RUCKCast #81: Partners Getting Pumped About Wi-Fi 7!

On our latest episode, Jim and John are joined by Al Brown, CEO of SmartWAVE Technologies, a RUCKUS Partner. And why are the mutts talking to the CEO of one of our partners?

It's all about Wi-Fi 7 once again, and we get a partner's perspective about what's ahead of us for this new standard, and what they are excited about to provide to their customers. Except for the part where Jim excludes Al from the conversation to go off on some tangent. You know, Jim being Jim.

If you are interested in checking out SmartWAVE, here's the link you need https://smartwave.us/

You can send an email to SmartWAVE using info@smartwave.us 

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

Transcript

John Deegan: Good afternoon, Mr. Palmer. How'd I do with that timing? Was that good? 

Jim Palmer: You've gotten a lot better at the music. I gotta, I gotta hand it to you. 

John Deegan: If I'm smart, what I would do is I would actually go into the soundboard and I would just cut it to like that 21 second mark. I think that's what you said yesterday.

I'll play. I have another edit for you. I'll play that another time. 

Jim Palmer: But don't, don't change the music. It's the only thing I look forward to on this podcast. 

John Deegan: It's a different, it's, it's the same. 

Al Brown: Hey, hey, hey, I'm right here. 

Oh, and yes, we've got a special guest. We'll get to him in a minute. 

Jim Palmer: What's it?

John Deegan: Go ahead. 

Jim Palmer: We went off the rails in 20 seconds. We need to like start a pool. 

John Deegan: I, I, no, I'd lose money on that one. Can I borrow your corporate card? Oh man, we'd really do, but that's fun. It's good. See, how are you? It's been like 24 hours since we talked. 

Jim Palmer: It's been 24 hours. It's the end of a long week and so we decided we'd finish off this with talking about a nice lightweight subject like Wi- Fi 7 because you know that's just easy.

Wi-Fi is easy, right? 

John Deegan: Of course Wi-Fi is easy. There's no wires involved at all. 

Jim Palmer: How hard can it be to not install wires? 

John Deegan: That's why I went wireless. I hate switches, right? 

Jim Palmer: Yeah, I'm working on that podcast episode. We're going to teach you switching if it kills me. 

John Deegan: What if it kills me? Then who's going to host?

Jim Palmer: Well, that's true. 

John Deegan: Our guest could host. Our guest could take over. It's Last Man Standing. 

Jim Palmer: I don't know if... 

John Deegan: I think we should introduce him. He's been waiting long enough and now he feels like he's going to be hosting the podcast. So... 

Jim Palmer: He's now elevated from guest to host. So, today we got we got Al Brown on, and Al's from a company called SmartWAVE.

I think I got that right. Yeah, it's in my notes. So Al thanks for joining us and why don't you take a second and introduce yourself to all the listeners and let them know, you know, kind of who you are, what you do and, and what you guys do over there at SmartWAVE.

Al Brown: Thank you, Jim. What a great answer. Al Brown, CEO of SmartWAVE Technologies. SmartWAVE is a wireless centric design build management firm headquartered in Atlanta. ATL with offices in San Jose, Tucson, Omaha, and McAllen. We've been a RUCKUS partner since 2009, so... been through a few changes with RUCKUS along with the Wi-Fi standards, and we're also a four time Partner of the Year recipient with RUCKUS.

So happy to be here. Thank you for the invite. 

Jim Palmer: Congratulations on the four time Partner of the Year thing. 

Al Brown: Yeah. Thanks, but don't, don't get any hosting ideas. I think I'm going to decline right off. 

John Deegan: I just got to say that. I think that's the prize when you win a fifth one. Right.

Al Brown: I'm going to have to start doing worse. 

John Deegan: No, no, no, no. We like, we love our partners. 

Al Brown: The race to the bottom. 

Jim Palmer: Tell Bart, go, Bart, I can't do any more with RUCKUS cause I might have to host the podcast. 

