethem.
They're great people.
But even that, you know, tryingto get that data in a timely
fashion so that you can solveproblems even for some of the
geniuses out there, like PeterMcKenzie right, shout out to
Peter, who's like the king ofpacket capture being able to do
(12:58):
that quickly is going to bedifficult.
And that all leads into what Ithink is the bigger picture,
which is a little bit of wheremeter's going, a little bit of
where now is going, which isthat whole idea, the concept
that it's not even going to beso much about the
troubleshooting.
(13:18):
It's going to be about peoplewho just want networks to work
and to do what they're supposedto do and if something happens,
inform me, but fix it.
Let me know that.
Oh hey, we found a problem.
This is how we addressed it.
We fixed the problem.
If you don't like that, clickhere and we'll roll it back.
Or alternatively, hey, we founda problem.
(13:40):
Here's the problem.
Here's what the fix is.
Click here to make that change.
If you don't click here, in 10minutes we're going to click
that for you.
There's got to be some way tointegrate self-driving networks
in a way that makes it useful,so that we can start to get more
(14:01):
and more hands-off with some ofthe smaller tasks that we have
to do.
Anyway, that's my rant.
I'm having a really good timewith AI, as you can tell, and I
hope you are too.
If you're not, you reallyshould be.
I mean, I try and integrate itinto so many different places in
my life, and specifically inwireless network, in building
networks and in doingconfiguration and doing design
(14:23):
and doing site design.
There's a lot that can be donewith the tool sets that are out
there, and they're only going toget better.
I mean, I love that idea thatthis is the worst that it's ever
going to be anywhere withregards to AI, so I think that
that's fascinating.
So what else we got going on?
There's a couple of otherthings that are happening right
(14:44):
now.
Let me change this windowcapture real quick and let's
load up some of the news thingsand let me adjust my window here
for just a second.
I saw this article this morningand I thought it was pretty
cool and it's talking about theprivate networks that are out
there and what private networks,how many private networks are
(15:05):
being deployed and where they'rebeing deployed.
And that's funny, there's an adfor Photoshop AI at the bottom
of the screen.
This from Fierce Networks, danJones our favorite Dan Jones at
Fierce Networking, fierceWireless, saying that there are
more than 100 installations ofneutral host private networks,
cranking over the 100 mark morethan 50 neutral host
(15:27):
installations in the US alone.
Sns, telcom and IT said thegrowth has been spurred by
shared CBRS spectrum, which isgreat.
I mean, that's the ticket rightthere.
And the stat that by 2030,private networks could account
for as many as one-fifth of allmobile network infrastructure.
Yeah, that's awesome.
I mean I'm a huge fan of neutralhost offload.
(15:48):
I'm a huge fan of thesenetworks getting out there.
I think it means so much toeveryone who uses a mobile
device because it's not justabout the network, it's about
what your connection to thatnetwork looks like and the more
private networks and neutralhost networks that are out there
, the closer you're going to beto so many different radios and
(16:10):
antenna right, and when you'recloser, your experience is going
to be better.
So the more pervasive thisbecomes, whether it's using
Wi-Fi offload you know,passpoint Wi-Fi offload or it's
using private cellular, or it'susing CBRS or it's using, you
know, das.
Whatever it is, as these growit's going to make that
experience for all of us so muchbetter.
You know there was a stat onLinkedIn.
(16:32):
I want to see if I can bring itup right here.
I was paying attention to my,to our old friend, let's see
here not that he's old, but heis a friend.
Klaus posted something aboutthe amount of mobile traffic
that was being delivered overWi-Fi and it accounts for
something like 90% of thetraffic that's out there.
(16:56):
So give me one second.
Let me make sure that I don'tblow it up.
Here we go.
Bombshell Report.
We're gonna load this up onLinkedIn Punch in Klaus's name,
right here.
Bombshell Report.
We're going to load this up onLinkedIn Punch in Klaus's name,
right here.
Bombshell Report Mobile dataconsumption over Wi-Fi closes in
on 90% in the US.
Open Signals Report justreleased confirms it.
Look at this Wi-Fi's proportionof data traffic on smartphones
(17:18):
is now closing in on astaggering 90% overall, exceeds,
in nearly all cases, 80% awayfrom home.
So this report that wasreleased by OpenSignal is
showing that Wi-Fi sure I'llaccept your cookies is showing
that Wi-Fi is driving smartphonedata consumption but depending
on the operator it changes.
And this is key to that neutralhost conversation.
(17:40):
In my opinion.
It's showing that if you lookat mobile Wi-Fi upload and
download and the way that itcompares on AT, look at mobile
Wi-Fi upload and download andthe way that compares on AT&T,
t-mobile, verizon and some ofthe other groups that are out
there Xfinity and Spectrum,which operate as MVNOs.
Also, it shows you know, youlook at this right here Wi-Fi
download accounts for 71% onT-Mobile and 10% is Wi-Fi upload
(18:01):
, 16% is mobile download notusing Wi-Fi.
And if you look at where neutralhost is doing well right now in
the neutral host space, it's nosecret that Verizon isn't open
to doing some of the neutralhost stuff unless you go through
them, unless you're using themas your provider.
There's not many groups thathave.
(18:22):
I don't even know if there'sany groups that have Verizon on
contract to do neutral host.
So it's no surprise to me tosee the numbers where they are,
especially that that you knowbetween AT&T, t-mobile and
Verizon.
But I want to watch thisbecause as Verizon then starts
to adopt or move into neutralhost, I wonder how that's going
to change what it's looking at.
(18:43):
But overall, this is showing alot of.
There's a clear sign here that alot of people are using Wi-Fi
on their mobile devices.
As opposed to the carriersT-Mobile, verizon, at&t two
MVNOs Spectrum and Xfinity usersproportionally consume more
data over Wi-Fi on the two MVNOshaving the highest proportion
of data consumption on Wi-Fi, at89% of their total.
(19:04):
Obviously, I mean, when youthink about the size of the
Xfinity network, you think aboutthe size of the Charter network
and the Spectrum network andhow they're leveraging Passpoint
specifically.
Yeah, man, they make it easy toget on their networks and
offload that data on Wi-Fi.
I mean, shocker, not really.
They've been in this game doinga really good job at it for a
(19:26):
while.
So I wonder how, now that moreneutral host is coming on,
especially with things likeAmerican bandwidth, things like
SignalRome being able to doPasspoint offload, how that's
going to change it Went awayfrom home.
T-mobile users proportionatelyconsume more mobile data than
any other major provider, mobileusers proportionately consume
more mobile data than any othermajor provider.
Well, okay, they travel more.
(19:46):
I don't know.
I don't know how this breaks itdown, but it's interesting to
see this.
So some fun statistics there.
I'm glad Klaus had put that outthere.
It was fun to read that.
Let's see what else we gotgoing on in the news today.
Speaking of, there was anannouncement from here we're
going to open it up in lightreading and this one came up a
(20:10):
couple days ago that Google isgoing to retire their CBRS
network planning tool.
Mike Dano, good old Mike.
Hey Mike, what's up?
Covering this article?
Google plans to discontinue theCBRS network development tool.
It's first launched in 2019.
A lot of people have used thistool and you know the Google
reader.
I mean seriously like if theycan get rid of that, they can
(20:31):
get rid of anything.
Unfortunately, that was one ofmy favorite Google tools ever,
but everyone you know bemoaningits loss but say there are other
options out there.
The Google tool was always, Ithink, revered.
Lots of people really loved it.
It's been around for five years.
It's going to be deprecatingits 3.5 tool.
What's happened now is I thinkthere was an announcement a
(20:55):
couple of weeks ago aboutFederated Wireless introducing a
new tool.
Still haven't heard fromanybody on there.
If you know someone atFederated, let me know.
I want a demo of the tool and Iwant to bring it on the podcast
to show what it looks like.
I didn't know Google was goingto deprecate their tool, but now
that they have even more of areason why Federated should be
showing that thing off.
A Rich Bernhardt SVP of Spectrumfor WISPA said it's really a
(21:17):
shame.
It is is fast, accurate, easyto use, it's integrated with
Google's geospatial data.
And now it's a bummer.
So Toronto explained a 25-pagedocument detailing how fixed
wireless operators can use thetool to deploy.
Toronto recommends the use ofGoogle Network Planner.
Toronto does not have their ownnetwork planning tool.
That goes into the detail.
I don't think that Google has.
(21:38):
So that's kind of a tough hitfor them.
Rich Bernhardt says that there'sothers that are out there doing
it.
You know.
Indeed, federated Wireless justthis month announced the
general availability.
Go figure, we covered that onthe Waves Wireless Podcast.
But there's other tools outthere by Auvik and, of course,
if you're looking for anincredible tool, you should
check out Hamina's 3.65 tool.
(22:00):
It is really, really cool.
And the thing that I like aboutHamina is that you can use 3.65
or you can use Wi-Fi in the sametool and I mean, if you go to I
think it's Hamina Wireless orHaminacom, you can bring it up.
Look, I'll just load it up.
If you've never used the toolwhich I really hope you have,
there's a free version of itthat you can even do stuff with
(22:21):
your house.
Go pull up my house.
You can go pull up a house andsee what's going on, like.
Here's me surveying restaurants.
Here's me having some fun.
You know, does anyone else liketo go to random restaurants and
go survey what their Wi-Filooks like?
Just out of curiosity I saw.
You know there's some peopleI've seen in the industry like
walk through airports and walkthrough different places.
(22:42):
You know there's some peopleI've seen in the industry like
walk through airports and walkthrough different places.
You know, if you've got a toolon you, why not use it?
That's what I'm saying.
So you can do home Wi-Fi withthis and then you can even do
outdoor.
If you haven't used Hamina,it's a really fun tool and they
do operate in three.
