Advancing the Wireless Frontier: Pioneering Partnerships, Long-Distance Milestones, and Expert-Led Learning

Battling a cold but undeterred, I, Drew Lentz – your Wireless Nerd – bring you a riveting update from the wireless realm that vows to transform your understanding of Open Wi-Fi's potential. Tune in as we dissect Net Experience's game-changing collaboration with Pavlov, a union set to revolutionize affordable wireless solutions. We're raising our glasses to their global partnerships and fresh influx of investments while marveling at the impressive new distance record set by 802.11ah, also known as HaLow. This episode is a treasure trove of insights into the seismic shifts and future of Wi-Fi connectivity that you won't want to miss.

The excitement builds as we approach the Wireless LAN Professionals Conference (WLPC) in Phoenix, and I've got the scoop on what's in store. Imagine honing your expertise in Secure Wi-Fi architecture or Python programming through an array of specialized boot camps, guided by industry gurus like Devin Akin and Phil Morgan. Moreover, we delve into the intricacies of Multi-Link Operation (MLO) in Wi-Fi networks and the promise of AI as a simplifying force. Whether you're a tech aficionado or a wireless professional, this discussion will captivate and inspire you with innovative intersections of technology, education, and community building.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:31

11.39 in the AM on Saturday, february 3rd. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, whatever it is, as long as you're not as under the weather as I am. Hello everybody, my name is Drew Lentz, I'm the wireless nerd and this is Waves for the week of this past week, last week in January, first week in February 2024. A little bit nasally this morning, that's okay. My camera's doing some weird stuff. It's trying to hunt on my face. Let's see if I can make it focus. Anyway, good morning I. You know this is a little bit overdue, but I wanted to make sure I got something put out.

Speaker 1: 1:04

This week I've been a little bit under the weather. It's been really difficult to breathe and talk and whatnot, but I'm trying to get my game face on. I'm hosting an event tonight for the Junior League of McAllen, which is a local group that helps our community and helps support a lot of things in the initiatives that happen down here in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, where I live. So I figured why not start the day off with a nice Waves podcast? Yay, cue the crowd Applause. I don't know if anybody's going to listen. Live, that's okay, because I want to at least make sure that I get this thing post on all the podcasts, and I do appreciate all the downloads. Thank you so much. I hit a milestone this past week with the number of downloads that I've had. Really great to see so many people downloading and sending back information and saying, hey, man, we really appreciate everything you're saying, so it's really cool. I forgot to check my mic levels. They look okay. I think I sound okay. I definitely have the face for radio, as they say. But if you can see this video, man, I am rocking this classic, I know HTML t-shirt. My buddy Ahmed decided one day that he thought that that would make a good prize for me for a gift. So I appreciate that. Nice little reference to Silicon Valley, anyway. So there's a couple things I want to talk about. What's new, what's now, what's next?

Speaker 1: 2:20

In the wireless industry Right now, there's some new things that have happened that I thought are pretty cool, definitely cool to pay attention to, especially if you've seen what I've done and where I've been over the last couple of years and some of the projects I've gotten involved in. There was a little bit of consolidation in the industry. That seems to be a theme. It seems to be a little bit of consolidation going on overall. Excuse me, pardon me for that, but the one I want to talk about today is Net Experience and Pavlov. Now, this is so cool to me. It was great to see this happening.

Speaker 1: 2:51

Open Wi-Fi is a whole near and dear to my heart. It's an open standards, open source based project that allows people to leverage equipment and hardware from multiple vendors and multiple contributors to make sure that you can get a great wireless experience without having to break the bank. Open Wi-Fi has done a lot. When I was at Meta, we did a lot on the connectivity team there to make sure that we had a product that was able to take over the marketplace for what we were trying to do. And now, seeing that Pavlov has made this acquisition of Net Experience, I think that it is awesome. First, the details out of the way the Net Experience subsidiary will remain based in Canada, which is really, really good to see my buddy CEO, bernard, and CTO, my old friend, marcel Think about Bel Air Networks for those of you all that go back to that, marcel, I'm so happy for y'all. I think that you guys are going to continue to run that team based out of Canada. It's going to be its own independent group underneath Pavlov. If you don't know who Pavlov is, pavlov is one of the key players globally in the MDU space. That's multiple dwelling units, that's apartments, housing complexes, retirement communities, things like that. Pavlov plays a really, really strong game there. And to know that they're moving in the direction of not just embracing Open Wi-Fi but acquiring arguably the top company out there that is making Open Wi-Fi compatible equipment or not equipment, but the software that runs on the AP, the software that runs as the network management service, all of that runs on that Open Wi-Fi hardware.

