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Wi-Fi6 is the latest Wi-Fi standard and will change the way we connect, open the gateway to more advanced and intuitive technologies, and hopefully improve the quality of our lives.

A little over a year ago, Cisco announced the sunsetting of AireOS controllers and the end of a dynasty in the Wi-Fi industry. Approximately ten years ago, Cisco acquired a young startup company named Meraki in an enormous, 1.2-billion-dollar purchase. As an Airespace Wi-Fi fan, the news was a bit intriguing. The one thing that had been clearly missing from the Cisco/Airespace acquisition of 2005 was the lack of a cloud-based management system coupled with state-of-the-art hardware and radios. The Meraki acquisition held the promise of closing that gap in Cisco/Airespace portfolio.

I'm feeling nostalgic as I write this blog. Like Rose on the movie Titanic explaining it had been 84 years since she went to Titanic and she could still smell the fresh paint.

Smart Cities have revolutionized communities and with their inception comes the demand for seamless Internet of Things (IoT) integrations. You need to choose IoT solutions that address commonly faced issues within your community.

Last week in my lab, I had an issue arise with one of my older network testbeds. When I came into the lab in the morning, none of my access points were connected to my older Cisco 5508 controller. A little troubleshooting and I quickly discovered that there was a certificate issue on my access points and controllers. Here, I’ll share what the issue was, the fix, and what impact it will have on your business.

At IE, our wireless practice engineers often are called on to troubleshoot a network that’s gone awry, for some unknown or unforeseen reason, resulting in a negative impact to the business. The WLAN has been run through multiple support calls and RF surveys to show that good RF signal exists and the RF cell is stable. Vendor support centers may have been contacted, but with little to no actual onsite visibility, the vendor online support engineer has no real way to identify the issue. Quite often of late, this has been the result of a change to the network that may’ve been intended to improve the behavior of one client’s device at the cost of older legacy devices on the network. One, or multiples of, new Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) standards have been engaged and legacy client devices are suffering. These standards are varietal configurations of 802.11r, k, v, and w. I will briefly describe what each of these IEEE roaming and protection standards is and how they could potentially cause issues with your WLAN client devices.