Al Brown: I'm out, man. I'm out. 

Jim Palmer: Watch his head just like explode. 

Al Brown: Yeah. 

John Deegan: Oh, all right. So since we're having too much fun, let's get into the heavy stuff, right?

So, Wi-Fi 7, we talked about this a little bit before I actually hit record. I think it's kind of an exciting and a scary time, right? It's, it's, Jim and I are both CWNE I, I know I personally feel this. I, I don't know how Jim's opinion of it is, but this, it, it feels like you have to relearn Wi-Fi, but, so you, Al, you've been in, in the business a long time, and you, this is not your first rodeo in terms of changing from one generational Wi-Fi to the next, so, What does a new Wi-Fi standard like Wi-Fi 7 mean to the business of an integrator or a consultancy such as yourselves?

Al Brown: Well, you nailed it, John. I mean, it is exciting, right? But every new standard or model brings excitement, right? Whether it's the iPhone 15, right? Or the latest Porsche 911. It's like, hey. Faster, all that good stuff. But really, really excited about this, this release because of all the cool features it brings to the market, right?

When you, when you think about how Wi-Fi has evolved. You know, from Wi-Fi 1, it's basically, historically, it's been taking the same block of spectrum and, and most of the changes revolved around just being able to make larger channels. And, you know, going from, you know, 20 meg, 40 meg to 80 meg, 80 meg to 160 meg to just bring on throughput.

But, I mean, this change with Wi-Fi 7, And, and really harnessing the 6 GHz spectrum. I mean, I, I would, I would say you could argue this is the biggest change in Wi-Fi since the jump from Wi-Fi 1 to Wi-Fi 2. And maybe even bigger than that because of all the other advantages it brings. So. Pretty, pretty cool stuff.

John Deegan: That's, that's definitely, I mean, I hadn't seen somebody or hadn't heard somebody go back that far. 

Jim Palmer: Right. 

John Deegan: And, and, and that's not a bad thing. Like, at the end of the day I mean, I've been around Wi-Fi for close to a decade at this point. But, I mean, I know there are people that have been dealing in Wi-Fi for, since the beginning, effectively.

And the perspective is, I mean, I really, truly appreciate that perspective. And it's, it's kind of exciting to hear. Still, still a little terrified, but, 

Al Brown: Don't be scared, John. Jump in. Both feet, buddy. Both feet. 

John Deegan: To quote Dana Carvey from one of his better movies, "I fear change."

Al Brown: And at SmartWAVE, John, we take advantage of change.

John Deegan: The biggest one I like is definitely the 6 GHz spectrum, but I'm sure we'll get into more about what's coming soon. 

Jim Palmer: So Al, taking off, I mean, so that's sort of the CEO, founder of SmartWAVE answer, but you've been, you're a techie person. You're a, you're, I went and looked it up. You know, you have a degree in mathematics, you know, from a pretty reputable school, by the way. Congratulations.

But, you know, so you, I get the feeling that you're sort of a nerd like me. Well, maybe not. Well, nobody's a nerd like me, but you're kind of, but so taking off the, taking off the CEO hat, taking off sort of the business hat, I want you to just sort of answer this question as a, just a nerd, right?

 Just a nerd like the rest of us. You know, Wi-Fi 7 has a lot of different features that are being introduced, but what is the feature that excites you the most? What is the one thing that you look at and you go, you go, you know, if I'm not giving a business answer, if I'm not presenting to, you know, the CIO or the CTO of a company, you know, that we're trying to get in business with, what's the one thing that excites you the most?

Al Brown: Wow. That's a, that's, that's a, that's a tough one, Jim. And as far as like technical stuff and, and engineering stuff, I play one on tv. I am the I'm the wave in smart wave. And all the smart guys that are work here, they, they make things happen. But but when, you know, when you think about Wi-Fi 7, I mean, you've got a lot of cool stuff.

