Last week I spent some time doing half-day AirWave training road shows. Most of the folks in my classes were from small to medium size companies and the types of questions that I received really hit home that there is still a lot of wireless training that needs to be done to bring everyone up to speed.

For example:

• Why in the U.S. do we typically only use channels 1,6, and 11?
• Should all of my APs at a single site have the same SSID’s?
• What does RSSI and dbm mean when talking about wireless signals?

These are basic questions that all wireless administrators should understand.

There are several courses out in the market place today that try to address the basics of wireless networking. I would recommend some of the CWNP classes (www.cwnp.com). These courses are great for people who already understand some of the basic network concepts, but want to elevate their wireless knowledge level and increase their marketability to employers.

This morning, we announced that AirWave has agreed to merge with Aruba Networks. We expect this to be great news for our customers. Our mission remains absolutely unchanged: to develop the premier multi-vendor management software that allows our customers to operate and support their wireless networks.

Aruba is fully committed to operating AirWave as a business unit focused on developing and providing multi-vendor management software. The AirWave software will simply get better, because we’re going to have the resources of a larger organization behind us – and we expect this will enable us to add support for even more hardware vendors. Supporting the leading hardware vendors that our customers choose is critical to everything we do.

We believe in open, standards-based technology – and in giving every customer the freedom to choose the products that best meet their specific requirements. Aruba believes exactly the same thing… and that’s why this combination makes so much sense to us.

I’ve spoken with and emailed a number of AirWave customers this morning and have been very touched that many so people’s first questions have been, “What does this mean for AirWave employees? Is everyone going to be OK?”. First… I want to thank everyone for their concern for the people they’ve built relationships with over the past several years. I also want to reassure everyone that this transaction is a very good thing for the people of AirWave – AirWave’s employees are being kept together as a team and will operate as business unit. This will provide us the additional resources we need to develop even more interesting applications in the future.

From a customer perspective, nothing changes. You should call the same support number, talk to the same people, log into the same user forum… We’re here to help, and if you have any questions, just give us a call.

 

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Managing anything in a K-12 environment can be a very strenuous activity. Imagine all those different school buildings, thousands of students, parents, and teachers and then multiply that by government regulation and bureaucracy. In this episode of AirWaves we speak with Michael Cooper of Oak Hills Local School District who has been managing a Cisco autonomous AP based network for several years. Michael shares his thoughts on WLAN network management and how he transitioned from an, “I’ll just console in,” management style to valuing the benefits of an enterprise grade network management tool. Please take a listen and provide your feedback in our forums.

 

 AirWave Podcast with Denver International Airport: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

There has been a lot of press recently around Denver International Airport moving from a “paid” wifi service to a “free” service. I had the opportunity to speak with Mikael Rasmussen who is the WiFi Manager for Qwest Government Services and has the actual responsibility for running and maintaining all of the wireless LAN services at DIA. The free network is getting most of the publicity today but Mikael also has the responsibility for other wireless LAN services that the airlines and the airport use for things like baggage handling and security. Mikael inherited the AirWave Wireless Management Suite when Qwest took over responsibility for the network but has quickly become a convert as he’s had to deal with legacy networks and multiple vendors. Take a listen and feel free to post questions on our forum.

Recently, while doing some wireless training, I’ve had a lot of questions about the importance of keeping historical data and how to use that for troubleshooting. When we get right down to it, troubleshooting any system that is already in production is all about the ‘delta’.

In math, a delta is the difference between two items. When troubleshooting network issues, the delta is the difference between when the network was working properly and when it’s not. In most organizations, it’s the networks fault until proven otherwise!

So, what are the items that we need to track effectively to determine what is different, when things aren’t going the way we expect? Well, it varies on the hardware and the type of network you have deployed, but some of the basic items revolve around user counts, bandwidth, client signal strength, and 802.11 radio counters. For effective troubleshooting using these values, we need more than just a day or even a week of data. In some cases, we need months or even a years worth of data to identify trends.

Let me give you some real world examples where these values are important. First, we have user counts and bandwidth. These two values tell us about the utilization of the network. Most AP vendors will have a recommended maximum number of users per AP. When looking at this trending data, are we passing this number when users start complaining? Bandwidth is a little easier to trend since we know we only have so much bandwidth available, depending on the radio mode we’re using.

Client signal strength and 802.11 counters are a bit more ambiguous. These are the values that without historical information have almost no context. Often the ‘slow’ network issue from users is really a lack of good wireless signal. This can be caused by the user being in an area where there is a known lack of coverage, or it can be because something changed in the environment that is causing an issue. I’ve seen things like new construction (unknown to the IT staff of course) or, my favorite is the twenty pallets of canned beans that get delivered to the warehouse that drastically change the RF coverage.

Looking at the 802.11 radio counters can be an eye opening experience. These values usually relate to reception (i.e. interference issues) and transmissions errors. Things like transmission errors can be caused by stolen antennas (mostly in high schools!) or if you’re using outside antennas and the errors peak when it’s raining, you are getting water down into the coax. Reception errors are more varied, but generally point to some sort of interference. This can be caused by things like microwaves (the graphs will jump up during the lunch hour) or cordless phones. I had one situation where all the clients at a facility dropped off the wireless network every Tuesday at 1pm. I verified the wireless disconnect by looking at the roaming history for the clients. When I looked at the 802.11 counters, I saw a spike in the receptions errors every week at the same time over the last couple of months. After further investigation, it turned out to be the backup generator on the roof doing its weekly self test!

