In case you missed it, industry expert Craig Mathias was featured on Network World’s podcast series to discuss his selection for the WLAN industry’s “Category-Breaker,” defined as “products that go above and beyond to solve IT issues.”

We here at AirWave were absolutely smitten when we found out that the AirWave Wireless Management Suite Version 5.3 was chosen; in addition, Craig did an excellent job providing those unfamiliar with our solution an excellent synopsis of the features and benefits of our solution. If you’ve not yet heard it, click here to listen to Network World’s Category Buster: AWMS 5.3.

Summary from the Network World site:

As part of the Best Products 2008 coverage, we present a special podcast with Network World blogger and IT Roadmap presenter Craig Mathias, who talks about the distinguishing features and functionality of the latest Air[W]ave Wireless Management suite (12:01).

I encourage all of you to give it a listen and/or pass it on to anyone who you feel could benefit from understanding the features and functionalities of AWMS.

It’s great to finally see the industry recognizing WLAN management as a criticial component of an organization’s infrastructure.

For more Craig Mathias, click here.

In case you missed it, we hosted our 2nd-highest attended webcast ever on Tuesday, “Troubleshooting the Wireless LAN.”

Beyond the large attendance, the demand for a recording of the webcast post-event has been overwhelming!

So, without further ado, we present to you our newest addition to AirWaves:

Click to view “Troubleshooting the Wireless LAN” Webcast

If you have any questions or comments regarding the show, please direct them to the forum!

Here are a couple of slides that we went over, giving you an idea of the show:

Enjoy!

In the ‘Troubleshooting the WLAN’ webcast that I did earlier this week, I talked about the technical items that the helpdesk really needs to know to move from a ‘Production Metric’ helpdesk to a ‘Customer Service’ helpdesk. The helpdesk industry over the last decade has really moved from being an organization that is geared around hold times, abandonment rates, tickets opened, calls received, and other production metrics to an organization that starts to value the ‘softer’ side of the call center.

These ‘softer’ customer service metrics are geared around first call resolution, reopened ticket percentage, and other items that revolve around how the caller feels about the experience, rather than just how fast the helpdesk can pick up the phone. If we look out at the IT industry as a whole, there have been several recent examples of large IT companies who forgot that customer satisfaction is just as important as how fast you answer the phone! Now, those companies are paying for it with reduced sales, a falling stock price, and erosion of their corporate brand value.

So, to take this down from an overall corporate view and apply it to the wireless helpdesk, what do we need to give to our front line employees to improve their customer service metrics? Well, it boils down to giving them the applications to solve problems immediately, and if they can’t be solved at their level, the ability to escalate to the proper team for a quick resolution.

In the wireless space, it’s all about letting the helpdesk view real time user information, visually displaying RF information in an easy to read format (remember, the helpdesk is not staffed with RF engineers), trending information (see my earlier blog on ‘Troubleshooting Deltas’), and other troubleshooting dashboards. This way, the helpdesk can accurately diagnose the problem and either fix the issue, or get the trouble ticket to the correct place in the least amount of time.

Once the helpdesk is able to start focusing on the ‘softer’ side of their business, the user satisfaction rates will go up and the ROI of the wireless network starts to really take hold.

At AirWave, people constantly ask us “Why is it important to select a vendor-neutral wireless management solution if I have an ‘all-Cisco’ [or all-Aruba, all-Symbol, all-Anyone…] network?”

A few things to consider:

• You might have a heterogeneous network and not even know it — In large organizations, the left hand often doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. Is it possible [likely?] that a division somewhere in the world purchased some equipment that you don’t know about? If you use only proprietary single-vendor management tools that only discover APs and controllers manufactured by your primary hardware vendor, you may never find out — and if you do have some other equipment out there, you won’t be able to manage it and enforce your security policies using your proprietary tool.
• Wireless technology is still evolving — and so are wireless product lines. WiFi is so ubiquitous that people forget that the technology is still young. Many new technologies and standards [802.11n, anyone?] are still being developed. Hardware vendors will implement these technologies on different schedules and in different ways. Using a vendor-neutral management solution gives you the ability to evaluate new offerings as they come out — and to select the ones that best meet your needs, even if they’re from someone other than your primary vendor.
• Mergers & acquisitions — in the U.S. alone, there were more than 11,000 mergers in 2006. Every time corporations merge, IT has to knit together the diverse infrastructure of the two entities. Smart IT organizations understand this and select vendor-neutral management tools that enable them to control the infrastructure they have today — and what they’re going to inherit tomorrow.
• Maintain flexibility and control your own destiny. If you rely on proprietary management solution, you don’t control your network — your vendor does. If your vendor end-of-lifes management support for your product, you’re stuck. Time to upgrade. When you’re negotiating the price of your hardware, you’re not going to get much of a discount if your provider knows that your management solution won’t allow you to switch to a competitive product. If you’ve got flexibility, you’ve got leverage.

