RUCKCast #76: Getting Excited For Wi-Fi 7

In our latest episode, Jim and John spend time with Bart Giordano, President of NICS and GM of RUCKUS Networks, diving into the upcoming Wi-Fi 7 goodness.

To read more about Wi-Fi 7, check out this link here https://www.ruckusnetworks.com/solutions/technology/wi-fi-7/

To learn about CommScope Sentry, check them out here https://www.commscopesentry.com/

Intro music by Alex Grohl, available here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsRWpx8VJ_E
and
https://pixabay.com/users/alexgrohl-25289918/

Transcript

RUCKCast Episode 76 - Getting Excited about Wi-Fi 7

John Deegan: Good afternoon, Mr. Palmer. How are you, sir? Welcome back. 

Jim Palmer: Doing good, John. How about you?

John Deegan: I'm great. Fantastic. And as a matter of fact, it's a, it's a very good day on the RuckCast. We have a special guest. 

Jim Palmer: We do have a special guest, but it also means we can't be our normal self. We have to actually, like before when we had Mittal on, you know, it was like, that was my boss and you didn't have to care.

But now we have somebody who actually. 

John Deegan: We really have to behave today. 

Jim Palmer: We do.

Bart Giordano: I'm the most likely to be misbehaving on this episode. I would imagine. 

Jim Palmer: And it's recorded, so now we have an out. All right. So, 

John Deegan: I'm just going to leave it at that. 

Jim Palmer: So Bart we're, so, all right, we're doing this all backwards today.

So. We are joined by Bart Giordano, who is the president of CommScope NICS. I think that's what we're, what it is now, Bart. Am I right as I think that's what your title is? 

Bart Giordano: Yeah. So CommScope's organized, as you know, across five business segments, one which we call Networking, Intelligence, Cellular, and Security, and I have the privilege of leading these three business units, one being RUCKUS Networks, for which I'm also the general manager, but also in our Intelligent Cellular networks business, and a new business we're incubating around IoT device security that we call CommScope Sentry.

Jim Palmer: And, you know, I just, I actually had a call with those folks last week, I think, and I'm, I'm actually very excited to actually dig more into this, because as I was able to talk with them And we were kind of going through what that means and what that is. All of a sudden, I was just like, all these ideas just sort of like pop, you know, it's like, Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait.

So 

Bart Giordano: I have the same reaction. We actually have a very sophisticated, physically secure PKI infrastructure that we operate this business off of. And the first time I toured it, I got through the first seven layers of security and then they told me you can't go any further. You don't have right access.

That's for my own business, 

Jim Palmer: But we'll have to come back. That's, that's a whole other topic. We talked, we talked security last episode. So now, now we got it as much as I'd love to talk it. We have to cut that out and we have to actually talk about a different topic today. So John.

I've heard about this thing coming out and I might have talked a little bit about we might have talked about it on the podcast here about a thing called Wi-Fi 7. I've heard some rumors, heard some things about it and we decided that it would be. Kind of an interesting idea, interesting episode to bring Bart on to talk about Wi-Fi 7 from a different level.

So John and I are, we're Wi-Fi engineers. You know, we have other titles, but at the heart of it, we just like building Wi-Fi networks. It's what we're good at. And, and so we look at things from that perspective. And so today, for the next 25 to 30 minutes, I want to talk to Bart about Wi-Fi 7 and get a little bit different perspective of what Wi-Fi 7 actually means not only for RUCKUS, but just for, you know, the business across all the verticals and all the segments.

So putting on your, your president hat for a minute. What does Wi-Fi 7 actually mean for RUCKUS and for the business of making networking gear?

Bart Giordano: Well, I think, you know, across the industry, we recognize I've been doing Wi-Fi for 15 20 years now. Going, you know, we all kind of measure our time in Wi-Fi by these standards, right?

So I measure mine across the 11 G to 11 N transition, right? So that's how far back I go almost to the beginning, but not quite. We follow these regular periodic technology upgrades, right? And I think, you know, as as consumers or as buyers in an enterprise, you probably don't have the appreciation for how long these things take to develop.

Standards development in 802. 11 for Wi-Fi 7 would have started many years ago, and there is a very technical and often political process behind developing these standards in terms of which features are in, which features are out, which features are optional, which features are mandatory, and there's governing bodies like 802.11 and like the Wi-Fi Alliance where, you know, this consortium of of industry experts and, and, and businesses come together to sort all of this out. Ultimately leading to the new silicon that, you know, creates the opportunity to introduce a new Wi-Fi specification and then the products around it, those products consisting of, you know, not just the, the access point hardware itself, but a lot of sophisticated software on that device and a lot of sophisticated software either on premise or or in the cloud to manage all of that. So these are very long, expensive endeavors for the industry, but it's big business, right? Wi-Fi is a massive $10 billion market, you know, typically growing you know, the high single digits to 10% every year.