They do have something thatoperates for you in 365.
No-transcript, but maybe that'sa future video.
(23:12):
Oh, what else is going on?
Eero, speaking of outdoor Wi-Fi, eero introduced Wi-Fi 7.
They say that they're bringingOutdoor 7.
The Eero Outdoor 7 is bringingWi-Fi to the backyard using
Wi-Fi 7.
Unveils a weatherproof Outdoor7.
Their commercial is pretty cool.
This is the unit that they haveand this.
So this is of interest to mebecause Because, as we talk
(23:40):
about what AI means for thefuture of networking and
wireless networking, I like tothink about where large pools of
data about connections can beaggregated to make connections
better.
This goes back to when I wasworking at Comcast, when at
(24:02):
Comcast, one of the things noton our team, not on the business
team, but on the Xfinity sidethere was always this
conversation about how do wemake this the best home Wi-Fi,
how do we figure out how to makethe best home Wi-Fi?
And Comcast was really coolbecause once a year, thanks to
Daryl Deroja I'm not gonna lie,ddoggdmoney we would all get
(24:23):
together, all the wireless teamsin that whole organization.
We'd get together at least oncea year and just have a Wi-Fi
summit and talk about Wi-Fiacross everything that that
organization does.
Super cool when you think aboutthe size of it.
It's universal.
It's Comcast, it's universal,it's Universal Studios, it's the
Golf Channel, it's all thesedifferent entities that use
Wi-Fi in different ways.
And we'd all sit down in a roomfor a couple of days and talk
about what we were doing withWi-Fi and share ideas and
(24:46):
concepts with each other.
And when we would do that, wefigured out how to leverage data
from each other in order tomake better experiences, because
the whole name of the game, tome right, is quality of
experience.
How do you drive quality ofexperience?
And when you think about thedata that they have from Xfinity
users and we're not talking anytype of PII, no type of
personal identifiableinformation, none of that we're
(25:08):
talking about connectioninformation like a device
connected to a router.
This is what the signalstrength looks like and
understanding what causesfluctuations, and so on and so
forth when you have that amountof data, how can you leverage
that data to make thoseconnections better?
So how do you take that dataand integrate AI into it to
(25:31):
create a way for a system tomake better decisions for better
quality connections?
That's where my head's at rightto set the premise.
So then, if you think aboutMeter and Niall and these guys
that are owning full stack andyou think about Meraki, you
think about what's happeningwith HP Juniper, you think about
when you own the entireconversation, start to finish
(25:53):
how you can take that data, useAI to absorb and inform back
into the network.
It's really cool.
So when I see something likethis and I see a company like
Eero, which has I don't evenknow how many installations that
are out there in home and insmall businesses or wherever it
(26:15):
is, I wonder if there's a.
Maybe there's not a number onhere, but when I think about
this and I think about how theyhave access to this information,
this is a solution that is coollooking, not just for the
indoor component and now theoutdoor component, but not just
the residential space, but as wesee things happening in the SMB
(26:39):
space and people looking forthings that just work.
This piqued my interest,because now you have a lot of
information that can be fed intoa model and I can't say if
they're doing it, don't know.
If they're doing it.
That'd be cool.
If they are doing it, I wouldimagine that they are doing it.
Don't know if they're doing it.
But when you think about eachone of the carriers that's out
(27:02):
there and the amount of datathat they have access to to make
those decisions in residentialareas.
There's a differentiatorbetween what's happening there
and what's happening in small,medium-sized business.
Mid-market enterprise Meraki'sgathering this data, collecting
this data and using it to makeinformed decisions about
troubleshooting right and meters, using it to make decisions
(27:23):
about engineering and quality.
So why aren't those samedecisions being made for
something like this?
So lots of gears turn in there.
I think it's fascinating.
I think it's great to see, it'sgreat to see another entrant
playing into the marketplace.
What's really cool to see,right?
Spoiler alert if you look atwho the team is, who's building
(27:44):
these products, it's actuallypretty cool.
You'll see some fancy namesfrom days of old if you scroll
through LinkedIn and you seepeople like Eric Johnson, who
have the genetics of Arubacoming over and doing some stuff
at Eero.
Pretty cool to watch.
So you know what I would say is, on that note, always look at
LinkedIn.
Right, don't look at LinkedInjust as a social media tool.
(28:07):
Look at it as an investigativetool.
Look at who is where, wherethey come from, where they're
going and what they're doing,and it'll tell you a lot about
companies.
Just you know friendly word ofadvice there.
It's pretty neat to watch whatelse is happening FCC allowing
FirstNet to operate in 4.9.
I don't know if any of you oh,there's a big face, hey, photo
(28:29):
of Kenneth Corey, the Coalitionfor Emergency Response and
Critical Infrastructure.
I don't know if any of you everoperated in 4.9.
And we had down here in SouthTexas, as soon as 4.9 was made
available, the public safetyfrequency bands, 4.9, it's 50
megahertz of spectrum sitting in4.9, 4,900 to 4,950.
If I remember correctly, it wasright below five gig, right
(28:50):
above three gig.
And there were some equipmentmanufacturers like Alverion good
old Alverion that madeequipment that operated in that
space to be used specificallyfor public safety.
So connecting policedepartments, connecting fire
departments, connecting EMS,connecting critical
infrastructure in areas.
That was really neat and people.
It was kind of cool.
(29:10):
What they did is they made it sothat it was available to
everybody in public safety.
But then each group in publicsafety had to designate a
regional coordinator and I don'tknow how well that worked.
To be honest.
I know here in the county thatI live in, the sheriff's
department just kind of becamethe de facto coordinator for it.
There was never really a votewhere everyone was like, okay,
(29:32):
we vote, you guys should takecare of this frequency spectrum.
But there was a coordinatorwhose job was supposed to be hey
, we're operating on thesechannels, you shouldn't operate
on them.
Why don't you operate on thesechannels?
But as everybody starteddeploying, no one really asked
where the spectrum was, andthere were so few tools back
then to do really nice spectrumanalysis, so it was a little
(29:53):
difficult to monitor who wasusing what frequency and when.
But now here we are.
You know, a number of yearslater, october 22nd this is from
last week 24th FCC unveilsorder allowing FirstNet to
operate in 4.9 band.
So now FirstNet can jump in andhave access to the 4.9 gig band
.
The order will allow a bandmanager, once selected by the
(30:15):
agency, to apply for anationwide license and enter
into a sharing agreementallowing FirstNet, the
nationwide first respondernetwork operated by AT&T, to
operate in any unassignedportions of the band.
Incumbent license holders wouldbe able to enter similar
arrangements with FirstNet ifthey choose.
Opponents of the plan were nothappy.
Okay, look, jake Neenan over atBroadband Breakfast.
(30:38):
Bro, jake, you're a cool dude.
I've talked to Jake.
He's a nice guy.
That just kind of left mehanging there at the end, there,
buddy, the last line here itsays sorry, I thought I was
sharing my screen.
The last line of the articlesays opponents of the plan were
not happy, as we say in SouthTexas, obiol, obiol, that's
obvious.
Were not happy, as we say inSouth Texas, obvio, obvio,
that's obvious.
Probably not happy.
(31:00):
Let's see what else ishappening.
The Southern Ute Indian Tribetransforms reservation with open
access fiber network.
Love stories like this.
This also frombroadbandbreakfastcom.
This is really neat because Ilove the idea of open access,
building a network and lettingeverybody have some way to
communicate on it, sharing thataccess with people.
This is really neat.
Among the burgeoning number oftribal networks being built
(31:22):
across Indian country, a newfiber to the home network
spanning the Southern IndianReservation is unique.
When service was lit up inIgnacio, colorado, in May, the
network became the only openaccess network owned by tribal
government, providing itsresidents with a choice between
two different ISPs offeringlightning-fast connection speeds
.
How cool is that?
So, jessica, great job writingthis article over on Broadband
(31:44):
Breakfast October 23rd.
This one was published fiveyears in the making.
The Southern Newt Network isnot only the first tribally
owned open access network, it'samong the first of the new fiber
projects funded by the TribalBroadband Connectivity Program
offering services so cool, so alesson to be learned here.
I love the idea of using openaccess networks, whether it's on
fiber or copper or freaking DSL, I don't know or even Wi-Fi.
(32:08):
I love the idea that you couldtake a Wi-Fi network and
broadcast, have a city or amunicipality, build the
infrastructure, provide theconnectivity, provide the
backhaul and then have multipleSSIDs being broadcast for
multiple service providers withdifferent plans that are
associated with that.
This is something.
There was a guy named Kai Wolfwho did a lot of really great
(32:30):
projects with Google.
Kai moved down to the RioGrande Valley here in South
Texas and brought a lot of greatideas with them.
Unfortunately, he was involvedin a terrible airplane accident.
I believe it was a lightairplane accident and we lost
him and his thoughts, but itcontinued.
His idea of open access wasalways this idea that it wasn't
(32:52):
just about making choiceavailable to people.
It was about havingorganizations that could give
back.
And so if you think aboutbroadcasting multiple SSIDs or,
in this case, multiple providersrunning across the same fiber,
making one plan may be free butadvertisement supported, or
making another one paid for, butit comes with a high level of
support.
Or making another one that for,but it comes with a high level
(33:13):
of support.
Or making another one that hasa higher level of service with a
lower level of support.
And figuring out what's bestfor the community and giving
people the opportunity to buildinternet service providers
without having to provide thecostly infrastructure to operate
it.
And when I think about doingthat with Wi-Fi, I think it
(33:33):
would be so cool.
I mean City of McAllen.
We built an incredible Wi-Finetwork here and I would love
for the day to come when there'smultiple SSIDs being broadcast
on that infrastructure.
That's already there.
