An Access Point Is Just One Piece of the 802.11ac Puzzle

I just attended the Aruba 802.11ac launch and it was not what I expected. When the event started, I expected a full day of 802.11ac spec, and AP design discussions. While these topics were definitely covered, the discussions quickly moved on to other subjects.

Don't take my word for it. Watch the videos. The actual 'Look At Our Pretty New AP' session didn't really last that long. The AP didn't even get past around. If anything, the actual AP was like an appetizer to the main course of ClientMatch, Microsoft Lync, and Netflix. (Followed by an Exafort session for dessert).

To me, the format of the event was the real message: "If you want to play in the 802.11ac league, you had better bring a lot more than just an access point."

In Aruba's case, this means ClientMatch and AppRF. While we've already heard quite a bit about AppRF, this was their first chance to really showcase ClientMatch to the general public. In a nutshell, ClientMatch is designed to give the APs the ability to intelligently move clients around as application needs and/or RF needs change in the environment. This comes in really handy for 802.11ac since higher throughputs are only possible at shorter distances and 'stick clients' start to create real issues. Chris Lyttle did a nice blog post titled: A sticky problem - Wi-Fi clients that won't roam. I'd highly recommend giving it a read if you are new to the idea of sticky clients.

I think I agree with the direction Aruba has taken. 802.11ac is about more than just bigger numbers on the spec sheet. It also makes solving somewhat small issues, like sticky clients, much more important. By offering more than just another access point, I think they offer a far more viable solution. Of course, this all depends on whether or not all the other pieces of the puzzle work as required. Time will tell.

Daniel

Aruba Turns Up The AC Just In Time for Summer

Tomorrow Aruba will announce their 802.11ac access point with the help of Netflix, Microsoft, and Exafort. Once again, I am lucky enough to join in as part of the Tech Field Day 802.11ac Roundtable crew. 

I'm going to refrain from posting any major thoughts until after the event, but here are a few links that you can use to get up to speed ahead of time:

• The Event - http://www.arubanetworks.com/11ac 
• The Agenda - http://www.arubanetworks.com/wp-content/uploads/agenda.html 
• Gigabit Wi-Fi 802.11ac In-Depth Primer by Peter Thornycroft

As I'm writing this post, the temperature is 31 C. While the new Aruba 802.11ac AP probably won't be able to help with that, I'm hoping it will help make my customers happier in the near future. I can't wait to see what they've got to show.

Daniel

My Airheads 2013 Experience in 3 Minutes

I recently had the opportunity to attend the Airheads 2013 Conference in Las Vegas as a member of the Tech Field Day Rountable crew. I decided to have a little fun and created a 3 minute review of my experience:

Clearly, the review is far from comprehensive but hopefully it reflects that the event is a nice balance of fun, technical education, and networking. If you are considering attending this event next year, I would definitely encourage you to do so. 

Tech Field Day Roundtable Discussions

During the event, I also participated in some roundtable discussions with the following people: 

• Keith Parsons - @KeithRParsons
• Chris Lyttle - @WiFiKiwi
• Jennifer Huber - @JenniferLucille
• Sean Rynearson - @SRynearson

While the discussions were streamed live, they were also recorded for your viewing pleasure:

An 802.11ac Reality Check

Deep Packet Inspection

Predicting the Future of MDM

How to Boost Your Career as a Wireless Professional

That's all for now.

Daniel

Please leave any thoughts or questions in the comments section below. Also, be sure to share this post, or the videos, with anyone you think would be interested in the content.

My Top Secret Airheads Mission

Next week I am heading to the Aruba Airheads Conference in Las Vegas. If you take a look at the agenda you'll see that there are some incredible sessions planned. In addition to the sessions, I will also be participating in some roundtable discussions which should be recorded and posted online. 

All of these sessions and discussions are great, but I have a secret mission. I'm hoping to track down Peter Thornycroft and ask him to talk about the Aruba Utilities app available for Android devices. I've been watching this cool little app evolve for a few months now and I've got to say that it is quite amazing. 

