Aerohive – Wireless Field Day 2

Posted on February 6, 2012 by networkingnerd

We kicked off Wireless Field Day 2 with a visit to the Aerohive offices. Since my first interaction with these folks, I’ve been very impressed by their dedication to the wireless industry. I had to laugh when I realized how many Aerohivers I follow on Twitter. They’ve also done a great job of keeping in touch with me during the past year to let me know about new product launches, such as the BR100 branch router.

Aerohive was waiting for us with a smile and a handshake from the very start. The never-shy Devin Akin (@DevinAkin) welcomed us all to the Aerohive offices while we descended on the breakfast we were going to need to fuel the Tech Field Day “Firehose of Information”™. I must take a second here to highlight one of the best puns I’ve seen in a very long time:

#Brownies? Well played, Jeni. Well played.

Once settled with food, we were invited to take a shot of the Devinator’s favorite liquid substance, Diet Peach Tea Snapple, which I should probably start referring to as “Aerohive Kool-Aid” Our first presenter was Matthew Gast (@MatthewSGast), one of the chief archtects at Aerohive as well as a member of the 802.11 committees that drive wireless standards. His presentation was very technical, diving deep into concerns about 802.11n and issues that are already being seen with throughput on controllers today. This segued into the future of Wi-Fi, 802.11ac Gigabit Wireless, and the impact that Aerohive’s design philosophies have on the increased capabilities that wireless devices will have in the near term once 802.11ac sees wider adoption. Matthew really cranked up the Nerd Meter on this one, and I thank him for letting us get our hands dirty with all the talk about layer 1 discussion, which is probably one of the most neglected layers of the OSI model when it comes right down to it.

After Matthew finished melting my brain, we moved on to the newest Aerohive product, the BR100 branch router. Aerohive had given me a briefing on this device before, so much of it was a review. I like the form factor of the BR100, especially for remote offices or teleworkers that don’t need anything more fancy that simple connectivity. My personal use case would be something along the lines of having it available for trips to allow secure wireless connectivity in my hotel room without the need to rely on the hotel’s often-unstable wireless solution. We went through some more particulars of the device, mostly around the new options enabled by the additions to the Aerohive HiveManager interface that allow networking configuration on top of the wireless configuration options.

As the live demo was readied, we got hit with our Aerohive Oprah Moment – chocolate covered bacon! I must say that this was a first for me as a bacon fan. The hog parts were high quality, and the chocolate added a sweet compliment. I doubt it’s something I’m going to eat every day though. Thanks Aerohive for giving me the opportunity (and the extra cholesterol). We also got an Aerohive backpack filled with goodies. An Aerohive water bottle, notepad and pen set, and…a BR100! Yes, I now have a little Aerohive branch router to try out. I plan on putting this little guy through his paces. The unexpected Oprah moments really help me get a chance to evaluate the equipment.

The 15 minute, 15 branch deployment demo from an iPad was pretty impressive. The ability to have no restriction on the configuration device interface is a welcome change from the Java/Flash/client restrictions from other vendors, and it appears to be becoming a drive in the industry to provide that kind of flexibility. A word of caution, however, to those thinking of doing live demos at presentations or other events: Be sure to keep your audience engaged and riveted on the demo. It’s very easy to lose your audience with demos. Not that Aerohive did, but I noticed we were getting a little restless toward the end.

The restlessness seemed to trigger the Devinator’s Oprah Gland again, because he announced that we had reached the end of the presentation and that it was time to award the coveted Gregor Awards. We didn’t know it, but Gregor Vučajnk (@GregorVucajnk) had been monitoring the #WFD2 hashtag during the Aerohive presentation and handed out the awards for the best tweeters. Somehow, I managed to win! I guess the extra snark I packed in my carry-on helped my out on this one. I got an Aerohive AP 350 for causing so much trouble. This impressive piece of hardware is going to get a great workout both at home and the office, as I now have my own “hive” of APs to test and play around with.

If you’d like to learn more, you can check out their website at http://www.aerohive.com. You can also follow them on Twitter as @Aerohive.