You've got Multilink operation, right, where you can basically, you know, transmit at the same time using multiple frequencies. I mean, that's, that's crazy stuff, right? A really cool feature. And, and, and I'm really waiting to see all this stuff work, right? Because some of it's like really hocus pocus compared to how...

Wi-Fi used to be, right? I mean, puncturing, right? Channel puncturing. That's just fun to say, you know when you think about it, but, but I, I just think about if you're, you know, you're, you're transmitting a, you know, a 320 MHz channel size, which is humongous. Somebody comes in with a 40 MHz channel size and you're not backing off.

You're just like, hey, man, I'm just going to push on through and I'm going to take 280 of it and I'm gonna, I'm gonna make it happen. You know, so it's kind of a fearless Wi-Fi if you will, right? Just, just, just head on technology. So the, that, that, I think those two are really the coolest features that come along with all this additional capacity in 6 GHz, right?

But you know, I mean, there's, it's, it's almost like it's almost like they with this standard, they, there's so many cool things that they just. They just knocked out everything. I don't even, I don't even, you know, Wi-Fi 8 is going to be boring. Maybe millimeter wave technology, but it's, it's going to have, it's not even going to compare.

Jim Palmer: All right. So if you ask John, John will tell you, this is my favorite thing to do is because you, I asked for one, you gave me two. So I'm going to hold your feet to the fire. I'm not going to let you get away with saying that, you know, MLO and puncture transmission. No, you got to pick one. That's my, that's my rule.

If I say one, you got to pick the one. So I'm going to make you, I'm going to hold your feet to the fire and make you pick one out of those two. 

Al Brown: Okay. I'm going to go with it. I'm going to go with puncturing. 

I'm going to go with puncturing because like I said, it's fun to say, you know? And the, the, the, the other thing is there are more and more devices than have ever been in the market.

Right. I mean, I think I think Broadcom sold like three billion Wi-Fi 6, you know, chips over the last, you know, couple of years or whatever, right? That's, that's ridiculous, right? I mean, how much, how many devices, so, so you're going to have all these devices, more and more devices than ever, transmitting, and I, and, and along with that, You know, you've got this whole move to all this VR stuff.

That's going to have high capacity requirements. There's just, this is no way you're going to make it happen unless, unless you can just, you know, proceed without the latency and, and, and, and move on. It's like, like I said, man, it's kind of like almost like a head butting, the head butting, the problems, you know, head on, as opposed to backing down and being polite about it and saying, Hey man, you go ahead and you transmit and I'll wait on you and it's just get in there.

Get her done, you know. 

Jim Palmer: I kind of have to agree with you because the punctured transmission, the thing that I like about it, I'm, saying it doesn't really do for me what it does for you, obviously, but that's okay. What I like about it is the idea that we're, we're able to better utilize the spectrum, you know, because we can't keep going back to the FCC saying, Hey, we need, you know, give us another 1200 megabits or MHz worth of spectrum, you know, at eight GHz or whatever we can't, we can't keep doing that.

So I like the idea that we're able to better utilize the spectrum. Cause like you were saying, you know, if you get a 40 or even a 20 MHz wide, you know, quote unquote interferer on your 320 MHz wide channel, you know, depending on where that was in the past, it would just dump a massive chunk of spectrum and no one would use it.

So I feel like this, this gives us a better utilization and makes us better stewards of the spectrum by doing this. So I'm really looking forward to that one. So I'm glad you picked that one. Cause now we can be friends and agree on that. 

Al Brown: Well, thanks, Jim. I mean, you're, you're a real smart guy and you know, it makes me feel better about myself.

Jim Palmer: You're the first one that's ever said that, but 

John Deegan: I'm wishing I had some like warm and fuzzy music to play. It's, it's hard for me. I, I, I'm just to add my two cents, I can't pick one yet because I think Al kind of touched on it, right? It's, it's a lot of, I don't want to say it's hype now. I don't want to say it's vaporware or anything like that, but I, I haven't put a whole lot of focus on it yet because I need to be able to touch it.

