@keithrparsons - Atlanta, GA – April 11^th, 2013

I’ve been an advocate of ‘Fast, Free, Easy Wi-Fi’ for many years now. Many folks disagree with my sentiments. Perhaps because many people involved in the Wi-Fi arena make money off of selling and maintaining Wi-Fi systems for companies, and it is a far easier sale when you can convince your client the costs paid to your firm for doing Wi-Fi will be recouped through various other means.

But this post is about how Wi-Fi should be… not how people make money from it today. I’ll be talking about a change in attitude more than anything else. Sometimes a paradigm shift is all that is needed.

First some examples of other types of services different businesses use that fall in the category – ‘Costs of Doing Business’. These are expenses, with both a CAPEX and/or an OPEX component.

Hospitality (Hotels)

• Lobby Areas
• Parking Areas
• Swimming Pools
• Free Breakfast
• Daily Housekeeping
• Laundry Services
• Security
• In-Room TV’s
• Cable/Satellite Channels
• Public Restrooms
• Marketing

Retail

• Public Spaces
• Lobbies
• Public Restrooms
• Security
• Marketing
• Special Events
• Returns Service
• Location, Location, Location
• Lights in Parking Lots

General Business

• Public Areas
• Elevators
• Security
• Public Restrooms
• Marketing
• Advertising
• Warehousing Space
• Break Rooms

What ties all of these different services together? They are ALL cost centers! In real estate we call these costs C.A.M. – common area maintenance. Costs for maintaining building security, elevators, shared electrical costs, janitorial services, etc. When leasing a property, they are added on to the ‘rent’ – and are included in the monthly payment for use of some section of the building.

With all of these ‘free services’ there is a known cost. Sometimes mostly an initial capital expense, but many have ongoing operating costs as well.

Why would any business knowingly incur these costs, even though they can’t directly tie any revenues back to them?

• Because they are part of the ‘Costs of Doing Business’.
• Because their customers and clients EXPECT these as part of what a ‘normal’ business in their industry supplies.
• Because they know without these ‘free services’ their customers might go to their competitors.
• Because it is the right way to conduct business today and stay in business tomorrow.

Free Public Wi-Fi – History

Accessing the Internet from an always-on mobile device is a fairly new phenomenon. Since the advent of the Smart Phone and Tablet computing, the expectation of an always-on mobile device – it is now a solid customer expectation.

Years ago, when the first Wi-Fi Hotspots were developed, someone thought this would make for a fine business model. Provide Wireless Internet Access and charge customers for the convenience of getting something that was expensive and difficult to obtain any other way.

This paradigm still exists today – and it is running smack in the face of reality. Reality that it’s not just business people with expense accounts need to access the Internet – but the bulk of our first-world societies have this same need. Not only have the need – but now have the expectation it will be satisfied.

Years ago, getting Internet connectivity at then-expensive T1 speeds was only for the very rich, or for businesses who could justify the thousands of dollars per month for that ability. Today, however, broadband access is measured in tens of Megabits – and delivered to your home or office for prices in the tens of dollars per month.

Wireless Internet used to be a ‘nice-to-have’ feature – today it is a requirement.

Why ‘Fast, Free, and Easy’ for Public Wi-Fi?

I came up with these descriptions of what Public Wi-Fi should be in order to meet the needs and expectations of the customers we interviewed for my clients who were looking to roll out Public Wi-Fi.

Fast – note this is the first descriptor. The number one complaint of people we spoke with referred to the terrible experiences they’ve had on ‘Free Wi-Fi’. Glacially slow connections, unable to place calls, websites not responsive, and email not connecting at all. This is almost always caused by the system owner choosing to not pay for a faster Internet connection. They see all costs associated with Wi-Fi as BAD, and begrudgingly go about adding Wi-Fi but want to be cheap and fight every little cost. The net result is they have more complaints and loose more customers than if they’d not even had Wi-Fi at all.