Tom’s Take

Overall, Aerohive was a great start to Wireless Field Day 2. I enjoyed the interaction with Matthew Gast and the ability to pick his brain about the nerd knobs of wireless. While the information about the BR100 wasn’t necessarily new, I think this speaks volumes about Aerohive’s ability to keep bloggers and technical people in the loop about new developments and keep their products fresh in our minds. While the Oprah Moments are never a required part of Tech Field Day, it’s nice to see that companies like Aerohive believe so strongly in their products that they are willing to put a few out there in the hands of people that will pick them apart and tell you the good and bad without reservation. That’s a lot of confidence, folks. Something that I’ve never sensed that Aerohive is short on. Keep up the good work, Aerohive. And keep drinking that Diet Peach Tea Snapple Aerohive Kool-Aid.

Wireless Field Day 2 Disclaimer

Aerohive was a sponsor of Wireless Field Day 2. As such, they were responsible for covering a portion of my travel and lodging expenses while attending Wireless Field Day 2. In addition, they provided me with an Aerohive backpack, water bottle, pen and notepad set, an Aerohive BR100 evaluation unit, and an Aerohive AP 350 evaluation unit. They did not ask for, nor where they promised any kind of consideration in the writing of this review/analysis. The opinions and analysis provided within are my own and any errors or omissions are mine and mine alone.

CCIE Numbers Skyrocket – Red Alert?

Posted on February 2, 2012 by networkingnerd

Congratulations to Chris Martin, CCIE# 34310, according to IPExpert’s Successful Candidates page. Thanks to Windows Calculator and my non-binary math skills, that means we’ve had 5,000 new numbers since my pass back in June. That’s not counting the repeat passes that keep the same number. The new numbers have been skyrocketing in the last 3 months, shooting up over 2,000 since Blake Krone passed his lab at the end of October.

I’ve heard a lot of interesting theories in the past couple of weeks about why the numbers are shooting up so quickly. Some attribute it to the official Cisco 360 training program churning out candidates left and right. There are also those that believe there is something hinkey is going on with the numbering scheme. Is Cisco pre-allocating numbers to each lab seat every day and then discarding them if the lab isn’t passed? Are they counting by even numbers now? Is the numbering now logarithmic? Add in the recent troubles that Marc La Porte has had with Cisco and his unofficial CCIE Hall of Fame Webpage and the conspiracy theories started spreading like wildfire. Why is Cisco trying to take down the page? Are they trying to hide something?

After listening to all the theories and rumors and some of the more outlandish theories that I didn’t even bother to put down, I keep thinking back to a conversation that I had with Terry Slattery back at Cisco Live 2011. Being the fanboy that I am, I had a chance to ask Terry what he thought about the CCIE numbers climbing ever so higher. Some of the thoughts he shared with me were rather intriguing and got me to thinking about things in a light that I hadn’t really considered before. With the acceleration of the new numbers being spit out, I think now more than ever that Terry might have been on to something.

Let’s say for the sake of argument that there isn’t anything funny going on with the numbers. Let’s also assume that there isn’t rampant cheating going on, as some have suggested to me. That means that we have a large number of people taking and passing the lab. But we aren’t hearing about them. They don’t have blogs or spend time on Groupstudy or post success stories on LinkedIn. There isn’t any information about them out there. Almost as if they didn’t really have a big presence on the Internet. As if they weren’t really looking to market their skills to others and instead were either already at jobs that required the CCIE or had one lined up and ready to go. Where would such a thing be possible?

China.

Stop and think about it for a minute. According to Cisco, China is seeing explosive growth in networking, everything ranging from power systems to survellience. They’re ramping up and infrastructure that’s going to need to support over a billion people all looking to get connected somehow. China is leading the way in deploying IPv6 internally as a way to alleviate the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses. Ask yourself then: Where are they getting all these engineers? How many of your friends and colleagues are flying to China to work on these massive projects? I’m guessing hardly any. Why’s that? Where is the supply coming from to meet this massive demand?

I believe that there are sponsored learning facilities inside China that are essentially functioning like advanced technology vocational technology centers in an effort to train a workforce to go out and assume the roles needed to build and maintain advanced networking and computing infrastructures. That way, they don’t need to sort out all the details of arranging for a large number of visas to allow foreign engineers to come and work for months at a time. They also don’t have to worry about bad press from said foreign engineers coming back home and discussing things like the Internet filtering policies. Instead, they can focus on creating a highly-skilled group of workers to go out and tackle these huge projects. Because these facilities are likely sponsored or run by the government, profit is of less concern than results. And if you have a populace that is willing to clamor toward a job that doesn’t involve manual labor or other undesirable work, you would have a motivated pool of talent to pick from. Taking into account the mind-bending numbers of people available for these jobs, passing even 1,000 extra CCIEs into the global pool is a blip on the radar for China.