I need the devices that can run it. I need to be able to actually see it in action. And honestly, for me, I think that's one of the exciting things about this generation of Wi-Fi, because, and it sounds crazy to think about it, but 6 and 6E came out and they were kind of during the pandemic. I mean, I literally refreshed a whole bunch of buildings at my prior job to Wi-Fi 6, and then we all went home.

Never, hardly got used. And, and some of the problems with what those waves brought us depended, depended, I'm sorry, on people being in the building. You know, and so now we're seeing people return to the offices a lot more now in 2023 and, and, you know, beyond, as opposed to the last couple of years.

And now, with Wi-Fi 7 coming out, we're, we're going to have guinea pigs again. So it's kind of a nice, it's good timing, I think plus knowing the adoption. I think a lot of people have been waiting for 7, so it's kind of, the next few months are going to be exciting. 

But so to pivot a little bit, since we did spend a little bit of time on this how about a time crunch here. If you had 30 seconds, give or take to do an elevator pitch to one of your target audiences, CIO, CTO type person, you're trying to sell them on an upgrade specifically about Wi-Fi 7. What would you bring up? What would you try to convey to them about this one? Why is it worth the upgrade?

Al Brown: Well, I mean I mean, for our clients at SmartWAVE, we take a pretty consultative approach. I mean, we're, we're actually not like a lot of partners. We're not, we're not good at box pushing, right? It, it is more about trying to be good stewards of the client's money and and, and, and helping them, you know, make the right decisions.

You kind of got to know where they're at in their Wi-Fi journey, right? I mean, are they still on Wi-Fi 5? Are they Wi-Fi 6? Are they Wi-Fi 6E? You know, where are they? What are their application needs? You know, is it, you know, budget? I mean, we do a lot of work in cities and, you know, funding, you know, Funding this year is going to be tough, right?

Cause they're like, they're typically like a year behind the commercial market, right? Because of tax revenue and like good stuff. But but I mean, really I would probably a couple of things. One, if, you know, if the clients are on Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi 5, you know, first thing I'd tell them, I'd say, Hey, congrats, you made it, right?

Thank you for your patience because you are about to experience a Wi-Fi revolution. You know, I mean, you, you, you were, you were about to go from, you know you know, Kia to Porsche, you know, I mean, it's, it's a, it's a big jump. It's a really big jump and no offense to Kia Kia's awesome, right?

John Deegan: Say they've come a long way, but you're, you're a man after my own.

Al Brown: It, it's not, it's not a Porsche . 

John Deegan: So, and you kind of played into this, right? You mentioned like Wi-Fi five to Wi-Fi 7 and I sort of segued and I didn't even read the, the rest of my script, but a lot of people have waited. From for, you know, they've skipped 6 E some of them have even skipped 6, depending on, like you said, funding cycles and whatnot.

So now Wi-Fi 7 is here, but I've made it this long. Should I wait for Wi-Fi eight? I mean, what would, what would be your, your recommendation there? 

Al Brown: Well, I mean if, if you've got Wi-Fi 6 and, and, and, and your, and your operating effectively, I would say, unless it comes down to that depends, right? Our, our, our, a couple of our customers, San Jose airport, for example, right, we, we did an upgrade.

to Wi-Fi 6 with them and completed that upgrade, like, last November, December timeframe, right? Last November. San Jose Airport awarded fastest airport Wi-Fi in the United States, right? Can you give me the applause, background noise? 

Jim Palmer: Yeah.

John Deegan: Thank you. Thank you. Our general manager, I always get his title wrong, sorry Bart because that's, I think, his home airport. 

Al Brown: Yes, yeah, it is. And the airport Wi-Fi experience there is fantastic, right? But when I look at San Jose Airport and just the increase of... You know, potential of 45 times capacity, right?