Speaker 1: 4:17

If you were at WLPC and Prague last year not in 2023, but in 2022, you experienced a net experience network. That's what we use to deploy on the APs. It's what we use to deploy for the network management side. So it works. We had some of the brightest minds out there in the entire industry who were using it and loving it, and you know my challenge to everyone that was there was break it, show me what's wrong. And we had people from net experience there, including Marcel, who are watching this network play out and unfold in the hands of the wireless community live. That was so much fun. That definitely goes down in my mind as well on the top. Oh my God, should we have done that? Questions, but we did it and it worked real well. Net Experience has also been making a whole bunch of waves with what they're doing with the partnerships they have across the world, and so if you pay attention, just type their name into Google and see the partnerships that they have, so to know that they've got a sick ground of investment coming in through the acquisition and the building off of Pablo.

Speaker 1: 5:13

I think that is really great. That's all I want to talk about on the new side. What I do want to talk about now what's happening is Halo is getting some love, not the video game series for Microsoft, but 802.11ah. Halo just shattered a record. I want to say it was 1.8 miles, so they have it clocked at just around three kilometers. It's a megabit per second at three kilometers.

Speaker 1: 5:36

This is using a very similar Wi-Fi stack on top of 900 megahertz and it operates on these channels. They're like one, two, four, eight and I think there's even a 16 megahertz channel width that runs on 900 megahertz, that's from 902 to 928 megahertz. It's old stuff that we used to do like just telemetry out in the oil fields to get little bits of data. It's super long ranges 900 meg burns through trees and it burns through buildings and it does a great job from a propagation perspective. To see that the Halo component is now getting some great recognition is fantastic. Morse Micro just had an incredible range test that they did on the beach in San Francisco.

Speaker 1: 6:19

The FGH100M from Kectel is compliant with 802.11ah Features 21 dB maximum output power on 32.5 megabit maximum transmission rate. They're saying you can get 32 meg per second in an eight megahertz channel. When you compare this to LoraWAN when you've got Halo and LoraWAN, lorawan is great at going these huge distances with very, very small amounts of data. 22k per second, I think, is the maximum amount of data rate that you have on LoraWAN. When you think about the difference between a MEG and 22K, that opens up a whole bunch of different sensors. That's not just the LoraWAN sensors that are chirping every couple of minutes or every couple of hours or every couple of days. These are things that can dynamically change the way that people think about the data that's coming off of sensors at long range with a very limited amount of deployment.

Speaker 1: 7:08

One antenna, one transmitter pushing out across three miles oh man, it's fantastic. Tom's hardware has a whole write up about it. They say super long range Wi-Fi works at a range of 1.8 miles. It's the Halo standard. They've got some great little screenshots about where they did. It was not like some just remote beach, it was on the beach with buildings and stuff all on the side. 900meg is a little bit sensitive to interference Baby monitors. You've got old video cameras. You've got old, not mobile, but phones inside decked phones and phones inside buildings Well, not decked, but you know what I mean. It's been really neat to see what Halo is doing because it's reopening that conversation and reimagining that conversation of long range, low throughput communications. Lorawen has been used tremendously well in the world, across the globe for what it can do at long range with single transmitter.

Speaker 1: 8:04

I've got one right here. I was going to go pull it out but I guess on a podcast you can't see me pull it out and show it off to you. But you know machine cues using it. I've got a machine cue transmitter right here, a little gateway. You've got all these different sensors. I've got one that I track golf carts and there's a golf course across the street and this project where I was tracking their golf carts using Laura. But now to see that Halo is really starting to do something where people are paying attention is incredible, so I'm really excited to see that.