Recently some of my colleagues attended the National Retail Federation show in New York City. Just before show started, AirDefense did a survey of almost 800 stores in the New York City area to get a sense of what kind of security was in place. The results, while very dismal for retailers, are not very surprising at all. There were still many places where no security is in place or the easily broken WEP key was still being used.

This brings us to a bit of a quandary. How do we make it easier to implement better security and provide a way to audit the network while detecting rogue devices? Well there are a couple of things that we can do to help mitigate the security risk.

First, there needs to be a realization that security is not just a ‘point’ product or a ‘once in awhile’ process. It’s something that needs to be integrated directly into the organization. Using tools that can manage configurations centrally and can audit the network to make sure those configuration policies are consistent is key. This applies to not only the RF settings (i.e. what you’re broadcasting out of your AP), but also the wireline side of your devices. Remember, there are threats coming from inside the network as well!

I’ve been into many customer sites over the years, many of them retailers, and it still amazes me how some customers can be so organized where they know each and every configuration setting on their devices, while others haven’t the slightest clue what’s actually running in their own network. How can we have a secure network that will pass PCI audits when no one actually knows what’s loose on the network?!

The second item that the survey brought up was the number of potential rogue devices that were deployed. PCI today only requires quarterly scans for rogue devices. I’m not sure about you, but that seems a bit long to me! Putting in automated tools to detect these devices as soon as possible is much more in the spirit of true security. In addition to doing wireless scans, which only determines that someone is bleeding into your RF space, performing a wireline scan to determine if the device is truly a security threat is important. By determining whether a device is actually plugged into the wired network it reduces the amount of work involved with determining whether something is ‘truly’ a rogue or if it’s just the AP in the Starbucks across the street.

The whole key to this endeavor is to take the concept of security and making it a part of the day to day operations of the IT staff.

Senior AirWave engineer Jeremy Haltom discusses what he is advising actual customers in the field interested in 802.11n to do to prepare their networks for this high-speed wireless:

• how to baseline the WLAN
• The implications of 802.11n’s higher speed and wider coverage
• Impact on client devices
• Infrastructure life cycles and replacement schedule (and their cost implications)

Click to view the “Capacity Planning WLANs: How to Get Ready for 802.11n” webcast

Learn the latest developments in Fixed/Mobile and Mobile/Mobile Convergence — and what you need to know for managing convergence of voice and data on your wireless network and on single wireless devices– from leading wireless industry analyst Craig Mathias of the Farpoint Group – part of AirWave’s “Staying Ahead of the Curve” series of webcasts.

Click to view the “Fixed-Mobile & Mobile-Mobile Convergence” webcast

Congratulations. You did it. You just went out and bought a bunch of the most high-tech WiFi access points on the market. Too bad they will be obsolete in a year or two.

It is inevitable.

With the advent of every “latest & greatest” WLAN infrastructure purchase (see: 802.11n, WiMAX, mesh, “thin APs,” etc.), comes the question that has network engineers everywhere scratching their heads:

Now what?

Now what do I do with my legacy gear? Now what do I do to prevent downtime as we migrate? Now what areas need to be migrated first? Now what does my vendor have to help me manage my multi-vendor, (possibly) multi-architecture network?

These can be daunting challenges and I have to assume that nearly everyone purchasing enterprise wireless APs is going through this same line of questioning right now.

Our featured keynote speaker Craig Mathias helped to allay some of the fear created by WLAN migration:

Click to view the “Managing Wireless Migrations and Upgrades” webcast

This is the AirWaves webcast (visit AirWave Webcast Library for more) to have, as we shattered our previous registration and attendance records featuring Craig Mathias’ presentation on everyone’s hot topic in the wireless space: 802.11n.

When will the first enterprise units ship? What will this mean for my legacy gear? Will my users be able to connect to .11n APs? Will my users with .11n cards be able to connect to my old B or G equipment?

Find out here:

Click here to view the “What’s New with 802.11n & Beyond” webcast

So what is covered in a best practices for WLAN management webcast, anyway?

We discuss the latest WLAN management trends and approaches in user and client device monitoring, capacity planning and monitoring, help desk involvement, diagnostics, event correlation, network growth and evolution, device configuration, compliance, and maintaining complex security policies.

Yes, the world of management is growing and it never hurts to hear what Jeremy Haltom had to say about it.

Click here to view the Best Practices in WLAN Management webcast