Free – this is a very nebulous word. Some consider ‘not paying cash’ a form of free, and probably this is what most people think. But it also includes the idea that Public Wi-Fi should be Free from privacy issues, Free from subtle, devious ways to sell information. Public Wi-Fi should be Free as in Beer, Free as in Speech, and Free from Ads. These are all things people/customers desire.

Easy – this refers to not only the initial access. Having a user type in a long password, or click through many pages of ‘terms of service’ – all are intrusive and slow down the process. Easy means not even needing to have a browser on a Wi-Fi device.  Perhaps as Hotspot 2.0 finally comes out, we might have this as an option… but I’m not holding my breath. Easy means it should be just like your home Wi-Fi network. You see the SSID, you click on it, then you are connected to the Internet. Easy also means some technical things as well. VPN’s work, ports aren’t blocked, applications just run, email servers are accessible.

Do I expect providers of Public Wi-Fi to deliver ‘Fast, Free, and Easy Wi-Fi’ soon, well maybe perhaps not… but we do need to have a goal. A goal to deliver the best possible Wi-Fi access to the Internet, delivered in the appropriate manner, for those who are expecting it.

What about the costs of providing Public Wi-Fi?

Here is where the paradigm shift needs to take place. First with those of us who are in the business of providing design, consulting ands sales to those who want to provide Public Wi-Fi.

First – Wi-Fi should never be thought of as a revenue generator. Going down this path will only lead to disappointed customers. Providing Wi-Fi is just like providing any of those other free services as listed above. Companies have many costs that are part of ‘Costs of Doing Business’. Wi-Fi is one of those.

Second – See rule one. Now do it!

Third – Don’t try creative ways to break rule one.

• Sneaking in advertisements.
• Changing DNS or Web Services.
• Selling customer information.
• Any other devious way you can think of.

Fourth – if you need to, compare costs of providing a good Fast, Free and Easy Wi-Fi service to any of the other listed free services. For example:

• Security – It has a very high CAPEX, cabling, power, servers, cameras, NOC, etc. As well as fairly high OPEX with people, guards, backups, etc. Wi-Fi pales in comparison, yet meets the expectations and needs of customers.
• Free Breakfast – The room has up front costs, a kitchen, then all the ongoing costs for, wait staff, kitchen staff, cleanup – and a daily resupply of food.

In either of these two simple cases, the CAPEX costs for Wi-Fi are far less. As well as the ongoing costs for delivering packets of data are far less OPEX. Yet it provides an obvious, customer requested, customer expected need for Wi-Fi Internet access.

Everyone knows somewhere deep down, free breakfast isn’t really free – someone is buying the food, preparing the food and cleaning up the mess. But it is part of a customer’s choice in which hotel to stay at.

Everyone knows that mall security costs money – but they expect the mall they shop at to be safe, secure, and the retail shops who gladly take their money are willing to pay the additional CAM charges to make sure their customers are happy and buying more goods.

Each person eats more than $1.00 worth of food at these ‘Free Breakfasts’. The hotels are glad to pay it. But each person uses far less than $1.00 worth of data – even with a fast Internet backhaul. But somehow the hotels have been taught to fear these costs – I wonder who taught them that?

It’s all about a paradigm shift

Oh, wait, I’ve already used the words paradigm shift too many times – but it has been necessary.

The main thing needed in providing great Free, Fast, and Easy Wi-Fi to the public is for WLAN Professionals, and their associated clients to treat Public Wi-Fi like any other of the ‘Costs of Doing Business’.

Caveat to the above post. I know some locations have legal requirements to track individual users / devices who access the Internet via Public Wi-Fi Hotspots. To you I give my condolences.  Big Brother is becoming a reality… 

Caveat number two. I’ve been reminded that ‘Terms of Service’ are things that ‘should be’ used. But I’m against anything that makes the Wi-Fi experience difficult or slow for the end user. ALL captive portals are a pain. I want to see Public Wi-Fi on par with the experience one would have at home. It just works!