I mean, that's, that's nuts, right? That, that's crazy along with increased quality of service because you got lower latency and to stay on top. You got to get in the game. So, so for like, for someone like that, where business depends on it I, I am going to start encouraging the planning for Wi-Fi 7.

Now cities move at the speed of light. As you all know, they move so fast with all the decisions and all that good stuff. I'm just kidding, obviously. So if we start planning now. You know, by 2025, we have an opportunity to be fastest airport Wi-Fi again. That's, that's the way I see it. Also the convention center, the San Jose convention center, we manage all the IT events in there.

And man, you know, you want to make Wi-Fi break, which historically you could put a bunch of TwitchCon conferencers. In a large exhibit hall, like 10,000 of them in a large exhibit halls with no walls to block RF, and you're going to see how good you are at design, right? Because it's going to, it's going to test you, right?

Wi-Fi 7, it could, it could, it could make us a lot less nervous when a show starts at the convention center. I'll just put it like that. Right? So, 

Jim Palmer: Al, maybe, maybe, Al, maybe one day when San Jose gets the, you know, the fastest airport two years in a row, then you can tie me. 

John Deegan: Oh, boy. I... 

Al Brown: Congratulations. 

John Deegan: Jim's having visions of his former life. 

Jim Palmer: And in my former life. I ran the Wi-Fi at Denver International Airport. 

Al Brown: Oh, nice. Yeah. Fantastic. 

Jim Palmer: So yeah, 2017 and 2018. I was, Ookla ranked me fastest two years in a row. 

Al Brown: So, yeah, I tell you what, Jim, I'm, I'm, I'm, I actually fly to the airport that probably has the worst airport Wi-Fi to be honest with you.

And I won't, I won't name names, but you know, 

Jim Palmer: you know what we need to. You, we all need to get together because I got some stories for you. I know about you. I, I have a history with airport Wi-Fi and with convention centers you know, because 

John Deegan: a, a big dog meetup coming. 

Jim Palmer: I, we could have a, we'd have a really good time because you know, one of the reasons why I even joined RUCKUS, you know, you're talking about the convention center.

One of the reasons why I even joined is because I went to Las Vegas, and I helped my previous boss do Black Hat. Mo Williams, and I saw the way that she was putting out the RUCKUS network, and unlike in like a normal convention center where you get to mount it wherever you want, we just got to mount it wherever they had a jack in the floor.

And I told her point blank, I said, I said, this will never work. I said, this network, it will never, ever, ever function because you can, I was like, you can't mount APs like that. And sure enough, everybody loved the network. And I was like, how did you do that? And she's like, well, I use RUCKUS. And I was like, Hmm.

So yeah, so airports and convention centers, I have a little, I have a little history with this. That's fun. 

Al Brown: Yeah. Well, I, I tell you what, the product, the product does make a difference with antenna technology. There's no doubt about it. I mean, in, in you know BeamFlex I'm, I'm telling you the experiences have been fantastic at both of those venues.

You know, it's, it's tough. You think about you, you, you, you know, if you're waiting on a plane, it's not so much getting off the plane because people just like check their email and they, you know, hit their Uber app and they're off to the races, but, but when they're waiting on a plane, I mean, I, I sit in that airport a lot, I fly out there a lot, right?

And I mean, there are people streaming movies, all kinds of stuff, and you don't hear any complaining or whining, I tell you. You hear a lot of that at the airport I fly out off to get to California. There's no, well, you know, 

Jim Palmer: I've always said airports are really interesting though, because, you know, you were talking about, there's not really that thing of when they get off the plane and yet.

If you think about it, you have a plane load of people sitting there and they're all trying to get their content, like you were saying. And then you have the people to get off the plane. And, but those people, if they've connected before and their device remembers, then they connect as well. So you have this really small window as people are streaming out of the gate, off the jetway, out into the world.