One other thing that I’ve mentioned before lends credence to the Chinese CCIE theory in my mind. Remember those dastardly Open Ended Questions that I hated so much? Guess which testing facility instituted the in-person interview process that led to the OEQs before the new troubleshooting section? That’s right, Beijing. I’m not accusing anyone of wrongdoing. But the fact that the OEQ program originated there means they must have had a very high pass rate they were suspect of in the first place. What if the pass rate is still legitimately high even with the new safeguards against impropriety? Since Cisco doesn’t release numbers on pass rate per lab, I guess we’ll never know.

Tom’s Take

At this rate, we’re looking at seeing CCIE 40,000 before the end of the year. That’s really going to hit home for people if it took almost 3 years to go from 20,000 to 30,000 and then only takes a year to climb up to 40,000. I don’t like to think about the idea that lab cheating is so rampant that Cisco has given up trying to protect the value of the CCIE. Quite the contrary, I’ve heard rumors that the difficulty of the lab is as strong as ever and people are working as hard as they can to get their digits. To me, that says there is a large contingent of people passing the lab and not talking about it, either by their own choice or the choice of someone above them. And since we in the U.S. aren’t seeing the workforce flooded with new CCIEs daily, that must mean those passing are someone other than the U.S. (or Europe). Add in the fact that there aren’t many network rock stars studying Mandarin or watching Ni How Kai-Lan and I am guessing that means that many of our new unknown CCIE brethren are from the Orient. No crazy conspiracies or funny math. Just a group of dedicated people doing their best to make it in the world.

Clarification On Comment Policy

Posted on February 2, 2012 by networkingnerd

Before I get into the Wireless Field Day 2 posts coming up next week, I wanted to take a second and clarify the commenting policy I have on my blog. That way there isn’t any confusion about comment approvals and such.

I have a pretty open policy when it comes to commenting. If you take the time to post a comment, I will usually approve it. I respect the opinions of those that read my blog and welcome any and all feedback. If a particular post inspires you enough for you to take the time to put keyboard to phosphors and create a response, it is my duty as a blogger to make sure that your voice is heard. It doesn’t matter if your opinion is different that mine or if you are correcting misinformation. I will publish all comments in my queue. There are two exceptions, however:

1. Spam – I detest spam comments with the fury of a thousand fiery suns. I don’t need magic pills, Free*** devices (where *** is a ton of crap restrictions and offer signups) or SEO tips, thank you very much. I have managed my blog so far without your help kind marketing people of the underbelly of the Internet. I think I’ll make it a few more posts without you as well. Comments that are definitely spam are approved to /dev/null and forgotten. I will usually err on the side of caution when it comes to non-obvious comments. I also go through the spam folder regularly and rescue non-spam comments. I do see every one of them at some point, so the bad stuff is really bad stuff in my mind, not just a sorting algorithm.

2. Hateful Comments – I don’t mind a good discussion, even a heated one. Hell, I’ve even made a couple of pointed comments myself. But, there has to be a point to the pointedness. If you disagree with a particular position and can elucidate that point, even with some harsh or off-color language, I’ll likely approve your point of view. If your comment is nothing more than “F*** off and die you stupid a**h***!!!!!111!!!”, I will delete it. That comment adds nothing to the discussion and only seeks to inflame people into being dragged down to a low level of name calling. When in doubt, remember that even during the height of the American Civil War, when states were shooting at each other, the members of Congress still referred to each other as “The Distinguished Gentlemen from […]” even as they were yelling obscenities. A little decorum goes a long way to ensuring your voice is heard, even if it is a bit antagonistic.

With that said, there are times when things slip through or are taken out of context. While I approve every comment without (much) reservation, I also feel it is my duty to leave comments up and not delete them out of spite. I will, however, agree to delete a comment should the commentor contact me with the request to remove a specific comment. I want to be sure that the opinions and positions expressed are accurate for all represented parties. In the event that a comment reply chain spirals out of control, I reserve the right to remove comments of both parties back to the point where the flaming started. I’ll leave the original comments unless otherwise asked to remove them.

I’m not a journalist. I’m not a celebrity blogger. I’m just some random nerdy guy with a keyboard and some thoughts that I want to share. Many of you readers out there want to share your thoughts on my thoughts as well. This post just ensures that we’re all on the same page when it comes to what gets approved and what doesn’t.