It's already being taken careof by the city.
It's costing them 150 grand ayear or whatever it is that's
costing them for maintenance.
But I would love if thatnetwork were opened up where
people could offer things.
Maybe there's a very low-costalternative for educators
(33:55):
sponsored by I don't knowScholastic, I don't know
whatever it is.
But I love the idea that youcan take a network and segment
it up, and that goes into thewhole micro-slicing thing with
5G and there's just a lot ofdifferent ways that you can
slice networks and providelevels of service for different
organizations or differentpeople or different users, and
open access is truly a very coolthing to see.
(34:17):
So the fact that they're doingthis on tribal properties is
incredible.
I mean that's really neat.
What a great thing for everyonethere that is going to have
access to that.
All right, what else are wetalking about?
Let me just see where I wasplaying tools done.
Researchers are urging the FCCto stop low earth orbiting
satellites.
Here's another article comingin from Light Reading, nicole
(34:40):
Ferraro, the editor and host ofthe Divide podcast.
You know, I don't know theDivide podcast, just learned
about a new podcast.
Okay, nicole, I'm going todownload yours and check it out.
In a letter to the FCC, a groupof researchers said that
low-Earth orbit satellitelaunches should be paused until
national and internationalenvironmental reviews can be
completed.
You know, right after I readthis article and saw it pop up,
I got the notification thatStarlink was pushing 40 more
(35:03):
birds into space.
And it's like man in the middleof all this.
Things are just going and goingand going Over 100 researchers
from universities across the USand the FCC to put a pause on
LEO satellite launches.
Warning the environmental harmsof launching and burning up so
many satellites aren't clear Ina letter addressed to FCC Space
Bureau Chief, julie Kearney.
The researchers, who hail fromuniversities including Harvard,
(35:24):
princeton, yale, ut Austin andothers, point out the number of
large LEO satellites used forbroadband delivery has increased
12 times in just five years,led by SpaceX Obviously led by
SpaceX.
The letter adds that SpaceXStarlink has launched more than
6,000 such satellites in thelast five years, representing
over 60% of all satellites.
Wow, I didn't know that.
And then estimated 58,000satellites will be in orbit by
(35:47):
2030.
Hundreds of thousands moreexpected, based on plans from
SpaceX, project Kuiper, fromAmazon as well as others.
What's it going to do?
I don't know, but I can'timagine that, like, if you stop
and think about where we weresupposed to be with space travel
, like, imagine, you know spacelike a rocket ship trying to go
up and dodge all thosesatellites.
I don't know, not my area ofexpertise, y'all clearly, but
(36:10):
whatever.
Y'all clearly, but, butwhatever.
On the satellite tip, there's astartup called constellation.
It's proposing 5g millimeterwave solutions from space light
reading.
Had this one also lots of, lotsof stuff happening in that space
race where these guys a mikedano again with the, with the
scoop on the article, this isusing 26.5 gigahertz to 40
(36:34):
gigahertz beaming down fromspace in the ka and ku spectrum
bands, for there's 400 megahertzsitting in the 26 gigahertz
band that's available to 5goperators all over the world.
And if you follow what happenedwith t mobile last week or the
last week of the week before,they were like they had all this
millimeter wave spectrum andthey're like nah, it sucks, fcc,
(36:55):
you can have it back.
It's not doing what we wantedit to do.
We can't make it work.
I think that's even coveredsomewhere here in this in this
article.
Yeah, indeed, t-mobile hasgiven up huge chunks of its
millimeter wave holdings becausethe propagation characteristics
of spectrum only allow forstable communications over
limited blah, blah, blah, blah.
Basically, they said it sucks,you can have it back.
And now they're figuring outdifferent ways to do it.
(37:16):
Space is a good alternative.
Speaking of space and beamingstuff down from space Li-Fi Does
anybody use Li-Fi?
I've been talking to someonewho does some Li-Fi stuff on
LinkedIn and I'm generallyfascinated with it.
I think it's cool, but I don'tknow of any deployments where
it's being used successfully.
So if you know anyone who'susing Li-Fi, it's where you use
(37:36):
infrared signals and lights.
You vary the amount I guess theblinkage Is that a word?
You vary how much it blinks andthe intensity of that to being
data like fiber optics, butwithout the fiber.
If anyone's using Li-Fi, let meknow.
Speaking of light reading, I'dbe interested to see one of
those deployments actuallyworking up and running what else
(37:58):
we got going on.
So the one thing that we do havegoing on that I did not get a
chance to attend this year wasPrague.
Wlpc Prague happened.
It's over, it's done.
It looked cool.
I was hoping for tons ofinformation coming online to see
what the presentations were.
(38:18):
There was some information thatwas posted.
I can't wait to see thosepresentations.
I can't wait for WLPC inPhoenix.
Missing Prague made me want togo to Phoenix even more because
I know it's coming, and I didmiss the teams, the teams out
there.
Probably I missed everyone.
I did, honestly.
I had a conversation thismorning with everyone's favorite
(38:38):
wireless you know one ofeveryone's favorite wireless
personalities, mr sean bender,and I said you know, sean, it
wasn't even the presentationsthat I missed, or or the scenery
, or being in prague, or Prague,or the romance that comes with
Wi-Fi in Prague, it was thestreet meet bro.
It was the three o'clock in themorning.
(39:00):
Scooter rides to go get someshawarma.
That is honestly what I missedthe most this year.
That was what gave me the FOMO,the presentations.
I was like I'm sure we're goingto see some of these in Phoenix
.
But dude, it was the shawarma onthe streets of Prague at three
o'clock in the morning thatreally had me down.
Don't know if we're going tofind shawarma on the streets of
Phoenix at 3 am, but there is anincredible taqueria there
(39:23):
called Taqueria El Rey orsomething.
I can't remember what it wascalled.
Anyway, they've got greattortas.
Tortas El Rey, I think, is whatit was called Anyway.
So if you want to find a goodtorta in Phoenix, let me know.
Also, start planning now todrink a lot of Purple Drink and
a trip to our favorite friedchicken joint in Phoenix, lolo's
(39:47):
Chicken and Waffles.
Make your plans now to join usat WLPC Phoenix at Lolo's.
It's become a tradition Anyway.
So, that being said, there wassome stuff that happened at WLPC
Prague that I was reallyinterested in specifically, and
(40:09):
let me see if I can bring it upon LinkedIn where shout out to
the team that used an old Ciscowireless access point and turned
it into a spectrum analyzer,leveraging the Cognio chipset.
I'm not even sure what happenedhere with this thing.
Let me see if I can bring it upon LinkedIn.
I'm not even sure how thisworked or what it did, but it
was like, wait a minute, youjust took an old spectrum
(40:29):
analyzer and leveraged the chip.
Or you just took an old ap andused the chipset in there and I
think, like jim florwick wasjust probably all smiles there.
Where is it?
Cadle, here, cadle tnh, digginginto the key benefits of wi-fi
spectrum analysis and analyzersthe features he finds most
useful in his daily work.
(40:50):
Here I'm sharing my LinkedInwith y'all.
Look, oh, this is the NickTurner one, old Nick Turner.
Okay, look see A secret project.
Okay, it's Kettle and NickTurner Secret project a 3702 in
a 3D printed box, powered by apower bank, while wearing the
Microsoft XP Bliss sweater anddoing spectrum analysis.
(41:12):
And there's the cameo on thescreen of Mr Jim Florwick popped
up there.
Dude, I hope that this makes itsway into WLPC Phoenix and I
hope to see this soon, becausethat is pretty creative.
Also, there's a cool box ofBaofeng radios sitting right
there.
That is pretty creative, man,and I want to see what they did
(41:33):
there, because radio is sittingright there.
That is pretty creative, man,and I want to see what they did
there because, god, was I a fanof cognio, jim?
Uh, cognio was so cool.
I mean, what a freaking.
Those pcmsa cards wereincredible, so I was.
I was interested to see that.
Also, dude hamina winning thewinning the social media award
for cranking out one new featurefor every day that they were at
wlp and some of the featureswere incredible and some of them
(41:56):
were, you know, maybe notearth-shattering, but they were
great.
But the fact that they wereputting out a new feature every
day at WLPC was really cool.
So I did miss the team at WLPC.
I hope everyone had atremendous time in Prague.
Wispapalooza happened rightbefore that.
We're actually going to betalking to someone about
Wispapalooza.
I think Dimitri and I are goingto jump on a podcast, maybe not
(42:19):
today.
It's kind of today might begone, but next week I want to
bring Dimitri over and talkabout Wispapalooza, because
Wispapalooza had some neatannouncements this year and,
more importantly, dimitri and I.
He sends me a message.
(42:39):
He goes hey, drew, do youremember 15 years ago or 25
years ago or whatever it was,when we went to the first
Wispapalooza, we sat on thestage and was like, wow, this
could actually become somethingsoon.
I want his insight.
10 years, how many?
I guess it's been 10 years2024?
, yeah, 2014.
I want his insight into whatwas happening at Wispapalooza
because I think that there weresome neat announcements there
that play into the overallpicture of everything that's
(43:01):
going on.
So, anyway, that's it, man.
That's my week, my last twoweeks.
I apologize for not having thatregular cadence last week of
having the podcast.
If you care, you might not care,but I appreciate everyone
that's jumping in andsubscribing and downloading
videos and talking andchit-chatting with me.
I made a really neat videoabout using Hamina in a home.
(43:23):
A friend of mine is a homebuilder, so I went and I got her
floor plans.
I cranked out some Wi-Fi forher client.
I thought that was pretty neat.
So my advice to you wirelessnerds that are listening if you
have people that are strugglingwith in-home Wi-Fi, point them
in Hamina.
Open up an account for them.
Set up an account for the freedemo that has three access
points and show them howimportant things are like
(43:45):
secondary coverage.