Here is snippet of the feature set listed on the Google Play store:

• The Handover Monitor view shows current access point ID and name, dynamic signal strength and RSSI measurements, other access points audible to the device and handover events
• The Floorplan view downloads the floorplan picture and AP details from your network’s Airwave WLAN management system. It displays where APs are located relative to your position, and you can touch AP icons for details of current loading, channels and power.
• The Floorplan view also offers a locally-generated estimated heatmap and a site survey function that links actual coverage measurements to indicated positions on the floorplan.
• An implementation of the Airwave Management Client reports device information and scanned APs to your Airwave WLAN management system.
• An integrated version of the iperf application allows for easy throughput testing.
• We have added a tab where you can log directly into the Aruba controller and read or change configuration (requires userid/password like usual terminal access)
• Scans and measurements are written to a plain-text log file that can be saved for use later.
• Various testbed functions compare different ways of estimating location from Wi-Fi and GPS.

I didn't have time to play around with the full utility yet but here is a recording of me messing around with the handover monitor feature in my lab:

I've got to say, I think it's great that Aruba has released a tablet-based tool that integrates with their infrastructure. I see a lot of potential for this tool. It is for this reason that I'm hoping to learn more about at the Airheads Conference. 

Daniel

Aruba, AppRF, and Some Funky New Math: 7200 + 6.2 = -600

Last week I had the pleasure of attending Wireless Field Day 4 down in Silicon Valley. There were many great presentations and I will be writing my thoughts on all of them over the next few weeks or so. To get things rolling, I will begin with my thoughts on the Aruba Networks session.

AppRF and The New 7200 Series Controllers

For many of us, this was our first look at AppRF. This is Aruba's technology that allows their solution to categorize applications using application fingerprinting/heuristics instead of by just looking at IP addresses and port numbers. This is something I was looking forward to for quite some time now and I'm glad it has finally almost arrived. What? Did I just say almost? Yes. Yes I did. While AppRF is off to a really good start, it is still a bit behind something like Meraki's L7 Firewall and it is currently missing one key component.

During the demonstration, we were shown how the 7200 controller can quickly and easy breakdown application usage for each user; very cool. This is well and good but there is currently nowhere to actually configure a layer 7 firewall rule. Yes, I can still go and block YouTube by creating a 'Name' destination that resolves youtube.com to an IP but that really isn't a layer 7 firewall, is it? Upon further questioning, I was told that the enforcement capabilities will be in an upcoming code release. To me, AppRF won't really be useful until this occurs.

I promised you some funky math...

During the presentation, a key point was glossed over. It was mention by Aruba that the AppRF functionality, present in the 6.2.x code, would only work on the 3000-series controllers and up. Put another way, if I'm understanding correctly, AppRF will not be supported on the 600-series controllers. I guess this is understandable since AppRF would require a beefier box and the 600 controllers are rather light on muscle. However, this does lead to a few obvious questions:

• Does the introduction of AppRF and 6.2 code spell the demise of the 600 series?
• Is there a possible play to replace 600 deployment with Instant APs and Airwave instead?

I might be attending the AirHeads conference in March so I'll be sure to try and get some clarification then.

Increased Emphasis on Controller-less

Aruba spent a lot of time on controller-less WLAN solutions this time around. In Aruba-speak, this means Aruba Instant. You can view the controller-less session below:

Aruba Controllerless Wi-Fi from Stephen Foskett on Vimeo.

There weren't too many surprises during this part of the session. For me, the main take-aways were:

• Instant is a good fit for distributed deployments.
• Instant APs can create IPSec VPN tunnels but cannot terminate them.
• By using a combination of Instant APs, Controllers, and Aruba Activate a company could build a highly available, highly-customized WLAN across a very distributed deployment.  

Closing Thoughts

Overall I thought that Aruba did a good job of introducing most of their solutions (Airwave, Controllers, Instant, Activate) and demonstrating how all of the components can integrate fairly well with one another. I didn't see any mention of AppRF on the Instant side so I am a little worried about feature disparity across solution sets but we'll have to wait and see how this plays out over the coming year.

Aruba really 'did it right' by giving the delegates the chance to log into the management pages of each product during the presentations. Hands-on experience is incredibly valuable and I give kudos to Aruba for making it happen.

Daniel

For another great breakdown of the Aruba session, please check out 'Aruba Controllerless and Controller-Based WiFi' by Steve Williams. He's done a great job of summarizing the entire session.