And they, and you walk past all the people waiting to get on your plane. And so you have this brief, you know, moment in time where you have this almost like a plane and a half load of people connected to one AP. And so it's really an interesting scenario. And a lot of people, you know, don't think about that because then when the banks leave and there's like nobody sitting there. You can walk down there an hour and a half later and all the place is empty. And so you get these crazy peaks and valleys. 

And so it's one of the things I liked about Airport Wi-Fi is just because it was just such an interesting experience. And I got to see and do a lot of whole lot of things.

So, 

Al Brown: yeah, well, well, that's a, that's a, you know, tip my cap cap to to Ruckus on APs can, can handle a thousand associations. And, and, you know, you don't want to have a thousand people in there, you know, hammering them all the time and it's not going to work. Right. 

John Deegan: But, but, but, 

Al Brown: but, but, but they are, they are associated with it.

They're doing something or not. Right. So they're taking a slot. Right. So it's important to be able to, to do that for sure. 

Jim Palmer: Well, that was a nice segue to nowhere. 

John Deegan: I can recover that one, though. So, so we had one question kind of teed up, and I think we sort of covered that already. But as, you know, a leader at SmartWAVE, as somebody who's got their finger on the pulse of the industry, if you will, and you're aware of what your customers have been looking for and asking for, I'm kind of curious, without naming names, we're getting too into the NDAs that we won't sign because our lawyers don't talk to us anymore.

What would be... If you have an idea of what segments you're dealing with that are actually, or have been asking for Wi-Fi 7 the most. Whether they've been putting 6 and 6E on pause, or they're just really excited about it. Are you noticing any trends, or is it kind of just across the board, or how does that look for you?

Al Brown: Well, I mean... Those, I think, are going to benefit out of the gate the most, if that's kind of where you get into, or you know, high density public venues, obviously, any kind of high density environment. I think, I think the learning environment education K 12, higher ed, you know, you, you jam in higher ed, right?

You could have 150 people in a classroom and and, you know, everyone's streaming, wanting to, wanting to participate, collaborate real time. You know, it, it's, it's going to add a tremendous amount of value there. I mentioned, you know, convention centers like, you know, the San Jose Convention Center.

I mean, you don't want to have. The Apple Worldwide Developer Conference going on and, and the keynote speaker up there and people can't connect, people can't participate, right? I mean, it's just embarrassing. So there's definitely going to be benefits there, but, but also high noise floor areas. I think of hospitals as being a, in healthcare, being a huge beneficiary of this.

Cause you know, when they, they sent, they send these scans, I mean, they're huge files, right? And, and, and, and hospitals also, you know, historically, it's tough to manage the infiltration of rogue devices. Cause doctors know everything, right? And, and whatever they're going to do, they're going to do, I mean, you, you can't control some of the things in those environments.

And so that's kind of where the, you know, the, the, the puncturing capabilities come into play. You know, MLO, you know, combining across channels, that's going to, that's going to be pretty attractive. I think it's going to have a substantial impact there. 

And then manufacturing, kind of the same thing, especially, especially if you're in manufacturing where, not, not like the low latency machine learning stuff, or, or actually you could, you could say that, that could be pretty sweet too with some of the features to support IoT. But but like you know, environments where people are sending large, like, design files. CAD program, CAD files, those types of things, you know you know, high bandwidth is needed to transmit it, but yet you're in an area where it's, it's congested or, or, or susceptible to noise.

Jim Palmer: Yeah, it's a good, yeah, I never thought of the medical aspect, but I could definitely, I can definitely see that. I like it when I learn stuff. 

John Deegan: That's two days in a row. 

Jim Palmer: I got to, maybe I need to take tomorrow off. What's today? Today's Thursday. Yeah, I can take Friday off. Yeah. 

Al Brown: Really? Three-day weekend. 

John Deegan: I'll just say, Al said we could.

