Watch As I Pull A Cloud Managed AP From My Hat!
Monday, October 29, 2012 at 11:10AM The biggest underdog ever to present at a Wireless Field Day event had to be Tanaza. When Sebastiano stepped up at WFD3 I don't think most people knew what to expect. Luckily for me, I had spoken with Sebastiano before the event so I was a little more familiar with the purpose and function of the Tanaza product.
In fact, I did a blog post about Tanaza back in July. Since my initial introduction to the solution, which aims to provide cloud-based management for SOHO access points in a vendor-neutral manner, I had hoped to test out the product. Unfortunately, do to some shipping issues and lack of appropriate gear I was not able to do so. After WFD3, Tanaza was kind enough to provide me with a Ubiquiti UniFi AP pre-flashed with Tanaza firmware.
Armed with my new equipment, I set out to finally test out one of the biggest and most important claims made by Tanaza: '[we are] committed to the idea that network management should be simple.' What better way to test this then to record myself as I attempt to get my Tanaza AP up and running without having watched any how-to videos or read any instructions? Here is the result:
A few notes in addition to the video:
- I did eventually figure out how to add the AP to the map. I would still prefer to just drag and drop though.
- I was hoping the AP would try to validate that the IP address I gave it was already in use. It didn't.
Overall, Tanaza lived up to the claims of being simple to use. Probably a better test would have been to get a non-wireless consultant to do the initial setup but I didn't have any in my toolkit.
Daniel
Disclosure: As stated in this post, the UniFi AP used during this testing was provided by Tanaza. No requirements regarding reviews or endorsements were communicated or agreed to as a result.
