Category Archives: Wi-Fi

When is a client problem also an AP problem?

My employer is currently building a new home office (HO) campus. In every building except two infrastructure support buildings, we are installing Mist AP45s which are 6E capable. The two support buildings received AP43s which don’t support 6E, but are Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) capable and still very capable APs.

Why is that important? Well, as most if not all of you out there know by now, WPA3 is mandatory in 6 GHz. We haven’t deployed the AP45s in many places yet, so the new HO campus is an opportunity to really get our hands dirty with not just 6 GHz, but also WPA3-Enterprise on our corp WLAN and OWE on our guest WLAN to see how some of our client base would respond and operate. But Keith, didn’t you just say the support buildings had AP43s which don’t support 6 GHz operation? I did, but as I mentioned in the opening paragraph, they are 802.11ax capable and 802.11ax does support WPA3 which isn’t something we had broadly enabled yet in our environments up to this point!

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My adventures with 6 GHz and my Pixel 6a phone

I’ve always been someone who has advocated for buying your own tools to test and troubleshoot things. This applied when I was working primarily as a network engineer focused on route/switch, datacenter, and security technologies and it still applies today, now that I’m primarily focused on wireless. In my experience, some companies and/or management are better than others with regards to buying tools for their employees so you cannot always rely on them for help. Investing in yourself and your learning is critical in my opinion so don’t let that deter you. It’s also nice to be able to take those tools with you if you decide to move on to “greener pastures” one day. Unfortunately, not all tools are what I consider to be affordable for the average person, especially if they are somewhat frugal like myself. Just do the best you can, when you can.

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Building a power conversion tool in Python

I’ve been doing less and less Python development since moving to a new company back in June. At my previous employer, I worked on Python command-line scripts and a custom-built web app fairly often that assisted with daily, monotonous tasks as well as troubleshooting. I really enjoyed the process of learning more about Python and developing tools that helped not just myself, but also my team.

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Manually scaling a floor plan

I was recently asked to do a predictive design for a warehouse. Sounds innocent enough, except the floor plan was a picture of the floor plan made in an Excel spreadsheet. Up until this point, I had never dealt with something like this, but it immediately reminded me of this exchange on Twitter between Eduard Petrov and Vasco Costa a day or two before receiving it:

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