Jim Palmer: Al said we could take a three-day weekend! 

Al Brown: I'm your host. 

John Deegan: See, he's catching on. I like him. 

Jim Palmer: All right. You know, kind of wrapping this up a little bit. If there's one thing that you could, you'd want people that's listening to this. You know, that you want to impress upon them or the, the one thing that they would remember from our conversation today.

What's that one thing you'd want them to, to take away? Whether, you know, and we'll stick with Wi-Fi stuff and not, you know, whether or not you're co hosting and which airport's fastest, we'll skip that stuff and just go with the actual Wi-Fi stuff. What's the one thing that you would, you'd want to say anything to the listeners?

What would that be? 

Al Brown: Well think, think about your environment, right? And, and, and think about it. If you, if you are having some challenges with whatever, you know, you're, you're working with, right, whether it was Wi-Fi 5 or Wi-Fi 6 or whatever, I mean, this, this is again, arguably the largest change in the Wi-Fi standard to date.

And. And even if, even if you have a Wi-Fi 6 network and you have, you know, problems with, or challenges with interference, just, just throwing in that Wi-Fi 7 access point with just, with its full feature set, you can overcome some of those challenges just out of the gate, right? Not have to look at channel planning.

I mean, some of those features are gonna, are gonna make it hocus pocus type of work, right? So you know. And if you've, like I said earlier, if you're on a Wi-Fi network, let's go, you know, it's time, you know, get up, join the party because Wi-Fi 7 is it man, lucky seven, got to go with it, more spectrum, four to five times the data, eat it up, lower latency, greater flexibility with channel planning, man.

Let's go. Catch the word, let's do it. 

Jim Palmer: I'm sorry. It was like, all of a sudden somebody turned on the "Marketing Man." It was just like, bam, here it comes. 

Al Brown: I'm your CEO. 

John Deegan: But it's like, it's exciting and he's not wrong. You know? I mean, 

Al Brown: It's, it's, it's, it is a cool time. 

John Deegan: I'm still a little terrified, but 

Al Brown: if you're, if you are a Wi-Fi guy or girl, I mean, or, you know, if you're a Wi-Fi person, it's, it is awesome.

It is fantastic. 

John Deegan: The fact that we've got new spectrum to deal with even though it's... Obviously, it's coming with some, some, no restrictions, but some rules. I don't hate the rules at the end of the day because, you know, we've gone through six iterations of this so far. We've proven as a Wi-Fi community that if you give us spectrum without rules, we will make it dirty.

So I think when we talked to Bart about a, oh, it was about a month and a half ago at this point. You know, one of the points he made that I think is, it's almost getting overlooked is the fact that in order to be Wi-Fi 7, you have to support all of this good stuff. Whereas before it was like, vendor 1 did this, vendor 2 did that.

So I had a phone that did really well on one thing, and then I had a different phone that didn't do well on that at all because different vendors deployed different things differently. Now it's like, this is it. You want to work on this. You want it to keep it nice. This is why we can have nice things now.

So I think, all right, I'm getting more excited now. 

Al Brown: It's a good point, John. I mean, they bundled a lot of stuff in this release. I mean, I mean, crazy stuff, right? I mean, they bundled a lot in there, so it is exciting.

John Deegan: I really am looking forward. I mean, that's, and you mentioned it too, at the beginning, Jim and I haven't talked about this on the episodes yet, but like the iPhone finally has Wi-Fi 6E in it.

Or at least one version of it which is kind of funny to me that they're announcing that, and it's coming. And we're weeks away from Wi-Fi 7 becoming a formally announced, and we all know it's coming. Some of the manufacturers have already announced devices. I don't think we're going to see Apple do Wi-Fi 7 next year, but who knows?

They took their sweet time to do 6E. There's always going to be something new and different, but yeah, it's still, it's still an exciting time. I can't wait to get some handsets and some APs and start to really, you know, play. I know Jim is, is going to his inner geek. He wants to do the PCAPs. I know he does.