Use it as an opportunity toteach people about what we do in
a way that makes sense to themat home.
Right, and Hamina is just sucha great player in the industry
and such a strong advocate forwireless that making that
version available and havingpeople use it is really, really
neat.
And if you have the NetAllytools, you can use the NetAlly
(44:06):
tools with Hamina if you want towalk around and do that survey.
If you don't have access to aNomad, you can use your
AirChecks.
You can use your NXGs.
You can use your air checks.
You can use your NXGs, you canuse your cyberscopes to do that.
Bring some of that data in.
It's a really cool way to showoff what we do in a visual way
to someone who might notunderstand it.
I had a great week this week andall about that will come out
(44:28):
soon, hopefully.
I had a great week, and part ofwhat I got to do this week is I
got to be very retrospective insome of the projects that I
worked on, and what I'll leaveyou with is one of the questions
I was asked was how do youexplain RF and propagation to
someone who doesn't knowanything about wireless and
probably doesn't care, and soI'm going to go over that
example real quick so I can editit and use it as a little
(44:48):
soundbite.
But just in case you haven'theard it, you need a fun way to
talk about it.
The way that I explain RFpropagation and the way that I
explain to people where to placeaccess points in their homes is
I use the light bulb method andI say, okay, imagine you're
sitting in your home, yourapartment, your condo, your
house, whatever it is, and allof the lights are off and I give
(45:08):
you one light bulb and you haveto place that light bulb in the
exact spot that you think isgoing to provide as much light
as possible to everybody that'susing light inside your house.
Where are you going to put it?
Do you put it in the corner?
Do you put it in the closetback behind the house?
Do you put it next to thegarage?
Do you put it in the garage ordo you stick it in the middle of
(45:30):
the room, in your living roomor in your bedroom or in your
family room?
Wherever it is?
Do you put it in there?
And if you put it in there, howfar is that light going to go?
But also something to thinkabout is when you have that
light bulb.
If that light bulb is turned upto its complete brightness,
setting the people that areclose to that light bulb, it's
going to be too bright for themto really see anything that's
(45:52):
going on.
The people on the end they'llsee the bright light.
But if you turn the power ofthat light down maybe 75%, maybe
50% you're still going to getlight into the areas that you
need light.
But now it makes for everybodyto have a better experience with
that light bulb being, you know, shone in that light inside the
room that you're in.
And once you have one light thenit's easy to identify where you
(46:16):
need to put that other lightbulb.
Now do they cable themselves?
Do you run a cable to thatother light so you can plug it
in, or can you use wireless meshto connect those together?
You know there's a lot ofdifferent options, but I like
the idea of using light bulbs toexplain where to place Wi-Fi
access points in homes, andnothing shows that better than a
modeling tool.
So take advantage of Hamina'saddition that you can use for
(46:38):
home so you can show people that.
But also put an emphasis onsecondary coverage, because
that's a good way to explain alittle bit about what we do as
wireless engineers.
And when you talk about callhandoff and call drop and being
able to transition from one APto another, if you think about
light and you think abouttransition from one AP to
another, if you think aboutlight and you think about going
from one lit area to another litarea, you never want to go to a
place where it's dark, so usethose as examples.
(47:01):
I hope you enjoyed those.
That being said, I hopeeverybody has a great week.
Welcome to November.
November 1st Waves podcast.
Enjoy, like, subscribe, smashall the buttons, do all the
clicks, whatever it is.
If you have any questions or ifyou want to be a guest on the
show or you want me to review aproduct or whatever, please
reach out.
I hope you guys have awonderful week and I will talk
to all of y' all soon, see ya.
Good morning, good morning, good morning, good
afternoon, wherever you are.
Hope everybody's doing okay.
I hope everybody's having afantastic Friday.
Hope you had a great week.
Hope you had a great Halloween.
It's me, drew Lentz, theWireless Nerd, and this is Waves
, on November 1st 2024.
You know I skipped last week onthe podcast.
I had every intention ofgetting it done, but you know
(00:21):
there was just a lot of familystuff going on and that's okay.
It done.
But you know there was just alot of family stuff going on,
and that's okay.
It's okay.
We had a float that we had tobuild for homecoming and I ended
up DJing on that float with abunch of second, third and
fourth and fifth graders and wehad just a bunch of family
activities and it was okay.
There's lots of fun stuffhappening.
It's been a tremendous week,such a good week of personal
(00:41):
growth and such a good week offun and excitement and family,
and I hope y'all are having asmuch fun this week as I am.
Let's get to some fun stuff.
There's some interesting thingsthat happened this week.
I feel like I use the wordinteresting a lot, but it's been
a really good week.
I got to get hands-on with somecustomers.
I got to get out and get infront of people and had a really
good time doing that,especially with the SignalRome
(01:04):
stuff.
So SignalRome as you know, ifyou've listened to this, what
we've done if you visitSignalRomecom, is we're working
with a Passpoint as a service.
We're acting as a Passpoint, asa service provider, so that we
can connect Wi-Fi networks tocarrier networks Right now,
t-mobile and AT&T and all theMVNOs that work with them and
basically you go and you make a10, 15 minute configuration
change on your wireless networkand once you do that, it
(01:28):
broadcasts a separate SSID andit ties it into the carriers and
it's awesome and it'seconomical and it's really cool.
And I got to spend some time insome old stomping grounds this
week back up to Corpus Christi,had some fun with the crews over
in Corpus, got to eat at anincredible Vietnamese restaurant
called Vietnam Restaurant indowntown Corpus Christi.
So if you find yourself in thehome of Farrah Fawcett, corpus
(01:50):
Christi, texas, and the home ofSelena, make sure you stop by
and eat at the Vietnamrestaurant.
It was incredible.
Their fried rice wasdelightfully magnificent.
Anyway, got to talk to themabout Signal Roam, got to talk
to them about Wi-Fi offloadingand Passpoint and help a lot of
(02:10):
these school districts in thestate of Texas leverage this
instead of having to spend awhole bunch of money on a DAS
system.
So it was really neat.
What else is going on?
Today is the last day of earlyvoting in the state of Texas, so
if you're in the United Statesand you're listening, don't
forget to vote early and geteverything done.
We've got a pretty incredibleelection coming up, so make sure
you get your voice heard andget that out there.
I had a really good time withour local cybersecurity group
(02:32):
down here in South Texas.
The area that I live in isknown as the Rio Grande Valley,
the RGV, and in the RGV we havea cybersecurity group that
popped up a couple of weeks agoI guess maybe now a couple of
months ago and there's over 200members subscribed on our
Discord, which is really cool tosee people coming together as a
user group, and one of thethings that we're working on is
figuring out tasks that we canall do, where we can get
(02:55):
together and help each other outand try and do things for the
community, and I have a websitethat I've owned the domain for a
really long time it's calledPolitiquera,
p-o-l-i-t-i-q-u-e-r-a,politiqueracom, now Politiquera
is like it's someone.
A Politiquera or Politiquero issomeone who will go out and get
votes for people, who willencourage people to vote, who
(03:15):
will encourage people to comeshow up to the polls and vote in
the local elections.
And then, of course, it gets apretty bad name in South Texas,
which is part of the reason Ichose it.
To be honest, it gets a badname down here because it's
associated with people who arenot coercing, but trying
alternative ways to get votes,and so there's been a lot of
struggle with that down here inSouth Texas.
(03:35):
It's a fun area, so I figuredwhat better way to get attention
than an inflammatory name for awebsite?
And so what we did atpolitikeracom is we worked with
the local elections departments,we gathered their information
that's posted by Texas ElectionCode on their websites and
includes all this information,and we decided that we were just
going to start showing it off.
(03:57):
We're going to start chartingit, and the problem is that when
you look at numbers, it doesn'treally stand out in a way that
people can make sense of it.
So what I did was I decided toLet me see if I can show this.
Let's see if I can share myscreen here.
(04:18):
Window capture.
Give me just a second.
Let me open up the right window.
We decided to make a map out ofit and I'll show it here, if
you're watching live.
This is not where I want to go.
Give me a second here.
If you're watching live, you'llsee what we were able to do.
It was actually really coolbecause we took all this
(04:39):
information, we took all thesenumbers and we put it up on a
website.
Here we go.
We put it up on a website tomake it easily accessible for
people so that they could see it.
So here's the website.
It's up on the screen right nowand let me resize it and make
sure it looks okay.
But essentially, this is thewebsite and I'm going to hit
(04:59):
refresh and what it does is ittakes voting data from voter
rolls in the state of Texas andthe United States.
There's a lot of informationthat's made available when you
vote, such as the address ofwhoever voted.
Now, it doesn't tell you howthey voted.
It doesn't tell you you knowwhich party or affiliation they
voted for, but you can crunchdata together and look at that.
(05:20):
So what I did was I built thiswebsite and it's kind of neat.
It shows any second.
Now it's a database of over ahundred thousand entries that we
were using just strict JSON for.
Give me a second, let me try torestart the browser that we're
just using strict JSON for andwe're able to visualize the
votes that are taking place inour county and in some of the
(05:42):
sister counties that we havedown here in the Rio Grande
Valley, and you can zoom in on aneighborhood and you can see
who's voted in that neighborhood.
Now that's not the fun part tome.
The fun part to me, while thisloads way to go, drew, way to
get a good demo going what wewere able to do with it that was
really neat is we didn't wantto write any code and so we used
(06:04):
an AI tool to do all of thecode writing for us.
So AppAnthropic has a programcalled Claude Claudeai and
that's what we used, and we hadit write all of the code for us.
I'm sorry, not AppAnthropic,anthropic is the name of the
company.