Speaker 1: 8:28

I don't know if there's going to be any talk about it at WLPC coming up. I don't think there's any. I don't think there's any sessions about Halo. I could be wrong, but either way, if you're interested in long range, low throughput communications, halo is making its way out there, which is super, super cool. Another thing that's coming out, not long range, but low cost EkaHow just introduced this is this is part of me doing the show a little bit late. That is a benefit EkaHow just introduced yesterday Excuse me, I believe ECHOHAL Measure, a new subscription based service for ECHOHAL for $1300 a year that allows you to do surveying and data collection on your app, where you can enable the Just Go Survey mode, the one that you just tap the button and you walk around and you do a survey.

Speaker 1: 9:13

You can sync up your project so that guests can see it. It supports all of its software and firmware updates. It works with a SideKick. A SideKick is actually. It's a necessity, it's a requirement in order to use ECHOHAL Measure. What it does is for people who aren't doing planning and design and all that side, that side of the RF world. If they're just doing data collection or sending someone out to go do a site survey for them and bring that data in and send it back, this is a great way. It's a lower cost license.

Speaker 1: 9:39

We knew something like this was coming. You don't get how many are coming out into the market and just dropping the price on everything and not think that someone's going to respond. It took a minute. But here they have Measure, which is an interesting subscription based model to get into. If you bundle it with the SideKick 2, it's $49.95 and that includes it says free first year of subscription. That's great marketing, guys. It's not the free first year, that's the price of the SideKick, with the price of Measure included. Either way, kudos to ECHOHAL for doing something that's trying to get out, you know, back in that market.

Speaker 1: 10:11

There's been some colorful commentary. Lee Badman, one of my favorite people in the wireless industry. Lee, had something to say on Twitter about that and we'll see. You know, we'll see where it goes. We're looking forward to seeing these folks out at WLPC and then I actually have a webinar coming up with them on Valentine's Day. So check my LinkedIn, you'll see we're doing a little Valentine's Day webinar with ECHOHAL, but either way, it's great to see that they're doing something a little bit different. Kudos to ECHOHAL for getting them back out there. Now, that's what's now new. Is the Net Experience and Pavlov integration or not integration? You know what I'm saying? The acquisition Now is what's happening with 802.11ah and Halo. Also, what's happening with ECHOHAL Measure Next, well, obviously I'm going to talk about WLPC.

Speaker 1: 10:52

We only have two more podcasts until WLPC is live, where we're going to be in Phoenix. I don't know if I'm going to go out the week before for the boot camps, but I will definitely make it make a diligent effort to get out there. This year Things, things have gotten a little rocky by. Pretty sure I'm going to be there. We'll see how it goes. That being said, some of the boot camps. If you haven't thought about going to WLPC yet, let me just go over a quick list of the boot camps that are happening. Those are going to start. I believe they start. Let me make sure I don't mess the dates up. The boot camps are the 17th through the 19th of February. The boot camps right now Secure Wi-Fi architecture masterclass with JJ and Jonathan Davis.

Speaker 1: 11:27

Python for wireless engineers Jake Snyder, one of my favorite people in the industry, especially to learn from Hell of a teacher. Wi-fi adjustment class with Devon Aiken Make sure you get a hug from Devon. Rockstar wireless analysis with Raseka. Dude, raseka is like I love, everybody loves Raseka. So there's nothing that I can say there that no one has said already. Raseka is great. So Rockstar wireless analysis that's part of Rockstar Wi-Fi. So Chris A Vance will be out there somewhere. Raseka is teaching this one, though, and Chris is actually teaching the Rockstar Cisco 9800 V2. So you're going to have to pick and choose there.

Speaker 1: 11:59

Lora Wann Troy if you don't know, troy, martin, troy and Lora Wann go hand in hand, so it's a great, great time to learn about Lora Wann. Don't think they're going to be covering Halo in there, but we'll see Hamina. Certified network architecture boot camp with Pete McKenzie Mr Peter McKenzie, love him. Wna 109 with Tom Carpenter. Rutgers. Certified wireless associate with John Deegan A Vance is teaching the Rockstar Cisco advanced Wi-Fi security boot camp. Real world defense against dark arts.