Your comments are always welcome. Lets start a conversation about Fast, Free, and Easy Public Wi-Fi!

One of the things we try to tell the vendor presenters is to not do ‘normal’ PowerPoint slide decks. It is sometimes quite hard for the marketing folks to not want to share their product matrix. Or to not talk about their features & benefits. Or to not talk about “their unique value proposition”… Listening to that type of drivel is the cost the delegates and those watching the live stream have to pay in order to get to the good technological stuff.

The highlight of this series of presentations had very little to do with Wireless LANs – it was the presentation by Merkai’s Sean Rhea on the backend database Meraki has developed to capture, and analyze data collected from millions of Meraki devices around the world. The audience in the room, as well as those following along were stunned into silence at the brilliance and intelligence shown in this presentation. Sure, there was a PowerPoint slide deck – but it was used to help convey technology, not some marketing spew.

A great presentation doesn’t fit in any mold. Sean spoke from the heart, and used the slides to help share with us the difficulties, and their solutions they encountered in building a robust, fast, solution.

Why don’t ALL Wireless LAN vendors do this?

It reminded me of a session with Ruckus Wireless’s Victor Shtrom from Wireless Tech Field Day #2 where he discussed antenna design to a shocked and stunned audience – and left everyone in the room wondering if it was possible to keep learning new information at that fast of a rate for very long.

Sometimes its the revelation of something that, after you hear it, you say to yourself, “that is just obvious”. Though minutes before you’d never even thought of it. Wireless Tech Field Day is designed to bring to its audiences those ‘Aha’ moments.

In addition to the great Meraki presentation on their backend massively scalable databases, we had some other ‘Aha’ moments last week in Silicon Valley at Wireless Tech Field Day. Below are a collection of those moments I remember from the sessions. These usually happen right in the middle of some presentation when you’d least expect it.

Motorola

It is obvious now, one of those ideas that just makes sense. Right up until I heard this new technique, I’d never have personally thought of it. Now that I’ve heard this idea – it seems ludicrous that all WLAN vendors don’t support it. The idea is to have a technique for troubleshooting client activity across an entire Wireless LAN. One of those things that is notoriously difficult to do. We’ve invented equipment and processes to capture wireless packets on multiple channels simultaneously. Wild Packet’s Omnipeek, AirMagnet’s Wi-Fi Analyzer Pro, and even Wirehshark with multiple AirPcap cards attached can all do it. That is, to capture packets on all channels so we can follow a single client through a roaming event to help analyze the How’s and Why’s of the clients roam.

Then along comes Motorola, and they cut through all that convoluted processes, and make this process simple. The idea is now totally obvious. Just ask all the Access Points to do a packet capture, with a specific filter made on the target client’s MAC address. Having all the AP’s forward those collected frames to a central location. Voila, you now have perfectly orchestrated, time-stamped, packet capture with all the detail one might need to troubleshoot in a single location. Brilliant, just brilliant!

Why don’t ALL Wireless LAN vendors do this?

Motorola Links

Motorola Next Generation

Motorola Wireless – WING5 and services at the edge

Hello Moto

Juniper

As some readers might have noticed, I personally like the information that can be gleaned from actually TESTING your product. Thus the Wi-Fi Stress Test we conducted back in January 2013. (http://wlanpros.com/WiFiStressTestReport)

I got very excited when Juniper started talking about their own internal testing processes and procedures. They don’t merely test their Access Points with a small subset of clients like many other vendors. No, they rent a huge tent, fill it with 300 clients and do full-scale testing so they can emulate a conference hall, or lecture hall packed with attendees. This is NOT an easy or inexpensive process. But oh what data can be gleaned from such testing!

Why don’t ALL Wireless LAN vendors do this?