So Anthropic has somethingcalled Claude anthropiccom it's
(06:24):
like Claudeai, c-l-a-u-d-e, andwe use it to write all of our
code in Python.
And it worked.
Man, it was the first time thatI've dug deep in having AI
write a whole lot of code for me.
If you listen to the pod, youknow that in the past I've done
some really fun projects where Iuse ChatGBT or I use some form
(06:45):
of AI to write the code for me,and now Claude has shown that
it's got a little bit betterproficiency.
I think it's got some reallyneat stuff there.
But GitHub just introduced theirnew solution and there's a beta
going on for it.
There's an open wait list.
It's called Spark, github Spark, and I've signed up for that.
(07:06):
Hopefully I'll get that,because then it's all integrated
.
Because what we did is we tookthe code, we generated the code
in Cloud, we dumped it intoGitHub, we put it out under GPL3
.
So if you want access to it,let me know.
I can share a link or I cansend it to you if you want to
see how we did what we did.
Unfortunately, I think we mighteven be updating it right now.
It's totally a work in progress.
It's not working the way it'ssupposed to.
(07:27):
But here you go, let me show itto you.
There you go.
So this is showing a heat mapof where voters are in our
specific area, and then we havevoting locations.
You can see where the votinglocation is, but if you zoom in,
you can see specificneighborhoods.
I'm just zooming, I'm notpicking on any one in particular
, I'm just zooming, but you cansee.
If you get in there, you cansee all the different addresses
(07:49):
and the street-level data ofwhere people are voting and from
a larger perspective, you canzoom out and you can say, hey,
you know what thisneighborhood's not doing as well
as this neighborhood, and thatmight be a place where you
encourage people to go get outto vote.
And it's also been reallyfascinating because you get to
look at by visualizing data.
You get to see some prettyinteresting stuff, like which
(08:09):
areas of the city are showing upversus which other areas of the
city, and it's prettyfascinating.
But it doesn't have anything todo with wireless, but it does
have everything to do with usingAI to do tasks that may have
seemed insurmountable or wouldhave taken a lot longer to
accomplish than before.
(08:30):
And so now, if you'restruggling with using Python for
automation or you're strugglingwith any type of programming or
trying to figure out how tomake your network work better,
dude, just turn to AI.
I mean, honestly, it's a toolthat's out there, that's meant
to be used and it's phenomenal.
And when you think about theimpact that that's going to have
on our industry and what we doon a day-to-day basis, you can
(08:53):
look at groups like Meter andyou can look at groups like
anyone that's really leveragingAI.
I know that at WLPC in Praguethere was, I think, tani gave
talk and they haven't beenposted.
The videos haven't been postedyet, but Tony gave a talk
talking about AI and you knowit's making its way in, not just
with Cisco but, you know,obviously with Juniper Mist and
(09:15):
into the HPE thing.
There's a lot more conversationabout AI and how AI is going to
play a larger role, and I thinkthat you have to think about two
different sides of that coinright.
One of it is using AI toautomate all of the things and
make our jobs easier by takingcare of the little tasks that
take up a whole lot of time orinforming us.
(09:36):
You know Mince and the teamover at Cisco has done some
incredible work on the Merakiside of being able to do, you
know, like automated packetcaptures, bring that information
in, do diagnosis, understandwhat's happening and then make
recommendations that you canclick on or even get to the
point of self-driving that justfix themselves.
That's really neat.
But then there's also thesupport component of it, where
handling support for networksand automating a lot of those
(10:02):
support tasks can be key.
So it's not just about networkconfiguration and RM and
identifying which channels, butunderstanding why things are
happening when they're happening, what's happening in real time,
and being able to solve thoseissues.
That's where I'm excited withsome of the AI stuff that's
happening that we're seeing.
We see it with Meter, we see itwith Meraki, we see it with
Juniper.
Yeah, it's really cool and Ithink that there's a lot
(10:26):
happening there that's going tomake our lives easier.
And I think that there's a lothappening there that's going to
change the scope in which we dothings.
In the programming example, itwasn't necessarily about not
having to write code.
It was understanding the syntax, understanding the way that the
code flows, understanding howto construct something, how to
construct a program, but usingit to do the lifting for us.
(10:49):
Right, it wasn't a replacement.
I'm not just going to jump inand say build me an app that
does this.
It's understanding how that appis built, understanding how
that web application is builtand understanding what needs to
take place that provides thatfunctionality and knowing how to
talk to it.
And this is that thing thateveryone keeps saying, which is
it's not AI that's going to takethe jobs.
(11:09):
It's people who know how to useAI that are going to take the
jobs.
So there's a lot happening inthat space and I think it's fun
and it's critical to watch.
I'm really keen on understandinghow this is going to play into
Wi-Fi 8.
You know, mlo is thatintroduction of multi-link
optimization and aggregation,and that's really cool.
(11:31):
You know Radio A communicatingon the downlink, Radio B bonding
channels, or you know, using adifferent uplink.
There's a lot of really funthings that are happening there.
Tarana is doing some reallygreat stuff with bringing
frequencies together,frequencies from different
pieces of the spectrum together,and so understanding that
(11:52):
component of it and how supportplays into that, I think AI is
going to be very helpful.
But then moving into Wi-Fi 8,where you have multiple access
points and you're receiving onone frequency from one AP and
you're transmitting to anotherAP on two separately bonded
frequencies, and how thatcoordination works and how to
troubleshoot that it's gettingto that point, I feel that we're
(12:15):
going to need tools thatunderstand everything that's
happening and can break it downfor us so that we can minimize
the time that we spend doing thetroubleshooting.
Because to do that on multipleAPs and multiple frequencies,
multiple APs, multiple packetcaptures, bringing all those
together in one area tounderstand what's happening
(12:35):
there's a lot to doing that, andI know some of the smartest
people in wireless and I lovethem.
They're great people.
But even that, you know, tryingto get that data in a timely
fashion so that you can solveproblems even for some of the
geniuses out there, like PeterMcKenzie right, shout out to
Peter, who's like the king ofpacket capture being able to do
(12:58):
that quickly is going to bedifficult.
And that all leads into what Ithink is the bigger picture,
which is a little bit of wheremeter's going, a little bit of
where now is going, which isthat whole idea, the concept
that it's not even going to beso much about the
troubleshooting.
(13:18):
It's going to be about peoplewho just want networks to work
and to do what they're supposedto do and if something happens,
inform me, but fix it.
Let me know that.
Oh hey, we found a problem.
This is how we addressed it.
We fixed the problem.
If you don't like that, clickhere and we'll roll it back.
Or alternatively, hey, we founda problem.
(13:40):
Here's the problem.
Here's what the fix is.
Click here to make that change.
If you don't click here, in 10minutes we're going to click
that for you.
There's got to be some way tointegrate self-driving networks
in a way that makes it useful,so that we can start to get more
(14:01):
and more hands-off with some ofthe smaller tasks that we have
to do.
Anyway, that's my rant.
I'm having a really good timewith AI, as you can tell, and I
hope you are too.
If you're not, you reallyshould be.
I mean, I try and integrate itinto so many different places in
my life, and specifically inwireless network, in building
networks and in doingconfiguration and doing design
(14:23):
and doing site design.
There's a lot that can be donewith the tool sets that are out
there, and they're only going toget better.
I mean, I love that idea thatthis is the worst that it's ever
going to be anywhere withregards to AI, so I think that
that's fascinating.
So what else we got going on?
There's a couple of otherthings that are happening right
(14:44):
now.
Let me change this windowcapture real quick and let's
load up some of the news thingsand let me adjust my window here
for just a second.
I saw this article this morningand I thought it was pretty
cool and it's talking about theprivate networks that are out
there and what private networks,how many private networks are
(15:05):
being deployed and where they'rebeing deployed.
And that's funny, there's an adfor Photoshop AI at the bottom
of the screen.
This from Fierce Networks, danJones our favorite Dan Jones at
Fierce Networking, fierceWireless, saying that there are
more than 100 installations ofneutral host private networks,
cranking over the 100 mark morethan 50 neutral host
(15:27):
installations in the US alone.
Sns, telcom and IT said thegrowth has been spurred by
shared CBRS spectrum, which isgreat.
I mean, that's the ticket rightthere.
And the stat that by 2030,private networks could account
for as many as one-fifth of allmobile network infrastructure.
Yeah, that's awesome.
I mean I'm a huge fan of neutralhost offload.
(15:48):
I'm a huge fan of thesenetworks getting out there.
I think it means so much toeveryone who uses a mobile
device because it's not justabout the network, it's about
what your connection to thatnetwork looks like and the more
private networks and neutralhost networks that are out there
, the closer you're going to beto so many different radios and
(16:10):
antenna right, and when you'recloser, your experience is going
to be better.
So the more pervasive thisbecomes, whether it's using
Wi-Fi offload you know,passpoint Wi-Fi offload or it's
using private cellular, or it'susing CBRS or it's using, you
know, das.
Whatever it is, as these growit's going to make that
experience for all of us so muchbetter.
You know there was a stat onLinkedIn.
(16:32):
I want to see if I can bring itup right here.
I was paying attention to my,to our old friend, let's see
here not that he's old, but heis a friend.
Klaus posted something aboutthe amount of mobile traffic
that was being delivered overWi-Fi and it accounts for
something like 90% of thetraffic that's out there.
(16:56):
So give me one second.
Let me make sure that I don'tblow it up.
Here we go.
Bombshell Report.
We're gonna load this up onLinkedIn Punch in Klaus's name,
right here.
Bombshell Report.
We're going to load this up onLinkedIn Punch in Klaus's name,
right here.
Bombshell Report Mobile dataconsumption over Wi-Fi closes in
on 90% in the US.
Open Signals Report justreleased confirms it.
