WiFi Jedi.com

Wireless Gift Guide (Cont.)

Posted December 21, 2009
Filed under: General | Tags: BlueAnt, Pet Rock, Playstation 3, wireless, Wireless Gift Guide

There are only a few more shopping days before Christmas. If you have procrastinated until this point, perhaps you should view the “wireless gift guide” I recently published on my Computerworld blog.

I have one addition to the list:

BlueAnt Supertooth Light – I can’t believe I excluded this one from the list because I actually *received* one of these as a Christmas gift this year. It’s a Bluetooth speakerphone/microphone that hangs on a car sun visor. And as Sheldon from the TV show, Big Bang Theory says, “Everything is better with Bluetooth”. I actually had a similar device from a different manufacturer and didn’t like it –mostly because it wasn’t loud enough. The call quality on both ends is excellent with the BlueAnt device.

I also wanted to expand on two of the original suggestions:

PlayStation3 – The Wi-Fi on this does a lot more than I originally anticipated. Not only does it allow for free online game play, but it facilitates game updates. Once such example of this is in sports games where updated team rosters can be downloaded from online servers. You can also stream movies directly to the PS3 from NetFlix.

Pet Rock – My Computerworld editor actually pointed out this reincarnation of the pet rock: http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/cubegoodies/c208/ Oddly enough, this version of the pet rock *isn’t* wireless. Uhg…

Last Minute Holiday Gifts?

Posted December 20, 2009
Filed under: General, Poll Questions | Tags: Bluetooth, Computerworld, elctromagnetic induction, Wi-Fi, WiFiJedi.com, wireless gifts

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Wondering what to get friends and family members for a last-minute holiday gift? Then check out my latest Computerworld blog post for gift suggestions. I won’t spoil all the fun, but I made four suggestions that deal with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and other wireless technologies.

If you are still puzzled about what to purchase, check out the Super Tuesday Poll that I ran here at WiFiJedi.com to see what wireless-related gifts others are buying for their loved ones.

Happy shopping!

Super Tuesday Poll: Wireless Gift Guide

Posted December 8, 2009
Filed under: Uncategorized |

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Xirrus Secures $20 Million in Additional Funding

Posted December 4, 2009
Filed under: WLAN Vendors, Xirrus | Tags: InterWest Partners, Xirrus

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InterWest Partners Leads Latest Investment Round in the Only Wi-Fi Power Play in the Industry

Thousand Oaks, California – December 1, 2009 – Xirrus, Inc. announced that it has secured an additional $20 million in a financing led by InterWest Partners. This financing round brings the total investment in the company to $80 million. Xirrus will use the new funds to bolster its reserves and strategically invest in partnerships with large integrators focused on making Wi-Fi the primary network connection for their customers. The financing is anticipated to be the last round of private funding Xirrus will require.

“Times have changed since my last technology venture,” said Dirk Gates, founder and CEO of Xirrus (previously founder and CEO of Xircom, which was valued at more than $2.0 billion before being sold to Intel® in 2001). “Xirrus has reached critical mass and significant customer traction with far less fanfare, yet far more substance than venture-backed companies during the 1990’s. We have quietly outpaced the competition by outperforming them on nearly every level – products, productivity and capital efficiency – as evidenced by many thousands of successful deployments, with 100% customer satisfaction, while growing at a compounded annual growth rate of nearly 250% over the past three years.”

Xirrus also announced the appointment of Khaled Nasr, Partner at InterWest Partners, to Xirrus’ board of directors. Mr. Nasr joins current Xirrus board members Dave Marquardt of August Capital; Steve Krausz of US Venture Partners; Eric Young of Canaan Partners; Bill Schroeder, former Vice Chairman of Connor Peripherals; and Dirk Gates, president and CEO. All existing venture investors including August Capital, US Venture Partners, Canaan Partners, and QuestMark Partners participated in the round.

