OK, by now I think everyone is aware of my opinion that the time for 802.11ac is now, whether you're ready for a production deployment (many are), want to try out the technology to see what it can really do, or simply want to prevent the unauthorized use of .11ac via appropriate monitoring and assurance tools. No matter what your strategy here might be, though, 802.11ac isn't some future direction or curiosity - it's here, and, again, now. A strategy, then, is essential - and, again, today.
Read more
I was recently setting up a new piece of networking equipment, and, lo and behold, I needed to do that initial setup via a CLI on a serial port. Yes, I know that testosterone is recharged by such activities; real men configure routers and such with obscure commands over difficult-to-configure interfaces based on RS-232. I don't want to pick on any particular vendor here, because there are so many of them still insisting on this practice. But, c'mon, really? Start bits, stop bits, and baud rate? Parity? VT-100?
Read more
We've completed work on the 2013 edition of the annual Network World Holiday Gift Guide with one of the most diverse sets of great gifts ever. I'm pleased once again to have been part of Keith Shaw's team in testing and evaluating an astonishingly broad array of gift possibilities, for home and even for work.
Read more
The deployment of 802.11ac, I'm sure we can all agree, is more a question of when than if.
Read more
I have been involved as a speaker at every US Interop event (some of those were known as Networld+Interop) since 2001, and a member of the Advisory Board since 2003 - anyway, thirteen years in all. Interop in many ways is the successor to Comdex, where I had similar roles from 1994 through 2004, the year that marked the end of the line for that series of conferrences. And now the time has now come to say goodbye to Interop as well - they're bringing the management of the Mobility track inside, which I in fact think is an excellent idea.
Read more
I recent engaged in a point/counterpoint debate with my friend and colleague Michael Finneran on the subject of whether Samsung will eventually drop or at least augment Android with . You can read the full debate (the link above) yourself, which makes all of the points I think are worth making.
Read more
Almost two years ago, I wrote in these pages of my fondness for 60-GHz. radio, and my belief that .11ad would eventually play a major role in wireless LANs and not just outdoor point-to-point links, HDMI cable replacement, and short-range docking solutions.
Read more
I've been following all of the outrageous news, or hyperbole, depending upon your personal politics, regarding the Website that is a key element of the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, a/k/a Obamacare. And, as I've noted before and irrespective of the politics central to this specific example, if software projects like this one are really this expensive and really this risky, then the future of mobility itself is in doubt.
Read more
The announcement of the Netgear R7000 802.11ac router that I recently mentioned led to an interesting conversation with Netgear staff about what's really going on with 802.11ac in the residence.
Read more
I've mentioned this before, but what's going to happen when people start dying because the implanted wireless devices that are keeping them alive are hacked? The time has come, just as is the case in any other dimension of wireless activity and applications, for security to be taken seriously.
Read more
So, needless to say, despite the death-march exhaustion inherent in such an aggressive agenda, I had a great time exploring mobile unified communications (start with Part 1, here) in the Baltic region. Talking on the phone with exceptional quality at about US$.06 an hour made me the envy of more than few who asked what I was doing.
Read more
My last posting on Apple prompted a question from a reader that deserves more than a quick note on Disqus. While I briefly covered what Apple Inc. might do a few months ago, let's take a more detailed, consultant's-eye view of this question - one that is, after all, of more than passing or academic interest to many if not most of us.
Read more
So, again, I undertook the mobile unified communications tour (start with Part 1 here) in an effort to see if truly global Wi-Fi-based communications could substitute for expensive cellular roaming or the other alternatives I discussed in Part 1 of this series. The answer is decidedly mixed, giving the final grade a distinct "maybe"; more on this in the next and final entry in this series.
Read more
Interop New York was buzzing with news on 802.11ac last week. Just for starters:
Read more
Assuming you've read Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, and you really need to before proceeding here, the following is what we discovered during the MUC testing project.
Read more
I'm a huge believer, as I've noted before, is the power of desktop virtualization to transform how we look at mobility from an enterprise IT perspective. Desktop virtualization is an easy way to mobilize existing applications (with minimal cost in terms of time, dollars, and risk) and to provision future applications as well - why write a lot of custom apps for specific combinations of handsets and mobile operating systems when the write once/run anywhere approach is both alive and so easy to deploy?
Read more
Last time, I discussed the motivations for this project - low-cost voice communication via Wi-Fi from anywhere - or, well, almost anywhere. This time, here's a look at the software and services involved.
Read more
My #1 wish-list item back in the '90s was a low-cost WLAN-oriented spectral analysis tool, interference and propagation being the challenges that they are in the unlicensed bands.
Read more
I've held off for a few days to let this one stew a bit - I really want to be fair to Apple here, and I really think the following is nothing but fair. I wasn't really that disappointed with the iPhone 5S/5C announcements, because my expectations were pretty low already.
Read more
For those of us who travel internationally extensively, and who more than depend on a wide variety of communications and networking capabilities, perhaps the best-known (and certainly most convenient) solution is international roaming on cellular networks. With the rise of LTE (with backwards compatibility to the GSM family of technologies, of course) as the universal access here, such is easy - turn on your phone, and talk, text and surf away.
Read more
Mathias is a principal at Farpoint Group, a wireless advisory firm in Ashland, Mass.