Failure Happens – Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)

Failure Happens – Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Mistakes are proof that you are trying.   Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) helps further the evolution of the DevOps unification.  DevOps is a concept describing the goal of uniting the traditional silos between software development and operation teams.  An oversimplification of the caricature between these two cultures describes…

Guest on ClearToSend Podcast

Guest on Clear To Send Podcast – Episode 256 (2^8) If you haven’t already heard of ClearToSend – it is a podcast for wireless network engineers.  It is hosted by @rowelldionicio and @vergesfrancois who together have released over 250 episodes across audio and video formats.  If you are into Wi-Fi at all, I highly recommend subscribing to their show.  In addition,…

Wi-Fi Design Resources

Wi-Fi Design Resources v4 This is a list of Wi-Fi resources I have found myself referring to many times: Understanding Wi-Fi Visualizing Waves Gjermund’s Airtime Calculator Fourier transform (“simple” explanation) Fourier transform (“less simple” explanation) WLANPros Wireshark Colouring Rules Wi-Fi Client Data Rate Calculator from SemFio (François Vergès) Wi-Fi Client Capabilities Clients.MikeAlbano.com RSSI Compared DFS…

Ekahau Template Reporting Cheatsheet

Ekahau Template Reporting Cheatsheet v1 Before we start, you can always find the full documentation for Ekahau Report Templates here. The following is a list of useful quick references when building out Ekahau Report Templates: Data Tags <#${project-name}#> <#${project-file-name}#> <#${project-owner}#> <#${project-notes}#> <#${project-customer}#> <#${project-location}#> <#${floor-name}#> <#${ap-name}#> <#${ap-number}#> <#${ap-model}#> <#${ap-vendor}#> <#${ssid}#> Loop Tags <#“loop-start”: {“type”: “floors”}#><#“loop-end”: {“type”:…

Extreme Private-PSK (PPSK)

Extreme Private-PSK (PPSK) This post provides an overview of the Private Pre-shared Key (PPSK) feature available in Extreme Networks’ access points connected to ExtremeIQ. Explanations below provide greater detail with additional context and options for advanced configuration; however, it takes less than 5 minutes to configure a PPSK enabled SSID with three unique PPSKs to…

Wi-Fi Generation Names

Wi-Fi Generation Names In October 2018, the Wi-Fi Alliance (WFA @ wi-fi.org) announced a new marketing scheme to brand different generations of Wi-FiTM. The initial three brands are summarized in the following table as described in the WFA Generational Wi-Fi User Guide. Highest level of technology supported Generation Name Band (GHz) 802.11ax Wi-Fi 6 2.4…

Translating Business Requirements into Technical Requirements

Translating Business Requirements into Technical Requirements A quick post to provide a link a presentation I delivered at the WLCP US conference in 2020.  The presentation started off with a short story on the origins of the Michelin Star rating system  as I first heard on the Under the Influence radio show on CBC hosted by Terry O’Reilly.  Michelin was looking for…

Using AirPort Utility to collect RSSI

Using AirPort Utility to collect RSSI Apple developed a utility to manage your Wi-Fi network and assist connecting to Airport base stations.  It is NOT installed by default in iOS and there are some settings that may need tweaking each time you want to run the application.  The AirPort Utility has several features, but the…

Extreme Site Survey AP Configuration

Extreme Site Survey AP Configuration This post captures useful commands when performing site surveys for configuring access points from Extreme Networks (formerly Aerohive).  Sometimes events happen in the field and you need to factory reset or re-configure an AP in the middle of a site survey.  What follows are some notes about relevant commands to configure an…

With Extreme Power comes Extreme Responsibility

With Extreme Power comes Extreme Responsibility Have you ever wondered why RSSI values from validation surveys don’t match your predictive design?  Have you wondered why changing the AP transmit power doesn’t always correspond with RSSI values for the client? There are some subtle nuances to be aware of when setting the transmit power on Extreme Networks (formerly…