“We have been monitoring the Wi-Fi industry in search of a viable investment for several years, but have been dissatisfied with the lack of differentiation and leadership among the vendors,” said Khaled Nasr, Partner at InterWest. “There was one Wi-Fi vendor, however, who had the leadership, vision, and products we were looking for. Xirrus not only has a management team with proven operational abilities, but they also have the vision and products to take Wi-Fi to the next level – to replace wired Ethernet to the desktop with wireless connectivity.”

About InterWest Partners
InterWest Partners (www.interwest.com http://www.interwest.com), founded in 1979, is a leading diversified venture capital firm focused on building long-term relationships with entrepreneurs and portfolio companies. Currently investing its tenth fund, InterWest X, a $650 million fund, InterWest has raised more than $2.8 billion of capital since inception. InterWest has a total of 13 partners and general partners in Menlo Park, CA and Dallas, TX, who bring together deep domain knowledge in life sciences and information technology.

The firm’s past successful investments in information technology include: CIENA (CIEN), Copper Mountain Networks (CMTN), Crystal Semiconductor (acquired by Cirrus Logic, CRUS), Cyrix (CYRX; acquired by National Semiconductor (NSM), Lightera (acquired by CIENA), PlaceWare (acquired by Microsoft, MSFT), SiTera (acquired by Vitesse, VTSS), Silicon Graphics (SGI), Stratacom (STRM; acquired by Cisco, CSCO) and Xilinx (XLNX).

About Xirrus
Xirrus, the only Wi-Fi “Power Play”, manufacturers the Wi-Fi Array® architecture that displaces both overlay Wi-Fi offerings and switched Ethernet and Fast Ethernet to the desktop. The Wi-Fi Array integrates 4, 8, 12, 16, or 24 802.11abg+n radios coupled to a high-gain directional antenna system into a single device along with an onboard multi-gigabit switch, Wi-Fi controller, firewall, dedicated Wi-Fi threat sensor, and an embedded spectrum analyzer. The Wi-Fi Array provides more than enough bandwidth, security, and control to replace switched Ethernet to the desktop as the primary network connection. The Xirrus Wi-Fi Array delivers the most coverage, bandwidth, throughput, and user density on a per device and per system basis than anything else available on the market today – resulting in a solution that uses 75% fewer devices, cabling, switch ports, power, space, and installation time compared with any other offering.
Xirrus is a privately-held company headquartered in Thousand Oaks, California. For more information, please visit www.xirrus.com http://www.xirrus.com.

Xirrus – Switching: Without Wires™

Xirrus – High Performance Wi-Fi™

Xirrus – Wi-Fi Array®

802.11 Heaven

Posted December 3, 2009
Filed under: blogging, General, Social Media | Tags: 802.11 Heaven, Computerworld, Jamey Kistner, Joel Barrett, Keith Parsons, Ning, Tom Carpenter

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I recently wrote on my Computerworld Blog about wireless resources on Twitter. The goal of the post was to share ways for those passionate about wireless networking and security could find one another. One of the comments to that post was from Jamey Kistner (@jameyk1stner). Jamey recommended another such community, this time on Ning.

The Ning community is called “802.11 Heaven” and is accessible at http://80211heaven.ning.com/ The website’s subtitle is “The place to chat, argue, debate and understand all things 802.11”. The site was founded by Tom Carpenter (@carpentertom), who is a CWNA and CWSP author.

To be honest, the 802.11 Heaven community is extremely small at this point, but it definitely has some of the best minds in Wi-Fi including Joel Barrett (@joelbarrett) and Keith Parsons (@keithparsons). Let’s get the word out as the value of the community is strengthened with each new member!

