Coming up in September will be the 3rd installment of the Wireless Field Day events and I was trying to think of a fun play on the event, how can we relate this to something out there people know about? I came up with the idea that the Wireless Field Day events are kind of like the Bourne series, minus the awesome kung-fu skills. With the WFD events we have a pool of delegates that are independent thinkers when it comes to the wireless world, we are all trying to piece together the various information that has been presented to us in the past from someone. Our minds are a little fuzzy on all the details because we generally hear a slanted view from the eyes of one vendor telling us why their products are better than the others.

So we started with WFD1 aka The Wireless Field Day, I was unable to partake in this adventure (Thanks Tom 8P), but we can still use it as the initial go around. This first event we see the delegates starting to get an idea of who the players are out there in the wireless space and what they have to offer, while watching this event online it was interesting to see the wireless vendors that don’t start with C talking about their products and what they have to offer.

Next comes WFD2 aka The Wireless Supremacy, my first experience in the ring with the bulls. At this event we see most of the same delegates return as well as the same vendors, bringing with them some new material and some old material. As this event went on you see where peoples strengths are and which vendors they prefer. While attending Aerohive you can see a certain delegate who has now joined them strongly interested in their products. Metageek performs another Oprah moment handing out licenses to Eye-PA as well as their Chanalyzer products, we all love the underdog. Ekahau stepped up to the plate and displayed a great presentation with their ESS product line for Android, I think there were a lot of switchers after that presentation so AirMagnet take note! Thursday was wrapped up with Meraki, not many had experience with them but most all of us left their offices impressed. Friday gave us Aruba, HP, and Ruckus. Aruba is one of those companies that you either love or hate and have a hard time being persuaded either way. HP, well, let’s just say it kind of went like the scene inThe Bourne Supremacy where Jason tells Landy to get Nicky as he only trusts her. Landy says that might be hard, Jason’s response is that it shouldn’t be too hard, she’s standing next to you. We all knew where HP was going with their presentation because is was basic entry level stuff. We were 1 step ahead of them. Ruckus put us back in that confused state not knowing what happened, did we really just get our minds blown with insane RF math?!? Yes that happened!

This brings us to WFD3 aka The Wireless Ultimatum. What do I want to see this go around? I want to get some answers to some strong technical questions that seemed to have clouded a lot of our minds when we talk with others about the different vendors. While this isn’t our final mission, WFD will live on afterall, I want us to get some closure on items that we have continually talked about over the past year and set us up for WFD4 to be a restart, bringing something new. Here’s how the event is lining up with what I want to see in a nice outlined format:

• WildPackets
  I don’t have much experience with them, so really looking forward to whatever they present given they are the newbies to this event.
• Aerohive
  You may say your web software is great and easy to use, but I gotta tell you I must be too smart to use it. It doesn’t flow, but we can look past that. I want to hear about the components that make your APs better and able to handle the distributed architecture that much better than a controller, yes I said that word Devin! I want to know how exactly can you handle fast roaming for voice deployments? What does your JAMF integration look like?
• metageek
  Chanalyzer for Android and/or iPad, that is all.
• Ruckus
  Bring it again, let’s have some more brain hurting RF discussions. How is it that this company is displacing so many others in the hospitality market?
• Tananza
  Interesting product, but why would I want to use residential grade products in a business? I suppose I could use Ubiquiti. How does the agent work? To me it seems I would be better off just using someone like Aerohive or Meraki.
• Meraki
  Your cloud based management software is amazing, but lets talk some hardware. It seems that performance is hindered for a 5GHz client when a 2.4GHz client joins, what’s up with that? Can your hardware handle the extreme loads today’s users place on a wireless network? Where’s your RTLS integration, I have opportunities but I see nothing!
• Aruba
  Why am I stuck in what seems to be a worse licensing model than Cisco Unified Communications? I want to also see AirGroup working, not just an announcement. ciscobeatsaruba.com and ciscobeatsarubayetagain.com, need I say more?
• Cisco
  Welcome to the party, but please don’t be a repeat of WFD1! What would be amazing is to get an experience like some of us invited partners had in Ohio, the ability to see APs being developed, the testing chambers, etc. What makes Cisco so much better that there is such higher price? Show us that R&D and prove the point. I understand that cameras can’t be rolling for some of that though. I also want to know how Cisco is going to be able to combat the ever changing deployment model with controllers being seen as dinosaurs.
• Juniper
  Ahh, Juniper, this will be interesting. First just let me say making an AP look like a smoke detector doesn’t seem to go over well. I never did think the  Trapeze product line was that great, usually only lost to them when they pulled some gimmick like we’ll upgrade all your APs to new hardware if the 802.11n draft spec requires hardware change. I’d like to know how your product scales, with the largest controller only supporting 512 APs it doesn’t scale as well as a Cisco solution. What is your BYOD play?

Well if you are still with me after reading all of that I thank you, this post ended up being long but I hope it was enjoyable. I look forward to seeing my fellow friends Dan, Rocky, Jen, Sam, Chris, George, and Ryan as well as meeting in person finally Tom, Keith, Sean, Scott, and Gregor.

	Ryan Adzima	A Boring Look	@radzima
	Tom Carpenter	CWNP	@carpentertom
	Sam Clements	SC-WiFi	@samuel_clements
	Daniel Cybulskie	Simply WiFi	@SimplyWiFi
	Rocky Gregory	Intensified	@bionicrocky
	Jennifer Huber	I ? WiFi	@JenniferLucille
	Blake Krone	Digital Lifestyle NSA Show	@blakekrone
	Chris Lyttle	WiFi Kiwi’s Blog	@wifikiwi
	Keith R. Parsons	Wireless LAN Professionals	@keithrparsons
	Sean Rynearson	WiFiGeeks	@Srynearson
	Scott Stapleton	Phased Coexistence	@scottpstapleton
	George Stefanick	my802.11	@wirelesssguru
	Gregor Vucajnk	Not your fathers WiFi	@gregorvucajnk