Wi-Fi Article Round-Up: 2011/12/22

A recap of interesting Wi-Fi and IT industry articles from around the interwebs.

Author's Note
Since my last article round-up, Google has decided to completely gut the sharing features from within Google Reader, which includes notes, tagging of external articles not in your subscriptions, and lack internal sharing capabilities. Everything has been ported over to Google+, which is not nearly as useful. Therefore, an RSS feed of my shared articles is no longer available from my shared article feed (only historical shared items from before the change in November). I'm still looking for an alternative solution.

Wi-Fi Articles:
Wireless Tech Field Day 2 is coming this January, and we're adding to the mix with the Wi-Fi Symposium the day prior! Symposium topics will include the rise of mobile devices, BYOD, hotpsot 2.0, and gigabit Wi-Fi.

Wi-Fi Mobility Symposium – San Jose, CA: "Wireless networks are everywhere, and mobility is the order of the day from the enterprise to the consumer space. Wi-Fi technology is changing as a result, and the industry will come together to present a vision of the future at the Wi-Fi Mobility Symposium!"

Speaking of gigabit Wi-Fi, consumers can expect products to emerge in 2012 with enterprises following in 2013.

Another milestone for 802.11ac and gigabit wireless LANs: "One-gigabit wireless LAN products should enter the retail channel for the 2012 holiday season thanks to the fact that the 802.11 working group concluded balloting on the proposed 802.11ac standard last summer, meaning enterprise-focused products should follow in 2013."

Wi-Fi market growth shows no signs of slowing down. Find out why from Kevin over at CWNP.

What happens in Wi-Fi after 2015? | CWNP - Enterprise Wi-Fi Career Certifications: "Three studies: Informa Telecoms & Media / Wireless Broadband Alliance, Cisco, and IDC. One conclusion: between now and 2015, Wi-Fi is going to explode."

Still skeptical of those reports that Wi-Fi hotspots will grow dramatically in the next few years? Carrier Wi-Fi is only one reason, retail Wi-Fi could be even bigger! Brick and mortar retailers can take back the momentum from e-commerce retailers by opening up that in-store Wi-Fi! Here's why:

The Smartphone and the Revival of Impulse Purchases: "nothing compares to the instant gratification of buying it in the store with the comfort that they have done their research and they are getting a good price. The price doesn’t have to be the same as lowest online price - it just has to be close enough to offset the additional value the consumer receives from buying their products within the store, such as taking the product home with them immediately as opposed to waiting, and having the ability to easily return the product to the physical store if they need to instead of shipping it back to the online retailer."

Also check out my article on 5 Retail Trends Driving Wi-Fi while you're at it.

Ruckus Wireless released ChannelFly, joining the crowd in automatic and [dare I say] intelligent Wi-Fi channel selection... with a twist. Instead of passively listening to channels, Ruckus claims a better method is to actively measure performance with live clients to determine the optimal channel for operation. I'll reserve judgement until I see it in action (hopefully at Wireless Field Day 2).

Ruckus joins real-time wireless channel selection fray: "Ruckus access points enabled with ChannelFly use the dynamic frequency selection [DFS] feature of the 802.11h IEEE standard to bring wireless clients with them as they migrate from one Wi-Fi channel to another to perform real-time wireless channel selection analysis."

Any engineer can relate to this article. A fictional short-story on falsely accusing the network infrastructure for application problems!

Falsely Accused: The Wireless Controller Story - Your NCI: "This is another tragic case of the victim turning out to be our perp. Once we started looking at the evidence, it was clear that the WLAN controller was being falsely accused. After that, it was a simple matter of following the evidence back to the victim."

This Cisco newsroom release proposes using public VPNs as a solution to insecure Wi-Fi hotspot access. This is bad advice which is backwards-facing rather than forward-looking. Mobile access today requires an excellent user experience, and VPNs are not the solution. Secure hotspots are, which is why I find this article strange. Is the writer not aware of Cisco's efforts in carrier Wi-Fi and Hotspot 2.0 solutions?

Reducing the Risks of Public Wi-Fi - The Network: Cisco's Technology News Site: "One solution is to have corporate users connect to public Wi-Fi networks using public VPNs. These are less secure than corporate VPNs since they provide encryption only from the device to the service provider, not all the way through to the corporate network. But they do protect the most vulnerable zone, the Wi-Fi link and associated local area network."

IT Industry Articles:
A fascinating story on the history of Silicon Valley!

The Secret History of Silicon Valley » ÆtherCzar: "Entrepreneur Steven Gary Blank delivers an outstanding lecture on “The Secret History of Silicon Valley.” The story is in large part how Frederick Terman invented the culture of entrepreneurship at Stanford and Silicon Valley in the aftermath of World War II."

Why should we love a company or their products? Because they differentiate and are "evangelistic" about their products.

Why I Don’t Love Your Company Or Your Products. | In Search of Tech: "There is no differentiation from everyone else. There is nothing special about them. Their marketing stinks. Their ability to execute stinks. All they can do is jump up and down like a spoiled little child demanding that you notice them, but when you do take time to notice them, there is absolutely nothing remarkable about them."

Other Great Articles:
Forbes dives into why large companies lose great talent. It's not all about the money, it's about igniting their talent with exciting work and empowering employees to innovate.

Top Ten Reasons Why Large Companies Fail To Keep Their Best Talent - Forbes: "large established companies have a tremendous advantage in retaining their top talent and don’t. I’ve seen the good and the bad things that large companies do in relation to talent management. Here’s my Top Ten list of what large companies do to lose their top talent"

Follow that by reading this article from the Corporate Executive Board on the bleak outlook for employee retention and what IT organizations need to do to about it

CEB Tech Views » A Bleak Outlook for IT Employee Retention: "Only 25% of IT employees show a strong inclination to stay with their current employers and the number continues to fall. In response, IT leaders must take another look at the how they attract and retain key employees"

Comic for the Week:
I'm becoming a HUGE fan of the 1.00 FTE webcomic!

Cheers (and happy reading)!
Andrew