My thanks goes out to Jamey for highlighting this resource. Speaking of resources, you might also want to check out Jamey’s blog “Wireless Journeys”, which is available here: http://wirelessaficionado.wordpress.com/

Webinar Today at 11am PT / 2pm ET

Posted December 2, 2009
Filed under: 802.11n, Speaking Engagements, Xirrus | Tags: 802.11n, Burton Group, educational webinar, INTEROP, lessons learned, Xirrus

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The Burton Group and Xirrus are offering a FREE educational webinar today (Wednesday, Dec 2nd) on the newly ratified IEEE wireless standard, 802.11n. I delivered the Xirrus portion of this presentation at INTEROP New York a couple weeks ago, so I can tell you it’s packed with great information. 🙂

“802.11n: Lessons Learned from the First 1,000 Xirrus Installations”

Date: Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Time: 11:00 am PT / 2:00 pm ET / 7:00 pm UK

Speakers:

Paul DeBeasi, Senior Analyst, Burton Group

Kurt Sauter, Director of Product Marketing, Xirrus

The webinar is posted on the Xirrus webinars page: http://www.xirrus.com/library/webinars.php

You can use the below to register:

http://event.on24.com/r.htm?e=180563&s=1&k=6A1C2263406C5508E18B12C79EF90978

This webinar will discuss:

• Features that the first generation 11n products provide
• Site Survey Issues
• Performance Expectations
• Network and Architecture Considerations
• Client Device Considerations
• Security Issues
• Overall Recommendations

The webinar will be archived on the Xirrus website, and anyone will be able to listen/view after the live event.

Your Favorite Wireless Technology – Super Tuesday Poll

Posted November 10, 2009
Filed under: Poll Questions | Tags: Bluetooth, RFID, smoke signals, Super Tuesday Poll, Wi-Fi, Wi-Max, wifijedi

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As I am now coming back from my summer hiatus, I thought I would get back into the swing of things with all of the features of the WiFiJedi.com site, including the “Super Tuesday” poll.

Xirrus Introduces Advanced RF Security Manager (RSM) for 802.11n Networks

Posted November 8, 2009
Filed under: PCI, Regulations / Compliance, Security, WIDS / WIPS, Wireless Security, Xirrus | Tags: Advanced RF Security Manager, Dirk Gates, hardware based encryption, RSM, Wireless IDS/IPS, wireless spectrum analysis, Xirrus

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Intelligent Security at the Network Edge Minimizes Risk in Wi-Fi Networks

Thousand Oaks, CA – Xirrus, Inc., the only Wi-Fi “Power-Play” in the industry, announced today its advanced RF Security Manager (RSM) for improving security and minimizing the risk in deploying 802.11n wireless networks. Leveraging an integrated 24/7 threat sensor and hardware-based encryption/decryption in each Array, RSM secures the Wi-Fi network from multiple types of threats. The result delivers uncompromised overall network security with greater flexibility and performance compared to traditional centralized Wi-Fi networks.

Today’s Wi-Fi networks face a number of potential security threats in the form of rogue access points, ad-hoc clients, unauthorized clients, wireless-based attacks, eavesdropping, etc. As 802.11n continues its increased adoption in enterprise networks, the importance of defending against these threats is becoming more critical.

The Xirrus Wi-Fi Array enables the efficient deployment of high performance, maximum security 802.11n networks with a multi-radio design that integrates a dedicated 24/7 threat sensor. With this threat sensor radio scanning all channels in the 2.4GHz and 5GHz spectrums, RSM searches for security threats and automatically mitigates them. Traditional Wi-Fi solutions must time-slice a user servicing radio with the security scan function, compromising the performance of the wireless users and the effectiveness of the security scan.

High performance encryption/decryption in the enterprise Wi-Fi network is a MUST. The Wi-Fi network needs to support each client using the highest level of encryption (WPA2 Enterprise/128 bit AES) and without degrading the overall performance of the network. The Xirrus Wi-Fi Array incorporates hardware-based encryption/decryption into each Array, delivering line-rate encryption at the edge of the network instead of at a choke point within the centralized controller of traditional Wi-Fi solutions.