Look at this Wi-Fi's proportionof data traffic on smartphones
(17:18):
is now closing in on astaggering 90% overall, exceeds,
in nearly all cases, 80% awayfrom home.
So this report that wasreleased by OpenSignal is
showing that Wi-Fi sure I'llaccept your cookies is showing
that Wi-Fi is driving smartphonedata consumption but depending
on the operator it changes.
And this is key to that neutralhost conversation.
(17:40):
In my opinion.
It's showing that if you lookat mobile Wi-Fi upload and
download and the way that itcompares on AT, look at mobile
Wi-Fi upload and download andthe way that compares on AT&T,
t-mobile, verizon and some ofthe other groups that are out
there Xfinity and Spectrum,which operate as MVNOs.
Also, it shows you know, youlook at this right here Wi-Fi
download accounts for 71% onT-Mobile and 10% is Wi-Fi upload
(18:01):
, 16% is mobile download notusing Wi-Fi.
And if you look at where neutralhost is doing well right now in
the neutral host space, it's nosecret that Verizon isn't open
to doing some of the neutralhost stuff unless you go through
them, unless you're using themas your provider.
There's not many groups thathave.
(18:22):
I don't even know if there'sany groups that have Verizon on
contract to do neutral host.
So it's no surprise to me tosee the numbers where they are,
especially that that you knowbetween AT&T, t-mobile and
Verizon.
But I want to watch thisbecause as Verizon then starts
to adopt or move into neutralhost, I wonder how that's going
to change what it's looking at.
(18:43):
But overall, this is showing alot of.
There's a clear sign here that alot of people are using Wi-Fi
on their mobile devices.
As opposed to the carriersT-Mobile, verizon, at&t two
MVNOs Spectrum and Xfinity usersproportionally consume more
data over Wi-Fi on the two MVNOshaving the highest proportion
of data consumption on Wi-Fi, at89% of their total.
(19:04):
Obviously, I mean, when youthink about the size of the
Xfinity network, you think aboutthe size of the Charter network
and the Spectrum network andhow they're leveraging Passpoint
specifically.
Yeah, man, they make it easy toget on their networks and
offload that data on Wi-Fi.
I mean, shocker, not really.
They've been in this game doinga really good job at it for a
(19:26):
while.
So I wonder how, now that moreneutral host is coming on,
especially with things likeAmerican bandwidth, things like
SignalRome being able to doPasspoint offload, how that's
going to change it Went awayfrom home.
T-mobile users proportionatelyconsume more mobile data than
any other major provider, mobileusers proportionately consume
more mobile data than any othermajor provider.
Well, okay, they travel more.
(19:46):
I don't know.
I don't know how this breaks itdown, but it's interesting to
see this.
So some fun statistics there.
I'm glad Klaus had put that outthere.
It was fun to read that.
Let's see what else we gotgoing on in the news today.
Speaking of, there was anannouncement from here we're
going to open it up in lightreading and this one came up a
(20:10):
couple days ago that Google isgoing to retire their CBRS
network planning tool.
Mike Dano, good old Mike.
Hey Mike, what's up?
Covering this article?
Google plans to discontinue theCBRS network development tool.
It's first launched in 2019.
A lot of people have used thistool and you know the Google
reader.
I mean seriously like if theycan get rid of that, they can
(20:31):
get rid of anything.
Unfortunately, that was one ofmy favorite Google tools ever,
but everyone you know bemoaningits loss but say there are other
options out there.
The Google tool was always, Ithink, revered.
Lots of people really loved it.
It's been around for five years.
It's going to be deprecatingits 3.5 tool.
What's happened now is I thinkthere was an announcement a
(20:55):
couple of weeks ago aboutFederated Wireless introducing a
new tool.
Still haven't heard fromanybody on there.
If you know someone atFederated, let me know.
I want a demo of the tool and Iwant to bring it on the podcast
to show what it looks like.
I didn't know Google was goingto deprecate their tool, but now
that they have even more of areason why Federated should be
showing that thing off.
A Rich Bernhardt SVP of Spectrumfor WISPA said it's really a
(21:17):
shame.
It is is fast, accurate, easyto use, it's integrated with
Google's geospatial data.
And now it's a bummer.
So Toronto explained a 25-pagedocument detailing how fixed
wireless operators can use thetool to deploy.
Toronto recommends the use ofGoogle Network Planner.
Toronto does not have their ownnetwork planning tool.
That goes into the detail.
I don't think that Google has.
(21:38):
So that's kind of a tough hitfor them.
Rich Bernhardt says that there'sothers that are out there doing
it.
You know.
Indeed, federated Wireless justthis month announced the
general availability.
Go figure, we covered that onthe Waves Wireless Podcast.
But there's other tools outthere by Auvik and, of course,
if you're looking for anincredible tool, you should
check out Hamina's 3.65 tool.
(22:00):
It is really, really cool.
And the thing that I like aboutHamina is that you can use 3.65
or you can use Wi-Fi in the sametool and I mean, if you go to I
think it's Hamina Wireless orHaminacom, you can bring it up.
Look, I'll just load it up.
If you've never used the toolwhich I really hope you have,
there's a free version of itthat you can even do stuff with
(22:21):
your house.
Go pull up my house.
You can go pull up a house andsee what's going on, like.
Here's me surveying restaurants.
Here's me having some fun.
You know, does anyone else liketo go to random restaurants and
go survey what their Wi-Filooks like?
Just out of curiosity I saw.
You know there's some peopleI've seen in the industry like
walk through airports and walkthrough different places.
(22:42):
You know there's some peopleI've seen in the industry like
walk through airports and walkthrough different places.
You know, if you've got a toolon you, why not use it?
That's what I'm saying.
So you can do home Wi-Fi withthis and then you can even do
outdoor.
If you haven't used Hamina,it's a really fun tool and they
do operate in three.
They do have something thatoperates for you in 365.
No-transcript, but maybe that'sa future video.
(23:12):
Oh, what else is going on?
Eero, speaking of outdoor Wi-Fi, eero introduced Wi-Fi 7.
They say that they're bringingOutdoor 7.
The Eero Outdoor 7 is bringingWi-Fi to the backyard using
Wi-Fi 7.
Unveils a weatherproof Outdoor7.
Their commercial is pretty cool.
This is the unit that they haveand this.
So this is of interest to mebecause Because, as we talk
(23:40):
about what AI means for thefuture of networking and
wireless networking, I like tothink about where large pools of
data about connections can beaggregated to make connections
better.
This goes back to when I wasworking at Comcast, when at
(24:02):
Comcast, one of the things noton our team, not on the business
team, but on the Xfinity sidethere was always this
conversation about how do wemake this the best home Wi-Fi,
how do we figure out how to makethe best home Wi-Fi?
And Comcast was really coolbecause once a year, thanks to
Daryl Deroja I'm not gonna lie,ddoggdmoney we would all get
(24:23):
together, all the wireless teamsin that whole organization.
We'd get together at least oncea year and just have a Wi-Fi
summit and talk about Wi-Fiacross everything that that
organization does.
Super cool when you think aboutthe size of it.
It's universal.
It's Comcast, it's universal,it's Universal Studios, it's the
Golf Channel, it's all thesedifferent entities that use
Wi-Fi in different ways.
And we'd all sit down in a roomfor a couple of days and talk
about what we were doing withWi-Fi and share ideas and
(24:46):
concepts with each other.
And when we would do that, wefigured out how to leverage data
from each other in order tomake better experiences, because
the whole name of the game, tome right, is quality of
experience.
How do you drive quality ofexperience?
And when you think about thedata that they have from Xfinity
users and we're not talking anytype of PII, no type of
personal identifiableinformation, none of that we're
(25:08):
talking about connectioninformation like a device
connected to a router.
This is what the signalstrength looks like and
understanding what causesfluctuations, and so on and so
forth when you have that amountof data, how can you leverage
that data to make thoseconnections better?
So how do you take that dataand integrate AI into it to
(25:31):
create a way for a system tomake better decisions for better
quality connections?
That's where my head's at rightto set the premise.
So then, if you think aboutMeter and Niall and these guys
that are owning full stack andyou think about Meraki, you
think about what's happeningwith HP Juniper, you think about
when you own the entireconversation, start to finish
(25:53):
how you can take that data, useAI to absorb and inform back
into the network.
It's really cool.
So when I see something likethis and I see a company like
Eero, which has I don't evenknow how many installations that
are out there in home and insmall businesses or wherever it
(26:15):
is, I wonder if there's a.
Maybe there's not a number onhere, but when I think about
this and I think about how theyhave access to this information,
this is a solution that is coollooking, not just for the
indoor component and now theoutdoor component, but not just
the residential space, but as wesee things happening in the SMB
(26:39):
space and people looking forthings that just work.
This piqued my interest,because now you have a lot of
information that can be fed intoa model and I can't say if
they're doing it, don't know.
If they're doing it.
That'd be cool.
If they are doing it, I wouldimagine that they are doing it.
Don't know if they're doing it.
But when you think about eachone of the carriers that's out
(27:02):
there and the amount of datathat they have access to to make
those decisions in residentialareas.
There's a differentiatorbetween what's happening there
and what's happening in small,medium-sized business.
Mid-market enterprise Meraki'sgathering this data, collecting
this data and using it to makeinformed decisions about
troubleshooting right and meters, using it to make decisions
(27:23):
about engineering and quality.
So why aren't those samedecisions being made for
something like this?
So lots of gears turn in there.
I think it's fascinating.
I think it's great to see, it'sgreat to see another entrant
playing into the marketplace.
What's really cool to see,right?
Spoiler alert if you look atwho the team is, who's building
(27:44):
these products, it's actuallypretty cool.
You'll see some fancy namesfrom days of old if you scroll
through LinkedIn and you seepeople like Eric Johnson, who
have the genetics of Arubacoming over and doing some stuff
at Eero.