Speaker 1: 12:24

Phil Morgan dude, if you have not taken a Phil Morgan class at WLPC, I would highly suggest that you do Maybe not the first year, like you know. Settle in and figure out what WLPC is first. But then you know, like the second or third time, maybe the third time that you go, go sit down with Phil and sit through one of his classes. Man, they are, they're awesome. I've had the pleasure of sitting in some and also I've had the pleasure of signing up for some and not having a chance to sit down in them. But Phil's a great guy and so much fun to learn from. And then six gigahertz the spectrum and you, that sounds like an old education film from like high school. You know, for us that are born in the 1900s, six gigahertz the spectrum and you, scott McDermott's laying down the law, it'll be a fantastic show for him.

Speaker 1: 13:09

Now, something that I don't know is going to be talked about a lot and I, you know I clicked on the on the WLAMPRO's deal to see about the deep dives because I really wanted to. I had a customer of person, a customer, a friend, et cetera, et cetera, asked me a question the other day about MLO and about why it wasn't your typical Wi-Fi 7. Ask, it wasn't. Hey, how's Wi-Fi 7 gonna change the enterprise? How's Wi-Fi 7 gonna change education? Blah, blah, blah. It was. Hey, this MLO thing sounds fantastic.

Speaker 1: 13:40

How in the hell are you supposed to troubleshoot that If you've got a client device that's using maybe one radio for one thing and maybe one radio for another and it's downloading on one and uploading on another and multiple packets coming from two at the same time? How in the world are you supposed to troubleshoot Wi-Fi links for client devices when MLO is enabled? That was the question that was posed to me. I didn't have a good answer because so much of it's still trying to figure out what to do, but the first thing that came to mind is the power of AI. This is where that AI conversation holds so much water, because I immediately thought about the Wi-Fi cactus and I thought about Peter McKenzie and antennas all over the back of my laptop and I thought about how do you measure, monitor and ministry multiple frequencies all at the same time, doing things with split second reactions and without AI, it's gonna be increasingly more difficult to really understand how our troubleshooting procedures are gonna take place. So that's something I'm keen to learn a lot more about troubleshooting MLO specifically for client connectivity, for packet loss, for things like that. I don't know, like I said, if that's gonna be covered at WLPC. I hope it is. If not, that will make a fantastic sidebar conversation for everyone.

Speaker 1: 14:48

That being said, let me look at the comments right here. Anders, nelson, anders, look as long as a Wi-Fi moose. It was hilarious. He sent a comment in one time when I was doing this webinar and says the guy with the moose. And everyone was like who is that? Who's the guy with the moose? I don't know who the guy with the moose is. I was like clearly you're not that deep of a part of the Wi-Fi industry if you don't know who the guy with the moose is. Anyway, stu, stu Gormand is on his own right now. So, stu, nobody better to talk about ECHO-HOW than Stu survey equals. Just go autopilot and continue to stop and go with GPS. Stu, thank you for putting in there. Come for Phil Morgan class. Stay for the Ducky. If you don't have a Wi-Fi Ducky, phil Morgan is definitely the guy to give it to you.

Speaker 1: 15:28

I'm glad to see some interaction we got over here on the chat. It's cool. Sometimes I just sit here on mornings and stare into a blank camera and talk to myself. You know, this reminds me of the old days in radio. You're just talking to a wall and hoping that somebody's listening, but I'm glad to see that people are actually listening, so I appreciate it.

Speaker 1: 15:45

That being said, I do appreciate everyone who downloads the podcast. I think Spotify is the number one. The last time I looked, spotify is the number one. Apple Podcast is second. So keep on downloading. I love it, share it with your friends. Do all that good stuff. I will get back to you all next week. Hopefully my head cold goes away. I know you don't listen to me for the sound of my smooth voice, but hopefully I've imparted some good stuff about the Wi-Fi industry this week. On Waves I'm wireless nerd. Have a wonderful, wonderful weekend. Get outside, enjoy the weekend. Next week is a whole new week. Lord only knows what's coming to us and we're only a couple of weeks away from Nerd Spring Break WLPC in Phoenix. I hope to see you there. Have a great weekend. We'll see you soon. Take care.