And so it's an attractive market for a lot of players to participate in, and therefore it's hotly contested. Yeah. Wi-Fi 7, I think it's going to bring a lot of unique value over the ensuing years. We're expecting the first sort of enterprise products to be introduced toward the end of this year.

Obviously, you know, consumer products with the big numbers on the box that we're accustomed to when you walk into big box retailer on your on Amazon and you know, everybody loves when the standard has a new maximum PHY rate, right, because that's what goes on the box and That's what they try to sell on and those of us who know know that that's an unattainable value, but it helps sell, retail devices 

John Deegan: Ain't that the truth?

Jim Palmer: I'm, you know, I'm always, it always warms my heart when I hear somebody say that, you know, that max PHY rate is just so unobtainable, you know, it's just, I don't know, we all know it, but it always makes you feel good when 

Bart Giordano: We're about to run out of room on the box with Wi-Fi 7.

Jim Palmer: Well, if we can get a fourth radio, then we can make a really big AP and then you have to have a really big box to get more room to put more numbers. So maybe 

Bart Giordano: I think it does. It does help to provide some context around that. I think, unlike prior technology transitions in the in the Wi-Fi sector. Which all really were about higher speeds and feeds.

I mean that that has been the guiding force. And certainly, you know, there's a lot of unique value and unique unique features that have come in as we move from a/b/g/n when we introduced MIMO. And then you know, subsequently, as we moved to the new nomenclature, Wi-Fi 4,5,6,6E,7. But predominantly, it's been higher bandwidth and faster throughput, right?

I mean, that that's been the anchor and Wi-Fi 6E to a certain extent, and certainly now to 7 represents a bit of an inflection point in that. I mean, certainly there's there's, you know, higher PHY rates with Wi-Fi 7. The math behind that is getting very, very complex from a signal processing perspective.

Certainly there's there's higher bandwidth, right? We've got 59 new non overlapping channels. You've got five different bandwidths to choose from these these massive channels to use. But I think more importantly, perhaps is the focus and interest and opportunity around latency and reliability, right?

We're really bringing Wi-Fi I Into the realm of other wireless technologies like cellular, which beyond just speeds and feeds now can have more reliable and deterministic performance and and latency. Even in the presence of of interference, right? There's a lot of features coming into to mitigate interference.

There are features that are enabling you to you to transmit on multiple radios across multiple bands at the same time. And this is a bit of a watershed moment for the industry. As you think about the applications that can potentially be enabled as the ecosystem gets built out. I think one of the other things that we have to acknowledge is, you know, over the 20 year period of, of, of Wi-Fi billions and billions of devices, 10 billion devices have been introduced into the market.

And, you know, prior to the introduction of the 6 GHz spectrum in 6E, in 2.4 and 5 GHz, you have to maintain backward compatibility with all of those devices, you know, going back to the early 90s, right? If they're still out there in operation, and that, that has sort of I think hindered the ability of the industry to take advantage of some cases of all the new things that, that come out in Wi-Fi.

But now that we've introduced this greenfield spectrum, 6 GHz, and it's now being opened up from a regulatory perspective and in all the major markets around the world, we can now enable, I think a unique set of applications that previously would have said, you know, for this mission critical type of workflow that I have, I might not consider Wi-Fi as the way to enable that wirelessly. 

John Deegan: No, I mean, it's, it's, you just, I think you just stole the rest of the episode, Jim. We should just kind of hang up and let Bart go. 

Bart Giordano: I don't know, Jim's rolling his eyes, so he's got some contrarian opinion probably. 

John Deegan: But that's just Jim.

But so, but you know, you raise a lot of good points, and I mean, that's the reason why a lot of us are excited about what's coming with 6E and 7 at the same point in time, and I had this, this conversation with with Jared, my boss, who talked about Wi-Fi 7 or 6E actually back at WPC in Prague, you feel like we're going to have to relearn Wi-Fi.

I think we're literally going to go back to the basics for a lot of us, which is. Kind of crazy, but cool at the same point in time. Shifting gears a little bit. So that was sort of why Bart, the president, is excited about Wi-Fi 7. Take the hat off as president. We're going to do a lot of wardrobe changes for an audio podcast.