Juniper Links

Space the Next Management Frontier

Juniper Commitment to Wi-Fi

Cisco

Kudos to Cisco for actually TALKING about 802.11ac. Unlike other vendor presentations, they were not afraid in the least to bring up the elephant in the room, and talk about their internal testing and designs for dealing with 802.11ac as it rolls out this year and next. Sure, the protocol is not completed, silicon is still in flux, and there is an acute lack of .11ac clients to work with. But that didn’t stop Cisco from talking through the technological challenges and their potential solutions.

Thanks for taking a stand on future technologies!

Why don’t ALL Wireless LAN vendors do this?

 Cisco Links

Are you thinking smart?

Wi-Fi letting you know you are pregnant?

Select From Vendors where ID = Meraki

Cisco 802.11ac Timeline and new Cisco Products

Meraki acquired by Cisco, now what?

Aruba

Live, hands-on access to the demonstrations. Wow, what a gutsy move. Allowing the delegates to be connected to the live systems during the demonstration. The instructor part of me was a bit scared for the Aruba presenters. We like to control the minds of our students and help them get through an interface by following along with the presenter. I know how tempting it can be for students with live access to a system to wander around in the interface, not follow what you are talking about, getting lost, etc. In spite of those potential downfalls, Aruba opened up their systems so the delegates could follow along.

This was very helpful in many ways. First, sometimes it is difficult to see the small text in a user interface when projected on a screen on the other side of the room. By getting in the same system, but on your local laptop it is much easier to see. Second, having local access lets you try things yourself. You can simply to the same things as the presenter, or you can experiment. Haven’t you ever wished during a demonstration you could ask the presenter to just ‘click’ on some tab to see what it does? Well, we had that chance ourselves. Wonderful, just wonderful!

This technique was fantastic at getting the delegates involved in what was being presented. I’m not sure, however, how it came across for those on the live feed. In the future, having the live access should NOT preclude the able to get to the Internet at the same time. Thus we had a choice, experience the demonstration ourselves, OR do live tweets and posts about the presentation. The ability to do BOTH should be the target.

Why don’t ALL Wireless LAN vendors do this?

Aruba Links

Aruba Controller and Controllerless

Tech Field Day Delegates

One new addition this session was the Roundtable Discussions we recorded, just talking about a variety of topics that might interest ourselves, as well as those watching along.

For those who are watching the live streams, or the recorded sessions, they were missing out on the discussions between delegates held while the cameras were turned off. Sometimes this was on purpose, like when vendors want to get feedback from the delegates, or have some information under an embargo to talk about. But mostly it happens in-between sessions while the delegates are traveling or just hanging out.

This time we wanted to share some of those experiences with a larger audience, and were able to do this via the Roundtable Discussions.

Topics ranged from “what tools do you use”, to “how to grow a WLAN professional”, to “its the clients, stupid”.  I wished we’d had more time to do these, and think we’ll implement them more into the schedule for the future.

One big takeaway for me, everyone is looking for Wireless LAN Professionals to join their teams. This should be a clear sign to anyone who wants to get involved in this industry. There is a large demand, and right now a small supply of qualified Wi-Fi engineers. Think about that last sentence! Remember your basic Econ classes and see what that can mean for your own value proposition.

Want to be a delegate?

If you’d like to become a delegate for Wireless Tech Field Day #5 in August, get started right away building a following or your own.

Start a blog. OK, I’ll state the obvious one more time. START A BLOG! At first it might only be one place where you can keep your notes and comments on your learning experiences with Wireless LANs – but it can grown into much more.

Be ACTIVE on Twitter! There is a large, and very helpful, community on Twitter. These folks are friendly, helpful, and knowledgable. Get to know them. Participate in discussions. Ask questions. Answer questions. Get involved!

Then, when the request comes later this spring for those who want to participate in the next round of Wireless Tech Field Day events, you will be considered. It might not happen in the next couple of months. Get involved, get active, and you too can be part of the live delegation at a future Wireless Tech Field Day!

