Onward to Wireless Field Day 6

So it's time for Wireless Field Day 6, and I don't think I finished a quarter of the blogs I wanted to write for WFD5.  Most of you know that I have been head down studying for my CCIE-W which escaped me for the second time earlier this month.  That has eaten up a bunch of my blogging time, but no excuses, I will find more time to talk about the WFD vendors this time around.

Begun, the Chipset Wars Have

As you might expect, 802.11ac was a hot topic at Wireless Field Day 5.  While there wasn't a lot of talk about it onscreen, there was a lot of talk about chipset vendors between the delegates and sponsors.  Surprisingly, Meru  and Xirrus were some of the most open about talking about their chipset vendors of choice.  Props to Xirrus for being the only vendor to admit they were using Qualcomm Atheros on-air for a yet-to-ship product.

The general consensus was that Broadcom surprised a lot of people with their focus on the enterprise and their speed to market.  At the time of writing this, all of the shipping enterprise 802.11ac access points are Broadcom chipsets in the enterprise space (Cisco, Aruba and Meru).

Atheros was the king of the enterprise AP market in 802.11n.  With the exception of Cisco who is known for their Marvel chipsets, almost every enterprise class AP vendor used Atheros for their 11n chipsets.  Now Broadcom is the first to market and a number of the enterprise manufacturers have made the jump to Broadcom due to a significant lead time of getting their gear to market.

But being early to market didn't come without a price.  There are some restrictions around the number of encrypted clients, number of beam-formed clients and whether they support promiscuous  packet capture.

I would expect to see vendors bringing their Atheros based chipsets to market soon. Xirrus passed around their 802.11ac module based on Qualcomm Atheros.  I would expect to see a number of product announcement in the coming months and for the vendors to promote how they are different from their competitors products.

The real question is whether vendors who have jumped on the Broadcom bandwagon will continue to stay there, or if they will make the jump back to Atheros when those products become available.  This will also help AP vendors help differentiate themselves from these early generation products.  One thing you can bet on, it will be an exciting ride.

My thoughts:

Competition in this space will be good for everyone.  It will cause chipset manufactures to innovate with features and functionality, drive down price and generate product differentiation for enterprise customers.

The Next Adventure: Wireless Field Day 5

So in just over 8 days I will be heading to San Jose for Wireless Field Day 5.  I've been a long time follower of the Tech Field Day events, it has been a great way for me to gain exposure to other parts of the industry that I don't get in my dayjob.  I'm very indebted to Stephen and my fellow delegates to inviting me to this event.  In addition to getting to meet some of the best professionals in the industry, I get to see solutions from a lot of different vendors and get to directly interact with them. Stephen and the Tech Field day super-crew have a pretty exciting line-up of sponsors for us to meet.

We have a 5 AP vendors coming:

• Aerohive Networks
• Claim to Fame: Controllerless and Cooperative Control APs
• AirTight Networks
• Claim to Fame: Wireless IPS
• Meru Networks
• Claim to Fame: Single Channel Architecture (SCA)
• Motorola Solutions
• Claim to Fame: Retail Wireless
• Xirrus
• Claim to Fame: Multi-radio array technology

Motorola and Aerohive have been WFD sponsors before, and I've gone back and reviewed their presentation.  Devin Akin donated some Aerohive lab gear to me last year and I've enjoyed putting it through its paces.  I'm pretty comfortable with their solution and can't wait to see what they have coming.  For Xirrus, Meru and Airtight, I've been digging through their product manuals and marketing material and have a laundry list of questions.  

The next category would be what I would call "Overlay Solutions."

• 7Signal
• Wireless Performance and Qualiity of Experience benchmarking system.
• Fluke Networks
• Spectrum overlay solution

7Signal as a company wasn't even on my radar 6 months ago.  From the material they have posted on the web, as well as some stuff sent to me by Veli-Pekka via Twitter, I hope to have a pretty good overview of the solution before heading to WFD.  Essentially it's on overlay solution that you can define performance and Quality of Experience (QoE) metrics in and their hardware actively associates and tracks the metrics across your wireless networks.  I've included Fluke here due to their overlay solution as well, but I primarily look at Fluke as a tools vendor.  Without knowing what Fluke intends to bring for Show-and-Tell, I'm including them in this category as well.

And last, but not least we have our wireless tools vendors. This is the like 3 tool vendors I want to see. 

• Fluke Networks
• Wireless Survey/Planning Tools, Troubleshooting Tools
• Metageek
• Spectrum Analysis and Visualization, Wireless Packet Analysis
• Wildpackets
• Packet Capture and Analysis

Some of the most valuable tools in my toolbag come from these vendors.   I use Planner/Surveyor as my design tool and it works for my needs. I have tested some of Fluke's other tools like their OneTouch AT. Even in the Beta, it was a tool with a lot of potential.  So there's lot of things I'm hoping to hear from the folks at Fluke.  Fellow WFD5 delegate Ryan Adzima has a post on their OneTough over at  NoStringsAttachedShow.com

I'm a pretty big fan of the Metageek hardware and software.  In addition to building some of the best Spectrum Visualization software in the market, they come from my hometown of Boise Idaho (Go Broncos!).  I utilize my Wi-Spy more than any other product in my toolbag by a long shot.

Omnipeek from Wildpackets is a solution I've looked at a number of times.  It's the gold standard for packet analysis from both a wired and wireless perspective and they have the solution that will make analysis work even as 802.11ac moves to speeds that will crush our USB 3.0 buses.

Overall, I am really excited to have the opportunity to join the rest of the delegates.  There is a small amount of nervousness surrounding this event for me personally.  For starters, I'm new to the TFD family.  I have met around half of the other delegates at other industry events.  I'm not an industry veteran, having just celebrated my 4th year in the networking industry (hey now, no young-in jokes).  And let's face it, there isn't a CCIE/CWNE number after my name.  But I do have a passion for wireless, networking, and really enjoy the opportunity to participate in the dialog at an event like WFD5.

I hope everyone logs in and participates live using the #WFD5 hashtag on twitter.  I've been asking questions using this method since I started following the delegates on Twitter during TFD3 , and have had delegates ask my questions to the sponsors on more than a few occasions.  You can watch live at http://techfieldday.com/event/wfd5/