It's kind of funny. What for you as just an engineer, somebody with an engineering background, what part of Wi-Fi 7 excites you the most? 

Bart Giordano: So I, I think the the capacity that's enabled by Wi-Fi 7 and really you know, you kind of have to look at how these, these specs evolve. I think for, there's always been sort of a little bit of conflict in the market across 3GPP and 802. 11, right? 

You know, cellular services versus Wi-Fi services and one is 5G going to kill Wi-Fi, et cetera. And, you know, I think if you're, if, if, if you work and live around these industries and now, you know, I have the privilege of managing both a very mature successful cellular business and and RUCKUS networks right with a with a broad history and lineage of innovating around Wi-Fi and you know with that perspective.

I think that you you can acknowledge there is time and a place to use the right technology for the right application And so the industry's begun to get a little bit smarter over the last couple of years and these specifications have been borrowing the best elements of each spec and ratifying those into the, the quote, unquote, competitive spec.

And so I think, you know, what I'm most interested and excited about in Wi-Fi 7 is the fact that we're borrowing some really fantastic primitives from the cellular world in order to make Wi-Fi more reliable, right? Approaching that that you can achieve with traditional licensed spectrum cellular networks.

Now, the nature of unlicensed spectrum is you know, you always have to back off in the presence of interference, right? So you're never going to achieve parity from a reliability perspective, from a latency perspective, perhaps with cellular networks over a prolonged period or in the presence of interference.

But we're, we're, we're taking elements of those you know, RF principles and radio management principles and adopting them into the Wi-Fi 7 specification to mitigate a lot of the underlying factors that previously precluded that you know, the ability to, you know, siphon off part of a channel that's that is you know, being interfered with in order to avoid interference of the network.

The ability to now transmit, you know, across multiple radios across different spectrums concurrently is going to have a lot of benefits to latency for applications like VR, and gaming, et cetera. And certainly as we see VR and AR more broadly adopted in the enterprise and you're enabling you know, workflows around factory automation health and safety equipment, et cetera, really mission critical applications where you previously might not have considered Wi-Fi.

Because of the nature of unlicensed spectrum, I think now that there's going to be folks who, who push the envelope to see what these new specifications and capabilities really will, will yield in terms of new applications, performance, reliability, and predictable latency. 

John Deegan: I'm definitely excited.

I think the one thing I always go back to every standard, and this goes back to when I was taking my CWNA class years ago. You know, they always show you the standards, you know, b/g/n, whatever. And the comment's always the same, like, there's a lot of good stuff in here. And they always have like one or two that they show you, and they're like, this is really cool, and everybody's like, why aren't we doing that?

And they're like, well, vendor A didn't want to do it that way, and vendor B did it a little bit differently, and nobody could agree with it, so they just gave up. And I think 

Bart Giordano: That's where the politics come into ratifying these specs, right? And you really only get the value and benefit from these new features when they become mandatory. 

John Deegan: Yeah.

And I think that's, that's the big thing, right? With all the, you know, the certification has to happen in order to be able to say your Wi-Fi 7 and just. Really excited about that, you know, not being backwards compatible for a change. Sorry, it's great that Wi-Fi does support devices that were made 20 years ago, but it's good that there's going to be a part of the Wi-Fi world that requires it to be new and it's not tied down or limited to the least capable device.

Bart Giordano: You get a clean sheet of paper with 6 Gig. 

John Deegan: It's really exciting.

Jim Palmer: I have to admit. Your answer about, you know, about, you know, you were, you were most excited about the capacity issue and some of those others and, and talking about 3GPP really fascinated me because that was not where I thought you were going to go with that. And, and, and I always enjoy these conversations that we have on the RUCKCast when I'm, when I learn something.

And, and as you were talking, you mentioned something and it, and all of a sudden it was just like, it clicked. And, and so I'm going to go off a little bit here on a tangent, but, you know, you were talking about, you know, some of these, the, the similarities between, you know, the 3GPP, the cellular stuff and Wi-Fi.

And it brought me back to a conversation I was having with somebody else in the industry when Wi-Fi 6, you know, 802. 11ax was first coming out and they were talking about OFDMA. And as they were talking, I realized that the OFDMA technology, it was actually lifted almost, you know, from them. LTE, that is an LTE type of thing.