Wi-fi Stress Test –  A Vendor-Independent Access Point Analysis

After weeks of planning, a full week of testing, and then a week of analysis and documenting… the Wi-Fi Stress Test results are now ready!

Here is the video that was posted to YouTube from before the tests started.

Here are the results in PDF format.

Wi-Fi Stress Test Report

READ MORE

OK, that just sounds a bit weird to me… But I’m trying to find a catchy title for the blog that brings up three supports for all Wireless LAN Professionals.

In my career focusing on Wireless LAN’s for the last decade, I’ve found three fundamental differences between folks working in this industry.

Experience, Understanding of 802.11, and a background in non-Wi-Fi networking.

Let’s look at each of these. READ MORE

Two years ago I posted a list of what I thought were the current state of Wireless LAN Vendors into three tiers. It received quite a few comments, and I thought it high time to revisit this list. (plus a little nudge from Zaib over at http://www.wlanbook.com.

This is not some ‘Gartner Magic Quadrant’ type thing. No hard data, like from a Dell’Oro Group report. This is just my personal opinion of where these fall. Not a ranking by quality, or by technology… just a ‘gut feel’ from what I see out in the marketplace. They are just random inside the Tiers. I was not about to try and rank these within tiers… that would take more research and numbers… then this wouldn’t be a ‘gut feel’ but measured.

I would love to hear what you think. Did I miss any major vendor? Any of these placed in the wrong Tier? READ MORE

This document is also available for download via a PDF White Paper.

The Wireless Mesh Cost vs Throughput Spreadsheet.

The “Magic” in magic is really just a combination of illusion and mis-direction.  And yet we are entertained by being convinced we’ve seen something that breaks known physical laws.

We know the woman really isn’t being sawn in half, yet we don’t mind suspending reality for a couple of minutes while we try and figure out how the magician is doing his magic.

In the world of Wireless Mesh, sometimes WLAN professionals get too caught up in the mis-direction and illusion of getting something for nothing that we forget all about the laws of physics that determine connections and throughput and watch as our customers suspend reality hoping to get something for nothing, and not paying any penalties.

In reality, there is nothing “magic” about Wireless Mesh. It follows known laws concerning RF propagation, packet transfers, and network packet protocols.

I believe that Wireless Mesh does have it’s place in WLAN Design… but many people, in their quest to save a bit of money end up ruining their Wi-Fi network by employing mesh incorrectly.

To emphasize this point, I’ve developed an Excel Spreadsheet and made it available to download. (Link to Mesh Analysis Spreadsheet) – this spreadsheet, like all good spreadsheets, pulls the variables out where you can see them. All the fields colored in Green are the input points for the algorithms. You, as a WLAN designer can choose your own amounts for these.

Here are the variables you can enter to drive the equations in the Spreadsheet:

• Expected net TCP data rate on the 2.4GHz Access Frequency
  • I started using a value of 25Mbs to reflect a network where the bulk of the client devices are still 802.11g
• Expected net TCP data rate on the 5GHz Mesh Frequency
• This is estimated at a value consistent with an 802.11n connection
• Remember – the Mesh AP’s must be within range to have great SNR to maintain this data throughput!
• Number of Clients per 2.4GHz Access Point
• Cost of a wired Ethernet Backhaul connection
• Including Cat 5e cabling, installation, and cost for a switch port
• Sample Size of the Mesh Network
• number of Access Points to provide coverage for clients, as well as enough Mesh AP’s to maintain high throughput speeds between 5GHz Mesh RF connections.
• Average Loss in Percentage per additional Hop.
  • I’ve started with the minimum loss of 50%, in actuality there could be 10% to 15% more loss because of overhead and other issues.

Remember, you are the one to make these assumptions. This is not something that I’m making up – you put in your actual costs, size of system, assumptions on data throughput and number of clients per access point.