He wants to do the lab. He wants to get dirty. So. 

Jim Palmer: That's next week. 

John Deegan: It's true. It's true. You'll be enjoying beautiful, sunny California. Well, 

Al Brown: I know our guys want to do that too, Jim. So, you know they, they want to, you know, we, we, we, when we, when we get a new release, you know, the guys like to, get the AP and just, you know, try to, try to break it, right?

I mean, everything we can, we try, we try to break it. We want to know what it is and what it isn't, so we can... set the right expectations to the customer and say, Hey, you know, you drank the Kool Aid this time. Sorry, it doesn't really do it. But you know, try to keep it honest, you know. 

Jim Palmer: And, and for the record I lost the bet because my bet was that Apple wasn't going to put 6 GHz in this iPhone and they were going to wait and do it next year.

John Deegan: Bet that they put 6 GHz in everything else except for the phone. Come on. 

Jim Palmer: I had my, 

John Deegan: Let's put it this way. We knew people that said that they were shocked that they didn't put it in the last year. 

Jim Palmer: See, but I was on the, 

John Deegan: prepared for it last year. 

Jim Palmer: Yeah. Okay. Well, we can go for another 20 minutes, 

John Deegan: But I would have taken that bet on you.

I would have, sorry. I wouldn’t want to take money from my co host, but 

Jim Palmer: See, you weren't, you weren't paying attention to me then. I see how, I see how I rate.

Al, how can people get a hold of you and SmartWAVE if they're they want to, they want to learn more about what you guys are doing? What's the best way for listeners to get a hold of you? 

Al Brown: info@smartwave.us . 

John Deegan: I feel like that's going to go on the show notes. 

Jim Palmer: Got a website that they might be able to...

Al Brown: Yes, www.smartwave.us . 

Jim Palmer: All right. 

Al Brown: We'd love to love to help out your audience any way we can, Jim. 

John Deegan: So, so to kind of drive that home. So you mentioned you've got offices in a number of cities across the country. Are there particular markets you primarily play in, or do your folks get on planes and travel anywhere the business is?

Al Brown: We are... Wireless gypsies. We're all over the place. I mean it's it's, you know, we, we, we travel a lot. We, we have projects across the U. S. in different places. Doing a lot of stuff in Southern California, but we don't have an office down there. Probably open one up there in the next year. With some stuff going on.

But yeah, give us a test drive. 

Jim Palmer: Awesome. 

John Deegan: I yeah, I'm excited to see what you guys do. I'll keep an eye on you. I know Jim's got his, he's done his research. I'm gonna have to follow up. I actually think I actually, I, I think I might have had one or two folks from your, your company in the RCWA I taught in Phoenix, maybe.

Al Brown: Possibly, yeah. 

John Deegan: Pretty sure I saw the name flying around. So but looking forward to running into you at a future, whether it's WLPC, Big Dogs, whatever's coming down the pike. Jim and you are going to have to talk about airport and conference Wi-Fi. So I might just have to be sitting there in a corner, just hiding the microphone and recording it for a future episode that neither one of you know what we're doing.

But on that note, I don't have anything else other than a big hearty thank you, Al. I know I appreciate it. You're, you're a very busy man and I appreciate the time. Excited to talk about Wi-Fi 7 and really excited to see where it's going to go. 

Al Brown: John, Jim, I appreciate the opportunity and we, we really do appreciate the partnership in all sincerity.

You know, again, we've, we've overcome a lot of challenges over the years together and in serving our customers and you guys have been great support for it. So really appreciate it. 

Jim Palmer: All right. Thanks, Al. 

Al Brown: All right, guys. Thank you. 

John Deegan: Anything else? No? Good. 

Good. Jim's speechless. I love it. We'll see everybody on the next episode.

Thanks guys.