Pretty cool to watch.
So you know what I would say is, on that note, always look at
LinkedIn.
Right, don't look at LinkedInjust as a social media tool.
(28:07):
Look at it as an investigativetool.
Look at who is where, wherethey come from, where they're
going and what they're doing,and it'll tell you a lot about
companies.
Just you know friendly word ofadvice there.
It's pretty neat to watch whatelse is happening FCC allowing
FirstNet to operate in 4.9.
I don't know if any of you oh,there's a big face, hey, photo
(28:29):
of Kenneth Corey, the Coalitionfor Emergency Response and
Critical Infrastructure.
I don't know if any of you everoperated in 4.9.
And we had down here in SouthTexas, as soon as 4.9 was made
available, the public safetyfrequency bands, 4.9, it's 50
megahertz of spectrum sitting in4.9, 4,900 to 4,950.
If I remember correctly, it wasright below five gig, right
(28:50):
above three gig.
And there were some equipmentmanufacturers like Alverion good
old Alverion that madeequipment that operated in that
space to be used specificallyfor public safety.
So connecting policedepartments, connecting fire
departments, connecting EMS,connecting critical
infrastructure in areas.
That was really neat and people.
It was kind of cool.
(29:10):
What they did is they made it sothat it was available to
everybody in public safety.
But then each group in publicsafety had to designate a
regional coordinator and I don'tknow how well that worked.
To be honest.
I know here in the county thatI live in, the sheriff's
department just kind of becamethe de facto coordinator for it.
There was never really a votewhere everyone was like, okay,
(29:32):
we vote, you guys should takecare of this frequency spectrum.
But there was a coordinatorwhose job was supposed to be hey
, we're operating on thesechannels, you shouldn't operate
on them.
Why don't you operate on thesechannels?
But as everybody starteddeploying, no one really asked
where the spectrum was, andthere were so few tools back
then to do really nice spectrumanalysis, so it was a little
(29:53):
difficult to monitor who wasusing what frequency and when.
But now here we are.
You know, a number of yearslater, october 22nd this is from
last week 24th FCC unveilsorder allowing FirstNet to
operate in 4.9 band.
So now FirstNet can jump in andhave access to the 4.9 gig band
.
The order will allow a bandmanager, once selected by the
(30:15):
agency, to apply for anationwide license and enter
into a sharing agreementallowing FirstNet, the
nationwide first respondernetwork operated by AT&T, to
operate in any unassignedportions of the band.
Incumbent license holders wouldbe able to enter similar
arrangements with FirstNet ifthey choose.
Opponents of the plan were nothappy.
Okay, look, jake Neenan over atBroadband Breakfast.
(30:38):
Bro, jake, you're a cool dude.
I've talked to Jake.
He's a nice guy.
That just kind of left mehanging there at the end, there,
buddy, the last line here itsays sorry, I thought I was
sharing my screen.
The last line of the articlesays opponents of the plan were
not happy, as we say in SouthTexas, obiol, obiol, that's
obvious.
Were not happy, as we say inSouth Texas, obvio, obvio,
that's obvious.
Probably not happy.
(31:00):
Let's see what else ishappening.
The Southern Ute Indian Tribetransforms reservation with open
access fiber network.
Love stories like this.
This also frombroadbandbreakfastcom.
This is really neat because Ilove the idea of open access,
building a network and lettingeverybody have some way to
communicate on it, sharing thataccess with people.
This is really neat.
Among the burgeoning number oftribal networks being built
(31:22):
across Indian country, a newfiber to the home network
spanning the Southern IndianReservation is unique.
When service was lit up inIgnacio, colorado, in May, the
network became the only openaccess network owned by tribal
government, providing itsresidents with a choice between
two different ISPs offeringlightning-fast connection speeds
.
How cool is that?
So, jessica, great job writingthis article over on Broadband
(31:44):
Breakfast October 23rd.
This one was published fiveyears in the making.
The Southern Newt Network isnot only the first tribally
owned open access network, it'samong the first of the new fiber
projects funded by the TribalBroadband Connectivity Program
offering services so cool, so alesson to be learned here.
I love the idea of using openaccess networks, whether it's on
fiber or copper or freaking DSL, I don't know or even Wi-Fi.
(32:08):
I love the idea that you couldtake a Wi-Fi network and
broadcast, have a city or amunicipality, build the
infrastructure, provide theconnectivity, provide the
backhaul and then have multipleSSIDs being broadcast for
multiple service providers withdifferent plans that are
associated with that.
This is something.
There was a guy named Kai Wolfwho did a lot of really great
(32:30):
projects with Google.
Kai moved down to the RioGrande Valley here in South
Texas and brought a lot of greatideas with them.
Unfortunately, he was involvedin a terrible airplane accident.
I believe it was a lightairplane accident and we lost
him and his thoughts, but itcontinued.
His idea of open access wasalways this idea that it wasn't
(32:52):
just about making choiceavailable to people.
It was about havingorganizations that could give
back.
And so if you think aboutbroadcasting multiple SSIDs or,
in this case, multiple providersrunning across the same fiber,
making one plan may be free butadvertisement supported, or
making another one paid for, butit comes with a high level of
support.
Or making another one that for,but it comes with a high level
(33:13):
of support.
Or making another one that hasa higher level of service with a
lower level of support.
And figuring out what's bestfor the community and giving
people the opportunity to buildinternet service providers
without having to provide thecostly infrastructure to operate
it.
And when I think about doingthat with Wi-Fi, I think it
(33:33):
would be so cool.
I mean City of McAllen.
We built an incredible Wi-Finetwork here and I would love
for the day to come when there'smultiple SSIDs being broadcast
on that infrastructure.
That's already there.
It's already being taken careof by the city.
It's costing them 150 grand ayear or whatever it is that's
costing them for maintenance.
But I would love if thatnetwork were opened up where
people could offer things.
Maybe there's a very low-costalternative for educators
(33:55):
sponsored by I don't knowScholastic, I don't know
whatever it is.
But I love the idea that youcan take a network and segment
it up, and that goes into thewhole micro-slicing thing with
5G and there's just a lot ofdifferent ways that you can
slice networks and providelevels of service for different
organizations or differentpeople or different users, and
open access is truly a very coolthing to see.
(34:17):
So the fact that they're doingthis on tribal properties is
incredible.
I mean that's really neat.
What a great thing for everyonethere that is going to have
access to that.
All right, what else are wetalking about?
Let me just see where I wasplaying tools done.
Researchers are urging the FCCto stop low earth orbiting
satellites.
Here's another article comingin from Light Reading, nicole
(34:40):
Ferraro, the editor and host ofthe Divide podcast.
You know, I don't know theDivide podcast, just learned
about a new podcast.
Okay, nicole, I'm going todownload yours and check it out.
In a letter to the FCC, a groupof researchers said that
low-Earth orbit satellitelaunches should be paused until
national and internationalenvironmental reviews can be
completed.
You know, right after I readthis article and saw it pop up,
I got the notification thatStarlink was pushing 40 more
(35:03):
birds into space.
And it's like man in the middleof all this.
Things are just going and goingand going Over 100 researchers
from universities across the USand the FCC to put a pause on
LEO satellite launches.
Warning the environmental harmsof launching and burning up so
many satellites aren't clear Ina letter addressed to FCC Space
Bureau Chief, julie Kearney.
The researchers, who hail fromuniversities including Harvard,
(35:24):
princeton, yale, ut Austin andothers, point out the number of
large LEO satellites used forbroadband delivery has increased
12 times in just five years,led by SpaceX Obviously led by
SpaceX.
The letter adds that SpaceXStarlink has launched more than
6,000 such satellites in thelast five years, representing
over 60% of all satellites.
Wow, I didn't know that.
And then estimated 58,000satellites will be in orbit by
(35:47):
2030.
Hundreds of thousands moreexpected, based on plans from
SpaceX, project Kuiper, fromAmazon as well as others.
What's it going to do?
I don't know, but I can'timagine that, like, if you stop
and think about where we weresupposed to be with space travel
, like, imagine, you know spacelike a rocket ship trying to go
up and dodge all thosesatellites.
I don't know, not my area ofexpertise, y'all clearly, but
(36:10):
whatever.
Y'all clearly, but, butwhatever.
On the satellite tip, there's astartup called constellation.
It's proposing 5g millimeterwave solutions from space light
reading.
Had this one also lots of, lotsof stuff happening in that space
race where these guys a mikedano again with the, with the
scoop on the article, this isusing 26.5 gigahertz to 40
(36:34):
gigahertz beaming down fromspace in the ka and ku spectrum
bands, for there's 400 megahertzsitting in the 26 gigahertz
band that's available to 5goperators all over the world.
And if you follow what happenedwith t mobile last week or the
last week of the week before,they were like they had all this
millimeter wave spectrum andthey're like nah, it sucks, fcc,
(36:55):
you can have it back.
It's not doing what we wantedit to do.
We can't make it work.
I think that's even coveredsomewhere here in this in this
article.
Yeah, indeed, t-mobile hasgiven up huge chunks of its
millimeter wave holdings becausethe propagation characteristics
of spectrum only allow forstable communications over
limited blah, blah, blah, blah.
Basically, they said it sucks,you can have it back.
And now they're figuring outdifferent ways to do it.
(37:16):
Space is a good alternative.
Speaking of space and beamingstuff down from space Li-Fi Does
anybody use Li-Fi?
I've been talking to someonewho does some Li-Fi stuff on
LinkedIn and I'm generallyfascinated with it.
I think it's cool, but I don'tknow of any deployments where
it's being used successfully.
So if you know anyone who'susing Li-Fi, it's where you use
(37:36):
infrared signals and lights.