You can use this spreadsheet to work with your customers/clients to help them better understand the value and costs of providing Wireless Mesh versus other alternatives like Ethernet cable or a dedicated Wireless Bridge.

As an aside, I like to keep these in order both in my mind, as well as in the mind of my customers. Order of AP backhaul desired:

• Fiber
• Copper
• Dedicated Wireless Bridge
• One-Hop Wireless Mesh
• and way down here in the very last position
• a Multi-Hop Wireless Mesh

Also remember the first hop is ‘free’ – only kind of – since there isn’t the requisite 50% loss on this first hop. The receiving Mesh AP doesn’t need to re-transmit the packet on the 5GHz channel. The client packet comes into AP #1 on 2.4GHz, AP #1 then re-transmits the packet on 5GHz, then AP #2 receives the packet and places it directly on it’s Ethernet port.

But for subsequent Mesh Hops, AP #2 would have to re-transmit the packet on the same 5GHz channel it came in on… thus the 50% drop (Plus additional loses due to overhead issues) Each subsequent hop also results in this drastic degradation of data throughput.

Here are some graphical examples of this process of going to multiple hops. The horizontal access is number of Mesh AP’s – one more than the Mesh Hop (two meshed AP’s equals one Mesh Hop).

Note the gradual reduction in total cost as you add more Mesh Hops. It is true that adding Mesh rather than Ethernet will save you money, but only on the installation costs, not the actual cost of the Access Point.  But also note the drastic drop in throughput as you add more hops.

In this graph we can see as the average cost per installed AP drops (savings from the Ethernet cabling costs as you go with more and more Mesh Hops) the actual cost per kilobyte for each end user skyrockets. This is a function of more and more client devices sharing less and less actual Ethernet backhaul.

In this final graph we’ll focus on comparing the savings in percentage of lowered backhaul costs, compared with the loss of throughput. The “Sweet Spot” is at two Mesh AP’s or one Mesh Hop. Each additional Mesh Hop barely adds much in the way of cost savings, but instead has a huge drop in throughput.

Learn from the experience of others, and don’t get caught with a Wireless Mesh system that doesn’t provide for the requirements of your client devices.

Wireless Mesh isn’t “Magic” – it’s merely an illusion of cost savings – you still can’t break the laws of physics.

(a note that I’m not talking about Strix or Firetide Wireless mesh so hold your comments on those vendor’s proprietary solutions)

Just a quick post to talk a bit about RSSI, and why it’s NOT the best way to judge your Wireless LAN.

First a bit of history, more than a decade ago I started into Wireless Networking. Back then the only tools we had were the Cisco ‘Breadcrumbs’ RSSI meter built in the Cisco (Aironet) client software.

Back then we thought Coverage was the Holy Grail – how to get the most coverage with the least amount of Access Points. So getting a strong RF signal, as measured by RSSI was everything. Then we found RF Amplifiers – and we made some HUGE RF coverage circles.

Site surveying was running around with AP-on-a-Stick and measuring how far the RF coverage went. That was all. Just RSSI.

Sad to admit, but I did hundreds of these. (I can only sleep at night knowing that everyone did it that way and no one had any better idea back then of what else to do)

But today we know it’s NOT about the RSSI! Sure, you *must* have good signal. But good signal alone won’t give you a great Wireless LAN design. It’s all about the actual throughput of data over the RF medium.

The new Holy Grail in Wi-Fi is getting the network to provide the actual data throughput and specs needed by the client devices. That is all encompassing.

So instead of measuring only for RSSI, we really need to be measuring better the net throughput, under load, of our Wireless Networks.

Sure, an RF amplifier can transmit a strong signal a long ways… but the net result is you have clients that can see the AP, but the AP can’t see the clients. And you now have HUGE contention domains (Collision Domains) where all devices must wait for the others they can see on the same channel to ‘Share’ the RF medium.

Remember – it’s not about RSSI – it’s about consistent, measured, available throughput!