And so as soon as I realized that I was like, Oh, I'm fine. I was like, because they've been doing this for a long time. So we have this experience, but as you were talking, I started to realize I was like, now I've done some Wi-Fi presentations and we've talked about Wi-Fi seven and I've done, but it never really dawned on me that, you know, You talk about building upon the next generation and OFDMA is really at the heart of what allows us to do some of the cool things with Wi-Fi 7.

And so I think it's, that's really cool. So thank you for, you know, sort of, you know, talking through that. And I was able to be like, I can make that connection. And so thank you for that. But, you know, but it also, you know, it really is that capacity thing. And it's a, and the fact that, you know, There's these four major things that we're talking about with Wi-Fi 7 and you keyed on capacity, which isn't even one of those things that we really talk about, I found really, I found fascinating.

Bart Giordano: Well, I think, I think the reason is, as you go out into the market over the last couple of years, we've seen a big shift in the approach to designing enterprise Wi-Fi networks, right? I mean, for, for years, the philosophy was I need to design for coverage, right? I need to make sure every corner of my office building has sufficient coverage because my employees are going to come in and they want to be in the corner conference room, you know, with their laptop and be able to, you know, be productive and effective, regardless of where they are in my facility.

But we're not just showing up to work with a laptop anymore. Right. Well, we're not just showing up to a higher ed campus with you know, a notebook computer and a phone and an iPad. You talk to CIOs in higher learning institutions, and I kind of pull them every year or so and ask them, you know, what is the average number of devices per student?

And it's gone from three to then, you know, the introduction of wearables and gaming consoles and connected TVs. Right. And so, you know, the, the proliferation of devices per person has exploded in the, in the enterprise, whether you're talking about an office space such as the one I'm sitting in here, or a higher learning institution.

Or, you know, a hotel. And so it's no longer sufficient to just consider coverage, right? What is my signal to noise ratio in this corner of my my classroom? And so there's been a shift now in the thinking for network designers. And how do I design for capacity? Now, this is a RUCKUS specialty, right?

I mean, I think RUCKUS stands out as somewhat unique in the enterprise Wi-Fi industry as not having been born out of solving connectivity issues predominantly in the carpeted enterprise, where you tend to have fairly symmetrical space, fairly predictable RF environment, an IT organization controlling the devices that come in, and perhaps some expectation on the sophistication of users.

On the other hand, you know, RUCKUS really started out serving public access networks, guest facing networks in municipalities, right out on city streets in large public venues, in hotels in, in learning environments where you can't expect anything about the sophistication of your users. You can't make any determination around peak capacity or when it's going to hit you, right?

You just might have you know, five, six hundred, a thousand people walk off a train in a transportation hub, right? After the network sitting idle all day. And you can't predict what devices are going to be brought onto the network, right? You'll see every Wi-Fi device ever conceived of onboarding to your network.

And it just needs to work and it needs to work with with carrier grade reliability under any any conditions. And so designing for capacity and solving for connectivity problems that arise even under the most difficult and dynamic environments. It's kind of the four was the original kind of fundamental value proposition for RUCKUS.

So we love this shift in the market toward a capacity based mindset, right? Because that's what we built the entire business around over the, the last 20 years. And I think that the specs sort of now catching up and, and contemplating the fact that we're going to need networks with more capacity, you know, new spectrum, higher channel bandwidths, more channels.

Along with, you know, some of the other underlying really complex technologies that have been around for a long time, like OFDMA, but recently applied to Wi-Fi, will allow us to continue serving networks that require even greater capacity under really difficult environmental conditions, and you know, non deterministic use cases.

Jim Palmer: It's funny, as you were talking, I thought about it, you were talking about, you know, RUCKUS and where we specialize in what we're really good at. It's like, you know, and it's really reflected in the, you know, in the name. Yeah. RUCKUS. We, we specialize when there's a RUCKUS, you know, when there's when it's, when things are crazy, when things are, you know, there's that uproar, when there's a RUCKUS happening, you know, and you, that's really where we get.

And so I, I just had to laugh. I was like, you know, it really goes to the heart of why that. Why that name is and, and quite frankly, why I love the name, it's just a personal thing, but 

Bart Giordano: The brand works very well for it does. 

Jim Palmer: It's all, it all fits together.

John Deegan: So getting, getting back to the the meat and the potatoes of this, right? So we've, we've had engineer Bart, we've had president Bart, let's say Bart gets stuck in an elevator with some CIO or CTO, you've got 30 seconds before she or he is off the elevator. What's your elevator pitch about why they really need to upgrade to this Wi-Fi 7?