So, the rule of thumb when troubleshooting an already deployed system is to find out what the network looked like when it was working properly and what’s different now, when the network is misbehaving.

After going through the list of questions from my recent webinars, I’ve decided to start addressing some of the common questions here in the Airwave Blog.

One of the common themes that I hear is, ‘What kind of mission critical applications are common on wireless networks?’ This kind of question can be very complex and varies by industry, but I thought I’d talk about some of the high points that I see with some of the prospects and customers that I have visited over the last couple of years.

In healthcare, there are two major applications that seem to be consistent. The first is WiFi VoIP deployments. Whether these are the Vocera badge type of devices, the more typical SpectraLink (now Polycom), or Cisco WiFi VoIP phones, being able to communicate with the hospital staff on a timely basis is important. In addition, I’m seeing quite a bit of IV pump and heart monitors that are being monitored over the wireless network. Obviously, these are extremely critical items!

In the retail and transportation verticals, inventory management and package tracking can make or break your business. Consequently, things like handheld inventory scanners and forklift terminals are at the top of the list. In the future, things like RFID will start being more important for all retail organizations, instead of the small list of mega retailers that rely on this technology today.

“It’s better than a trip to the dentist!”

That was actually a compliment from one of our customers - he said that in his experience calling customer support is usually like a trip to the dentist, but that AirWave is the exception.  We try very hard to provide an experience that’s personal and responsive.

When you call AirWave support there’s no phone tree to navigate.  Your call rings directly to the phones of support engineers.  On the rare occasion we’re all on the phone at once you might have to leave a voicemail, but we’ll give you a call back very soon (our goal is under an hour).

We’ve gotten to know many of our customers well - we know who breeds championship German Shepherds, who loves his motorcycles, and who is a die-hard Minnesota Vikings fan (and I’d like to point out that as a die-hard Green Bay Packers fan, I still answer the phone when he calls).

Many of our customers give us standing support connections, which allows us to access their AMPs any time to troubleshoot a problem or to check on how AMP is performing in different real-world environments.  We also have a subset of customers who always like to be offered our beta code, which helps us get feedback and fix any problems before we make a release available to everyone.  If you’d like to be on that list and you’re an existing AirWave customer, contact support@airwave.com and let us know.

So, on this last work day before Thanksgiving, I’m thankful for our great customers, who help make AirWave support a great place to be.

While planting over 30 large trees recently, as part of a landscape project, I was reminded of a saying from an ole’ nursery man that I used to know. He said that when planting new trees, they typically followed the following growth pattern for the next three seasons: Sleep, Creep, and Leap. This pattern is very typical of most wireless deployments that I’ve observed.

In phase one, the ‘sleep’ phase, we are designing our wireless network, deploying our pilot site, working out coverage issues, and troubleshooting application problems. This is the phase where doing our homework and selecting products that actually meets business needs vs. just being the latest technology come into play.

In the creep phase, this is when we start getting more users and devices on our network. This is the phase where we need to be fine tuning the ‘as deployed’ wireless documentation, but also documenting the processes that need to occur when things go wrong. This should include those steps (and tools) needed to troubleshoot the wireless network along with escalation paths when things don’t go as planned.

The last phase is when the real fun begins! With trees, it’s seeing them start really taking off and grow like a weed. For the wireless network, this is when all the hard work starts paying off with increased business productivity and flexibility. However, just like with anything else, we still need to keep on top of things, prune when necessary, and enhance as required.

There’s an interesting article in Computerworld today about the need for more integrated management of wired and wireless networks.

There often seems to be an assumption that integration is the responsibility of the hardware vendor — and often hardware vendors seem to believe that offering a wireless controller on a blade in a switch constitutes “integration.” That’s consolidation, not integration.

Truly integrated management must involve existing network management frameworks — integrating wireless data and location information with existing service desk, asset management, event correlation, and other applications. This means that the major network management software providers need to make their applications increasingly ‘wireless aware’ through integration with wireless systems. This simply is not happening today.

Only when these NMS providers step up their level of activity will we truly achieve wired-wireless integration.

In a recent AirWave customer survey, more than 70% of respondents indicated that they plan to test or evaluate a new wireless hardware provider by the end of 2008. That’s probably related to the introduction of 802.11n products — when organizations are evaluating new technologies and hardware upgrades, it’s a natural time for them to consider vendor selection.

Someone recently asked me how many vendors an organization should consider when performing an evaluation. There’s no right answer for every situation, but I usually recommend looking at three providers. More than that can be unwieldy and burn internal resources unnecessarily… In most cases, unless you’ve been burned by an unresponsive vendor, you will want to look at your incumbent provider’s new products. You should also evaluate at least one close competitor of your incumbent, so you can really understand technology differences, support capabilities, and other factors. For the third candidate, consider a vendor with a highly differentiated technology or product architecture — you may not select them as your primary vendor, but you might discover some niche solutions that will work extremely well in certain environments.