Anon asked; here's the answer
A comment to my Hole 196: Lessons Learned entry reminded me that I’ve never, ever published the name of my favorite wireless LAN product. For the record, the comment, which can be found via the link above, was “i advise you need to have a technical checker before you promote your latest favorite wlan company or believe anyones idiocy” (sic). OK, the part about a technical checker proved unnecessary in this case once reality was explained to Mr. or Ms. Anon (see other comments to the entry). I’m always willing, BTW, to learn where I’m just plain wrong, but I suspect this was just another gratuitous comment by Mr. or Ms. Anon, who is clearly still in need of additional bran in their daily diet.
Still, a fair question – just what is my latest favorite WLAN company? Answer: I don’t have one. Really, I don’t. I’ve used most of the products on the market, sometimes extensively, and sometimes only in testing. There are things I like and dislike about each of them. In general, I personally look for ease of use. Too many products assume that the user (typically an administrator or network manager) is either (a) a flat-out expert in WLAN, LAN, and network technology, (b) a graduate of product-specific training, or (c) a total nerd who loves reading manuals and solving complex technical puzzles for fun. I like management consoles that are self-documenting and even tutorial in nature, provided I can turn off easy mode once I know what I want to do. For me, it’s all about the management, productivity, and minimizing OpEx.
But there’s a more important question: what product(s) do I recommend to clients who are installing really large networks? What’s my favorite there? And the answer is that it depends upon what a given client needs, and what their particular constraints are. All of the enterprise-class products on the market today are at least serviceable for most horizontal applications. The key is in defining major operational objectives, from coverage to number of users to types of applications to throughput to price, and then carefully crafting the RFP and the subsequent evaluation process. But, I must confess, sometimes price is all that matters. I hate to think that the enterprise WLAN world has commoditized, and, really, it hasn’t – just look at the wide variety of system architectures and resulting products, and it’s clear that there is no single acknowledged “right” or “best” answer yet. Each vendor shines in some dimension, and often in more than one. But WLAN evaluation processes can be complex, time-consuming, and expensive, so sometimes it’s just easier to pick the cheapest solution qualified by the RFP and off you go.
As for Farpoint Group’s arsenal, our security policy prevents me from publishing exactly what we use here (although we occasionally do so under NDA with clients). But I typically have five wireless networks operational, each for a different application. And I may be running some number of test networks as well – vendors often send products for testing and evaluation, and as I’ve previously stated, we use these in production only if we buy them. And, again, we’ve used just about everything on the market here, and continue to enjoy trying new products and exploring their capabilities. Formal benchmarking of large-scale WLAN systems remains a challenge, but we’re working on that; more later.
But at least you now know, Mr. or Ms. Anon, what my latest favorite WLAN is.
