We were thrilled to have Aruba Networks return for our tenth anniversary Tech Field Day event, which marked their twentieth overall presentation with the event series. Having presented at the event since 2012, in this post, Aruba details their presentation highlights from years past.
Say Hello to NetAlly- A New Old Friend
The secret company is one of the most anticipated parts of a future Field Day event. Mobility Field Day was no exception. But now the cat is out of the bag, and we know that the newly spun off NetAlly will be a presenter. Lee Badman looks at what this new, more focused, company with an extensive analysis and tools portfolio might present.
S1E1 – 802.11ax 6ghz and the death of Wi-Fi
In this first episode of CenterFreqs, Samuel Clements and Jonathan Davis discuss what happens after 802.11ax. 6Ghz, 320Mhz channels, and future wireless standards. Plus some interesting stuff from NETSCOUT as seen at Mobility Field Day.
AirCheck G2 v3.0; Building on a Wifi Testing Stalwart
Mitch Dickey digs into the upcoming v3.0 firmware for NETSCOUT’s AirCheck G2, which he initially got a look at during Mobility Field Day this summer. This firmware adds a lot of new features, including support for over-the-air updates, device profile sharing via Link-Live, and improved packet capture.
Mojo (Arista) Answers The Layer 2 Situation for WLAN Migration To Cloud
Lee Badman has been looking at how wireless companies are dealing with the Layer 2 Situation, where cloud-controlled APs become hard to manage as volume increases. Lee thought Mojo Networks, recently acquired by Arista, had a good hybrid solution for this in their Multiservice Platform. He definitely hopes Arista maintains this approach going forward.
Nyansa; A Clearer Picture From a Data Gathering Powerhouse at #MFD3
Nyansa made a return to Field Day presentations last month, presenting at Mobility Field Day. Mitch Dickey looks at how Nyansa’s Voyance analytics platform is able to ingest massive amounts of data, creating a full client picture of wireless performance and experience. Mitch seemed particularly interested in how Voyance can help bring visibility and sense to the increasing volume of IoT devices on networks.
Has Arista lost its Mojo?
Scott Lester was looking forward to seeing what Arista would announce at Mobility Field Day, following their acquisition of Mojo Networks. Scott had high hopes for the presentation, but the traditional data center networking company didn’t exactly announce anything revelatory. In his post, Scott breaks down what was missing, and what he’d like to see Arista do with the Mojo Networks assets.
Why We’re Not All Flocking to Mist and Meraki Wireless: The Layer 2 Situation
Lee Badman has nothing against cloud-managed wireless solutions like he saw from Mist Systems and Merakiat Mobility Field Day last month. But he thinks there are some barriers to wider adoption, something he calls the “Layer 2 Situation” in this post. Controller-based wireless may have over stayed it’s welcome, but it does make deployment and changes to large numbers of APs somewhat easier at this point.
From the Edge to the Air, Fortinet’s Full Stack End to End Solution
Mitch Dickey might be hesitant to admit it, but he can’t deny that Fortinet isn’t just a security or wireless company (thanks to their Meru acquisition). Instead, this posts outlines how the company is a true end to end solution, from their FortiGate, through switching, and into wireless.
CTS 141: Analytics Data & Wi-Fi
Rowell Dionicio gives an overview of what he saw from Nyansa at Mobility Field Day this year. Nyansa Voyance gathers together a massive amount of information across the network to represent a full client experience within their dashboard. All of this helps drill down to the root cause of problems, and surface actionable solutions.
Analyzing analytic offerings
Sam Clements reviews some of the recent analytics solutions, including many from Mobility Field Day earlier this year. He looks at solutions from Nyansa, Mist Systems, Meraki, Aruba, and Cisco.
Meraki Is Now In The “F’ACK” Game
Jim Palmer wants his readers to know that Meraki’s FAST-ACK as presented at Mobility Field Day last month isn’t the same as fracking. Instead, this patented technology designed to speed up content from a remote device. He digs into the use of ACK in a traditional Ethernet network, and how Meraki is innovating on this for wireless networks.
“Thirteen hundred APs, no open support tickets” – achieving quality in wireless networks
Amy Arnold takes a look at what Mist Systems presented at Mobility Field Day last month. Utilizing a cloud-based micro-services architecture along with a smattering of AI, Amy looks at how Mist can provide customer focused reliability, visibility, and proactive troubleshooting for wireless networks.
Nyansa Brings a Social Aspect to Network Analytics
Lee Badman has seen quite a bit of Nyansa’s Voyance analytics platform, both at Mobility Field Day last month as well as in use over the last year. The most recent ability shown by Nyansa is the ability to share non-anonymized performance baseline data with selected parties and peer institutions. Voyance has always excelled at gathering a large amount of WLAN data and establishing performance metrics with perspectives. Providing the capability now adds a social aspect to the platform for additional context.
Bridging Enterprise Connectivity
In this post, Scott Lester considers some of the challenges with current connectivity approaches to the remote office. Cellular access is common, but makes it hard to maintain an enterprise security posture at all times. At Mobility Field Day last month, Cisco showed how the emergence of 5G might be the ideal solution.
Outdoor WiFi is Smaller, Sleeker and Faster
At Mobility Field Day last month, Jennifer Huber got a look at Aruba’s new flagship 802.11ac/ad outdoor access point, the AP-387. The AP has a set of 60GHz and a 5GHz radios that work to provide multi-gigabit speeds across a 300m range. For Jennifer, bringing together all those features in a tiny, portable, and fast AP is impressive.
Intro into Fortinet WLAN configuration
After seeing Fortinet present at Mobility Field Day, Amy Arnold found herself impressed by how in a few simple steps, the company could provide setup for WLAN SSID, applying security policies, and even automation for quarantining an infected machine. In this post, she reviews how to use their GUI to achieve all of these tasks, and what she learned along the way.
Meeting the Challenges of Managing Microservices-based Applications
LightStep’s [x]PM was a highlight of their Cloud Field Day presentation from earlier this year. Keith Ward was a delegate at the event, and was impressed by how LightStep could monitor complex microservices while maintaining full visibility in real time without overhead. LightStep [x]PM might not be a great fit for smaller organizations without complex applications, but many modern apps would benefit from this type of performance monitoring.
Meraki’s LittleTable Isn’t So Little Anymore
Jennifer Huber heard from Cisco’s Meraki team at Mobility Field Day earlier this month. She was impressed with the responsiveness of their Wireless Heath dashboard. This allows her to view the massive LittleTable database and evaluate which client devices are behaving badly.
If Cisco Could Lower Their Marketing Hype, We Might Actually Be Able to Get to the Substance
Lee Badman wrote up about one of the major benefits of a Mobility Field Day presentation, cutting through marketing hype, and learning about the tech that matters to him as a potential customer. Lee recently had a bad experience watching recent Cisco ads, but seeing them present at Mobility Field Day earlier this year, he found their Cisco Analytics and Assurance presentation “mind-opening.”