“RSM provides a simple, scalable security solution that enables any organization to proactively mitigate wireless threats, enforce enterprise policies, and prevent performance problems. It offers the visibility and control over the wireless airspace needed to enable an enterprise to reliably deliver the same standards of security performance and compliance for their wireless networks that they expect from their wired networks,” said Dirk Gates, founder and CEO of Xirrus.

The RSM (RF Security Manager) package includes:

• Wireless IDS/IPS

• Wireless stateful firewall

• Line-rate encryption/decryption

• Security alerts and logging

• User group policies

• Authenticated guest access gateway

• NAC integration

• PCI audit compliance enforcement

RSM is part of a family of functionality packages for the Xirrus Wi-Fi Array, which also includes the RF Performance Manager (RPM) and RF Analysis Manager (RAM). RSM is available now in the Xirrus ArrayOS 4.0.6 software release.

Wireless LANs as a “System”

Posted November 6, 2009
Filed under: Architecture, General, Troubleshooting, Uncategorized | Tags: co-channel interference, physical environment, RF environment, wireless clients, wireless infrastructure, wireless stations, WLAN system

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What makes up a wireless LAN (WLAN)? Is it just the Access Point(s) and any associated WLAN controller(s)? Does it include anything else? Personally, I think of wireless LANs as a system. In my mind, there are three main parts to this system:

The infrastructure
The clients
The environment

The Infrastructure

This includes not only the access point(s) and the WLAN controller(s), but any of the routing & switching gear used for uplinks. Also included in the infrastructure would be any of the network infrastructure / services leveraged by the wireless LAN (examples include RADIUS, Network Time Protocol, Syslog, etc.)

The Clients

The IEEE 802.11 specification refers to these as “stations”. Clients/stations could be computers such as laptops or tablet PCs. Other examples of wireless stations include dual-mode phones, handheld scanners, etc. When thinking about the clients, realize this includes not only the hardware, but the software (such as a client driver or management supplicant).

The Environment

This most commonly refers to the Radio Frequency environment. The RF environment can be evaluated with a spectrum analyzer, which can show you the signal level of your APs, the noise floor, and any interference in the area. Interference can come from other Wi-Fi devices, or non Wi-Fi devices (such as microwave ovens, cordless phones, and Bluetooth). I also think of the Physical environment, which is the type of construction materials used, the amount of vegitation in the area, the terrain/line-of-sight, etc.

I often get called out in troubleshooting situations. In many of these cases, the infrastructure has been evaluated as a potential source for issues (for example, are the authentication/encryption settings correct), but the clients and the environment have been neglected.

Conclusion

In these troubleshooting scenarios, it is imperative to take a thorough look at all three components. Not only should you take a look at the configuration file of the infrastructure, but ensure that wireless clients have the most up-to-date drivers. Look to see that clients power-save and roaming agressiveness settings are appropriate for the application. Double-check to see there is no interference from Wi-Fi or non Wi-Fi sources, etc. In short, evaluate your WLAN as a system.

Summer Break

Posted November 5, 2009
Filed under: Architecture, Cellular / Mobile Phones | Tags: cellular networks, Computerworld, network congestion, RSSI, wireless capacity, wireless density, wireless signal strength

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As you *may* have noticed, I took a hiatus from blogging over the summer. Now, it’s time to get back to work! “But Douglas”, you say, “It’s November. Summer was over long ago.” To that, I will remind you that I live in Phoenix. The high temperature is 94 degrees today. So in that sense, summer isn’t *entirely* over for me, but I’ll start back with blogging anyway…

Yesterday, I wrote a post for Computerworld titled: “It’s Not About ‘Full Bars’, Stupid”. It actually combines two of my passions: NFL football and wireless. The wireless portion discusses wireless’ hidden weakness: network congestion.

I don’t want to put any “spolier” information here, so you’ll just have to head over to Computerworld Blogs and check it out for yourself.