One of the things that I love about being product manager is when I think about my product, and then adapt it to the world around me. On a recent trip to Canada I had a planetary alignment situation where I was changing every song that I heard to be about WIFI. Following are some bad examples of some of the songs. Note that there is a slight slant to Canada. You can also probably figure out that I was a teenager in the 80s. Read More »

Wireless cellular networks have been driven by large capital expenditures on infrastructure and then clients are subsidized to get users on to the network with a well known return on investment (ROI). The emergence of WiFi technology has shifted this paradigm just that we now have a wave of unsubsidized unlicensed WiFi clients driving the demand for infrastructure with an unclear ROI. When we founded Airespace, the ROI for wireless networking in the enterprise was not clear either cut but the waves of clients from the consumer space were demanding the same mobility they had found so convenient in their homes to be in their work space, forcing enterprise IT managers to effectively become wireless ISPs. Once established in the work space, the productivity of wireless mobility became clear and measurable. As we watch WiFi technology emerge from the laptop in to other platforms such as cell phones, PDAs and your kid’s portable play stations we will see this growing wave of WiFi clients demanding WiFi access in the outdoor space. And while people are searching for the return on investment (ROI) and business model to justify these outdoor WiFi mesh networks, we will see the same productivity increases that wireless mobility brought to the indoor enterprise space in combination with the increasing wave of WiFi clients across new platforms make outdoor WiFi access an increasing a more common place and the ROI more obvious.

Everyone is celebrating a birthday or anniversary, (present company excluded of course, we get wiser not older). Apple just turned 30 and recently Network World did a spread in celebration of the launch of their magazine 20 years ago. One of the more interesting pieces in that edition was a reader survey on their perspective of the industry, both past present and future. Predictably the PC and the Internet were ranked as the most important innovation of the last 20 years. Looking forward, however, readers identified wireless broadband as the next big technology for the next 20 years. Wow! As big as the PC? The Internet? Those are big footsteps to follow. I am bullish, are you?

Hong Kong never sleeps and its seems EVERYONE is always on their phone. Here phones are fashion and not just functional. Yet 3G services, the promise of cellular broadband, is slow to take off. Definitely a conudrum for a society where many people carry two phones, one tethered to a necklace, dangling like a proud locket, megapixel camera and the ready.Perhaps allowing these phones to connect corporate networks, to services such as directories and databases could drive faster adoption of 3G and Wi-Fi. Remember the Chinese proverb: “Distant water won’t quench your immediate thirst.”

In general, everytime I get to Singapore, I am amazed how clean and efficient everything is. But I always see something new on each visit.This time, I had the pleasure of visiting the Republic Polytechnic, a BRAND NEW UNIVERSITY that is still under construction (when is the last time you saw a NEW university). AND ITs (drumroll please) all wireless. Rows and rows of APs everywhere, like the mad rush of ships in Singapore harbor, beckoning prosperity and connection with the rest of the world. Students everywhere with tablets, with laptops, all communicating. Read More »

Have you noticed that people can overblog? I think I have a new term for folks that overblog: SPLOGIt is when you SPAM your BLOGsMobile Vision Contributors: let’s watch out for SPLOG (especially me!)

WiMAx and WIFI what’s all the hubbub? People often ask me about the two technologies. Here is my reader’s digest answer…. Read More »

Touched down last night in Seoul as the orange cloud of nightfall blanketed the Korean pennisula before drifting down to the sea in Inchon. Waiting for friends to come out of customs, an SP network (with a weird, downloadable application), but, them, ah, deus ex machina, an open Linksys AP for a fast upload/download fun. 12 hours jammed in a metal can, a few feverish hours working through my battery life, and the the Centrino springs to life for a brief final burst of frenzied activity, like my 74 Opel Manta’s last ride down Newfane Hill (Vermont) in 1983 before throwing a rod and its ultimate, less-than-noble tow to the wrecking yard. Walked from the hotel next to the Cisco office to a Korean BBQ place (which if you have not been, is a communal cook-out on a tableside grill). 3 blocks and my hand-held wifi-seeker saw 7 networks.Just a little distance off is the most militaritzed border in the world. Wonder if they are sharing an access point, playing a multi-party game? A guild master to connect the North and South….

I’m sitting on a plane and like any good product manager I’m thinking about my product line -- the size, scope and future of it, and I had a thought…Without a doubt the world as converged on IP as the protocol of choice. In 1991 we had multi-protocol routers, but IP was already eeking out increasing market share because of the good old Internet. Finally web browsers began being bundled with PCs and voila! Everyone had to get IP connected. Flash forward fifteen years later and we now run voice over IP, data over IP and video over IP (The IP triple play). Plus there are a myriad of applications that were non-existent before the world coalesced around this protocol. It has transformed the way we communicate in business and at home. Read More »

It seems my colleagues Matt and Alan have been getting some recent air time. I too had the pleasure of boarding a plane lately. Once onboard, I usually tune out the flight attendant’s emergency pitch; partly out of fear, but mostly in an attempt to catch a brief cat nap. To form, the flight attendant requested that all laptops and cell phones be turned off. Yet, what caught my attention was her insistence that anything using Wi-Fi technology be left in the off position for the duration of the flight. Read More »

I was sitting in SFO yesterday waiting for a flight to Chicago, enjoying the TMobile Hotspot (you know, as a serious aside, I have been a customer for over 5 years. There should be a frequent downloader program or something for WISPs). It would have been great if I could have downloaded a boarding pass and either had a way to print it or store it to my PDA. Although bar-codes do not come off well today on LCDs, someone is going to fix this problem.Robert Frost once said: “If society fits you comfortably enough, you call it freedom.”As more of us develop mobile lifestyles, we are going to push business and government to morph around the changing work/play scenarios enabled by wireless networking. Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits please don’t be mad:”I want my boarding card.Public W-iFi for nothing, And the clicks for free.”Alan

I think we’re getting to the point where wireless will really take off in large businesses. To be sure, a lot of businesses have deployed wireless LANs to some degree, but I think things in this market get really interesting when the WLAN architectures merge with the wired network infrastructure. Here’s a great example:http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/wireless/2006/0327wireless2.htmlUnifying wireless LAN controllers into ethernet switching platforms, in this case the Catalyst 6500, really helps drive down the incremental operational costs required to operate wireless networks. We heard several large customer say just this recently. Here’s to more pervasive wireless!

The mobile revolution is here and is changing the face of business. In the global marketplace, businesses must be able to turn on a dime to respond to competitive threats, exploit new market opportunities and create lasting competitive advantage. Wireless technology is the enabler to providing the anywhere, anytime access to information needed for critical business decision making. Read More »

In his best selling book, Tom Friedman http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/ of the New York Times wrote “And now the icing on the cake, the ubersteroid that makes it all mobile: wireless. Wireless is what will allow you to take everything that has been digitized, made virtual and personal, and do it from anywhere.”We see wireless becoming that “ubersteroid” for networking, helping network managers to provide a range of mobility services to end users, including location/presence services, real-time unified communications (voice, messaging, chat, etc.), and identity-services (based on who you are) Read More »