Bart Giordano: So, you know, the important thing when just talking to a decision maker, a technical decision maker, is first and foremost to understand the problems they face. Right. I think it's really easy to come and spew all the value we just talked through around specs and performance, et cetera. But at the end of the day, you know, a buyer today can figure all that stuff out from your website. Right. 

So by the time you're in the elevator pitch with, with, with some technical decision maker you know, at that level, there should be an assumption that they kind of already understand the benefits of the underlying technology that we've we've talked through. And what they really want to know is how your solution is going to solve their problem better than others and, you know, approaching that from a RUCKUS perspective, we're very specific about what areas of the market we serve, right, where we know there are specific challenges faced by the buyers there.

That we feel we solve better than others and understanding the challenges faced by a property owner for multifamily apartment complexes or the CIO of a higher ed institution or, you know, large elements of the U. S. Federal government, given the sensitive nature of a lot of the networks we serve there is really critical.

And then, you know, we design, and and implement our solutions specifically targeting those those those challenges, right? And and try to speak to the specific buyers in those industries. So if you're going to, you know, approach somebody about a Wi-Fi 7 network upgrade, you're going to want to understand what are the areas of the their environment that they're struggling with today.

Do you have capacity issues? Do you have issues around latency and reliability? Are you implementing automation in, in, in your factory or distribution center where you have challenges around interference or you have challenges around coverage and mobility and there from there, when you have the understanding of their business challenges, you can propose the right technology, And I think there are some emerging use cases in those types of environments that will benefit tremendously from Wi-Fi 7 over the ensuing years.

John Deegan: That makes sense. I think the one thing and, you know, being in the field and and Jim and I both being former customers, you know, we're used to the refresh cycle. And I think the one thing that's, it's a unique point in time in Wi-Fi in general, because pre pandemic, it was like, I was literally looking at like a three to five year Wi-Fi refresh.

And depending on the building, depending on the use case was probably closer to three and if it was maybe not as important to the company, it was probably closer to five and I know there are plenty of places that upgraded during the pandemic, but there are plenty of places that didn't with, you know, with 6E still waiting with AFC, knowing that 7 was kind of coming and 7 was going to have everything with 6E, and then some, a lot of people waited.

So it's going to be really interesting to see you know, how, how much interest there is and how much uptake there is in the next you know, 6, 12, 18 months. 

Bart Giordano: There's certain industries that in our experience tend to adopt bleeding edge solutions. They tend to be those that are less price sensitive. Right?

I'll give you an example. U. S. Primary education, right? On one hand, you might assume that that's a pretty price sensitive market, right? We're talking about you know, publicly funded schools. On the other hand, there's a funding mechanism in the U. S. through the federal government called E-Rate right. And 50 to 80% depending on the financial situation in your school district of their connectivity upgrade can be funded through this program. So they tend to be less price sensitive than others. And I think one of the challenges we have to acknowledge with Wi-Fi 7 and 6E to a certain extent, these are more expensive solutions.

On a, you know, within a given product family, right? Then then Wi-Fi 6 and it's, you know, a couple of a couple of different reasons for that. One is, you know, the silicon itself and the components that go into these products are are more expensive. But we now have three radios rather than two, right?

And so those industries that attempt to that traditionally adopt bleeding edge technology and are less price sensitive, I think, are going to be more predisposed to moving earlier in more price sensitive industries where they tend to buy across technology generations within the same pricing band.

Right. It's going to be really interesting to see how this plays out. But our belief is that Wi-Fi 6 is going to persist much, much longer in the market than, for example, Wi-Fi 5 or Wi-Fi 4, when it was like, you know, everybody just moved on that 3 to 5 year cycle that you mentioned, and I think we're going to see Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 7 persisting a lot longer together with the bulk of the volume over the next couple of years continuing to be Wi-Fi 6.

 As the Wi-Fi 7 technology matures, and we really understand what the, the capabilities and benefits are in terms of the problems that, that it solves. 

Jim Palmer: This is why I love listening to you. Because you always end up bringing up perspectives and points and things that, you know, I hadn't really thought of because when you, when you said, when you said that the K through 12 education, as you know, somebody who was like bleeding, I was just like, he's gotta be so wrong on this one.

I was like, there is no way, but then you, then you put your reason out there. And I'm like, well, I'm like, well, 

Bart Giordano: If you go look at where we saw most of the 6E adoption in our business, that that's K through 12 education. And the E rate cycles five years, right? So once, once your five years is up, you're up, you're eligible for, for new funding and you're going to buy.