You vary the amount I guess theblinkage Is that a word?
You vary how much it blinks andthe intensity of that to being
data like fiber optics, butwithout the fiber.
If anyone's using Li-Fi, let meknow.
Speaking of light reading, I'dbe interested to see one of
those deployments actuallyworking up and running what else
(37:58):
we got going on.
So the one thing that we do havegoing on that I did not get a
chance to attend this year wasPrague.
Wlpc Prague happened.
It's over, it's done.
It looked cool.
I was hoping for tons ofinformation coming online to see
what the presentations were.
(38:18):
There was some information thatwas posted.
I can't wait to see thosepresentations.
I can't wait for WLPC inPhoenix.
Missing Prague made me want togo to Phoenix even more because
I know it's coming, and I didmiss the teams, the teams out
there.
Probably I missed everyone.
I did, honestly.
I had a conversation thismorning with everyone's favorite
(38:38):
wireless you know one ofeveryone's favorite wireless
personalities, mr sean bender,and I said you know, sean, it
wasn't even the presentationsthat I missed, or or the scenery
, or being in prague, or Prague,or the romance that comes with
Wi-Fi in Prague, it was thestreet meet bro.
It was the three o'clock in themorning.
(39:00):
Scooter rides to go get someshawarma.
That is honestly what I missedthe most this year.
That was what gave me the FOMO,the presentations.
I was like I'm sure we're goingto see some of these in Phoenix
.
But dude, it was the shawarma onthe streets of Prague at three
o'clock in the morning thatreally had me down.
Don't know if we're going tofind shawarma on the streets of
Phoenix at 3 am, but there is anincredible taqueria there
(39:23):
called Taqueria El Rey orsomething.
I can't remember what it wascalled.
Anyway, they've got greattortas.
Tortas El Rey, I think, is whatit was called Anyway.
So if you want to find a goodtorta in Phoenix, let me know.
Also, start planning now todrink a lot of Purple Drink and
a trip to our favorite friedchicken joint in Phoenix, lolo's
(39:47):
Chicken and Waffles.
Make your plans now to join usat WLPC Phoenix at Lolo's.
It's become a tradition Anyway.
So, that being said, there wassome stuff that happened at WLPC
Prague that I was reallyinterested in specifically, and
(40:09):
let me see if I can bring it upon LinkedIn where shout out to
the team that used an old Ciscowireless access point and turned
it into a spectrum analyzer,leveraging the Cognio chipset.
I'm not even sure what happenedhere with this thing.
Let me see if I can bring it upon LinkedIn.
I'm not even sure how thisworked or what it did, but it
was like, wait a minute, youjust took an old spectrum
(40:29):
analyzer and leveraged the chip.
Or you just took an old ap andused the chipset in there and I
think, like jim florwick wasjust probably all smiles there.
Where is it?
Cadle, here, cadle tnh, digginginto the key benefits of wi-fi
spectrum analysis and analyzersthe features he finds most
useful in his daily work.
(40:50):
Here I'm sharing my LinkedInwith y'all.
Look, oh, this is the NickTurner one, old Nick Turner.
Okay, look see A secret project.
Okay, it's Kettle and NickTurner Secret project a 3702 in
a 3D printed box, powered by apower bank, while wearing the
Microsoft XP Bliss sweater anddoing spectrum analysis.
(41:12):
And there's the cameo on thescreen of Mr Jim Florwick popped
up there.
Dude, I hope that this makes itsway into WLPC Phoenix and I
hope to see this soon, becausethat is pretty creative.
Also, there's a cool box ofBaofeng radios sitting right
there.
That is pretty creative, man,and I want to see what they did
(41:33):
there, because radio is sittingright there.
That is pretty creative, man,and I want to see what they did
there because, god, was I a fanof cognio, jim?
Uh, cognio was so cool.
I mean, what a freaking.
Those pcmsa cards wereincredible, so I was.
I was interested to see that.
Also, dude hamina winning thewinning the social media award
for cranking out one new featurefor every day that they were at
wlp and some of the featureswere incredible and some of them
(41:56):
were, you know, maybe notearth-shattering, but they were
great.
But the fact that they wereputting out a new feature every
day at WLPC was really cool.
So I did miss the team at WLPC.
I hope everyone had atremendous time in Prague.
Wispapalooza happened rightbefore that.
We're actually going to betalking to someone about
Wispapalooza.
I think Dimitri and I are goingto jump on a podcast, maybe not
(42:19):
today.
It's kind of today might begone, but next week I want to
bring Dimitri over and talkabout Wispapalooza, because
Wispapalooza had some neatannouncements this year and,
more importantly, dimitri and I.
He sends me a message.
(42:39):
He goes hey, drew, do youremember 15 years ago or 25
years ago or whatever it was,when we went to the first
Wispapalooza, we sat on thestage and was like, wow, this
could actually become somethingsoon.
I want his insight.
10 years, how many?
I guess it's been 10 years2024?
, yeah, 2014.
I want his insight into whatwas happening at Wispapalooza
because I think that there weresome neat announcements there
that play into the overallpicture of everything that's
(43:01):
going on.
So, anyway, that's it, man.
That's my week, my last twoweeks.
I apologize for not having thatregular cadence last week of
having the podcast.
If you care, you might not care,but I appreciate everyone
that's jumping in andsubscribing and downloading
videos and talking andchit-chatting with me.
I made a really neat videoabout using Hamina in a home.
(43:23):
A friend of mine is a homebuilder, so I went and I got her
floor plans.
I cranked out some Wi-Fi forher client.
I thought that was pretty neat.
So my advice to you wirelessnerds that are listening if you
have people that are strugglingwith in-home Wi-Fi, point them
in Hamina.
Open up an account for them.
Set up an account for the freedemo that has three access
points and show them howimportant things are like
(43:45):
secondary coverage.
Use it as an opportunity toteach people about what we do in
a way that makes sense to themat home.
Right, and Hamina is just sucha great player in the industry
and such a strong advocate forwireless that making that
version available and havingpeople use it is really, really
neat.
And if you have the NetAllytools, you can use the NetAlly
(44:06):
tools with Hamina if you want towalk around and do that survey.
If you don't have access to aNomad, you can use your
AirChecks.
You can use your NXGs.
You can use your air checks.
You can use your NXGs, you canuse your cyberscopes to do that.
Bring some of that data in.
It's a really cool way to showoff what we do in a visual way
to someone who might notunderstand it.
I had a great week this week andall about that will come out
(44:28):
soon, hopefully.
I had a great week, and part ofwhat I got to do this week is I
got to be very retrospective insome of the projects that I
worked on, and what I'll leaveyou with is one of the questions
I was asked was how do youexplain RF and propagation to
someone who doesn't knowanything about wireless and
probably doesn't care, and soI'm going to go over that
example real quick so I can editit and use it as a little
(44:48):
soundbite.
But just in case you haven'theard it, you need a fun way to
talk about it.
The way that I explain RFpropagation and the way that I
explain to people where to placeaccess points in their homes is
I use the light bulb method andI say, okay, imagine you're
sitting in your home, yourapartment, your condo, your
house, whatever it is, and allof the lights are off and I give
(45:08):
you one light bulb and you haveto place that light bulb in the
exact spot that you think isgoing to provide as much light
as possible to everybody that'susing light inside your house.
Where are you going to put it?
Do you put it in the corner?
Do you put it in the closetback behind the house?
Do you put it next to thegarage?
Do you put it in the garage ordo you stick it in the middle of
(45:30):
the room, in your living roomor in your bedroom or in your
family room?
Wherever it is?
Do you put it in there?
And if you put it in there, howfar is that light going to go?
But also something to thinkabout is when you have that
light bulb.
If that light bulb is turned upto its complete brightness,
setting the people that areclose to that light bulb, it's
going to be too bright for themto really see anything that's
(45:52):
going on.
The people on the end they'llsee the bright light.
But if you turn the power ofthat light down maybe 75%, maybe
50% you're still going to getlight into the areas that you
need light.
But now it makes for everybodyto have a better experience with
that light bulb being, you know, shone in that light inside the
room that you're in.
And once you have one light thenit's easy to identify where you
(46:16):
need to put that other lightbulb.
Now do they cable themselves?
Do you run a cable to thatother light so you can plug it
in, or can you use wireless meshto connect those together?
You know there's a lot ofdifferent options, but I like
the idea of using light bulbs toexplain where to place Wi-Fi
access points in homes, andnothing shows that better than a
modeling tool.
So take advantage of Hamina'saddition that you can use for
(46:38):
home so you can show people that.
But also put an emphasis onsecondary coverage, because
that's a good way to explain alittle bit about what we do as
wireless engineers.
And when you talk about callhandoff and call drop and being
able to transition from one APto another, if you think about
light and you think abouttransition from one AP to
another, if you think aboutlight and you think about going
from one lit area to another litarea, you never want to go to a
place where it's dark, so usethose as examples.
(47:01):
I hope you enjoyed those.
That being said, I hopeeverybody has a great week.
Welcome to November.
November 1st Waves podcast.
Enjoy, like, subscribe, smashall the buttons, do all the
clicks, whatever it is.
If you have any questions or ifyou want to be a guest on the
show or you want me to review aproduct or whatever, please
reach out.
I hope you guys have awonderful week and I will talk
to all of y' all soon, see ya.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Intentionally Disturbing
Join me on this podcast as I navigate the murky waters of human behavior, current events, and personal anecdotes through in-depth interviews with incredible people—all served with a generous helping of sarcasm and satire. After years as a forensic and clinical psychologist, I offer a unique interview style and a low tolerance for bullshit, quickly steering conversations toward depth and darkness. I honor the seriousness while also appreciating wit. I’m your guide through the twisted labyrinth of the human psyche, armed with dark humor and biting wit.