Whatever the latest and greatest solution is because it's going to get you through the next five years, right? And so you know, I painted a broad brush across an industry segment in one country in the world, but nevertheless, right? That it's a big market and, just given the nature of how it's funded and the cyclical nature, we definitely see, you know, them oftentimes adopting the brand new high end you know, highest spec technology.

Yeah, that's and we should for the kids, right? 

Jim Palmer: Yeah. And like I said, but it's, it's like I said, I always learn so much when I, when I listen to you talk and you know, I, I listened to some of your other interviews and everything and it's, and I always end up learning something, which I very appreciate. So thank you for coming.

Thank you for coming 

Bart Giordano: In order to learn from each other. You bet. 

Jim Palmer: And I, I gotta be respective of your times because you are an important guy. So last, last thing, last couple of minutes here. Yeah. Well, actually, you can take as much time as you want, because you are the boss. What is, if there's one last thing that you could impress upon people, they're listening to this episode about, you know, RUCKUS and Wi-Fi 7.

What would that, what would that one thing that you would want to impress upon our listeners about this, the past 30 minutes that we've been talking? 

Bart Giordano: Well, we call it purpose driven networking. And behind that is, you know, something we touched on earlier. It is... a deep understanding of the business challenges that are faced in the industries that we serve and from the way we conceive of how we design our products to the way we go to market, you know, with with salespeople, marketing people, partners that specialize in those industries.

We are incredibly purposeful around how we go and attack challenges in the most difficult environments that we can find, right? I believe that's where we really stand out. And we oftentimes challenge prospects and we challenge our our customers, you know, identify the most difficult area of your network.

Those that where you have the most complaints. The most dissatisfied users and let us go solve that problem for you, right? We want to rise to that occasion because that's where I think we bring the most value and certainly today the portfolio has expanded considerably from the days when I joined eight years ago.

I'm coming up on my eight year anniversary with RUCKUS when we were RUCKUS wireless and we had really fantastic Wi-Fi solutions along with network management. You know, today we've we've got the ICX switching portfolio, which emanated from the old days of Foundry Networks. So fantastic lineage in that portfolio.

We've organically developed our, our IoT solution which is, you know, solving a whole new host of operational technology issues that, that are cropping up in the enterprise. We've been investing very heavily in, in AI and machine learning and data science over the last several years, and that is reflected in our RUCKUS Analytics product and is even now being applied to Radio Resource Management in order to optimize and automate the way you can optimize a, a network for, you know, eliminating co channel interference.

And so. It is a very broad based portfolio that is coming together, you know, in a unified way that is solving, you know, the most difficult challenges in in these industries. And so that's where I think we deliver the most value to to our customers. And why you know, the business is, is being so successful today.

John Deegan: That's why I'm here. 

Jim Palmer: That's why I'm here. 

Bart Giordano: All right! 

John Deegan: It's, it's, it's it's one of those, I don't know. We've definitely got an underdog mentality. And I think yeah, I don't know who, doesn't love. 

Bart Giordano: I relish it. I always want to fight from the underdog position. Right. 

John Deegan: Nothing wrong with that. Everybody loves an underdog, right?

Yes. So I don't know that I have anything left to ask. I don't think Jim does either. And I know he's well, we could sit here for hours and hours, but the reality is Bart does run the business. And yeah, so he's, he's an important gentleman and we appreciate, 

Bart Giordano: I'm honored to have been asked to come on and I'm happy to do it anytime.

John Deegan: Anytime you want to come on, if you've just like walking into the office in Sunnyvale and you're like, you know what, I just feel like talking to Jim and John, just let us know, we'll make time. We have a guest, we'll kick some off. But, but in all seriousness, no, we do, we do appreciate the time. You know, it's, it's I love hearing your enthusiasm for what's coming down the pike.

We know Wi-Fi 6E was the big thing, well, the 6 GHz was really the big thing. thing was 6E, but 7 is really where it's at. And that's really where we're going to see, I think start to see a lot of interesting, you know, the adoption of the technology, the use of the technology. You hit on AI, you know, VR, AR, everything coming together.

There's so many different things. It's just an exciting time to be a Wi-Fi nerd, which is why we're really happy. And the enthusiasm from the big dog himself is just, I mean, it's, it's awesome. So I have no other questions, so I just want to say thank you for your time and I appreciate it. And I know I'll see you in a couple of weeks at a customer site, but I look forward to the next time we get to have you on.

Bart Giordano: Appreciate both of you. Thanks so much for the opportunity. 

Jim Palmer: Thank you, sir. 

Bart Giordano: Talk soon.