Head of Technical Stuff @haminawireless. CWNE #238. I break Wi-Fi hardware so you don't have to. Fueled by coffee, airports, and too many APs on my desk.
Milwaukee, WI 🧀
Joined May 2008
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Josh and Daniel did a great walkthrough of Orb, and then Jussi showed up with a vibe-coded dashboard reading Orb data off his Clips at the show. Nothing says 'CEO' like live-demoing your weekend project to a room full of Wi-Fi engineers. Worth the watch if you care about what the network actually feels like to clients.
@orbforge
linkedin.com/feed/update/urn…
Top 3 of the Deloitte Fast 50 in Finland. 🇫🇮
I'd love to say it's all the hardware I break in the lab, but it's really the team and the folks who trust us with their networks. Proud to be part of this crew.
Also, huge respect to Minna for the 3-second-notice video. That's the real growth story. 😂
@Deloitte
linkedin.com/feed/update/urn…
Joel Crane is going live the first Wednesday of every month to walk through what we just shipped. First one is Nov 4, 8AM EST / 2PM CET. Bring questions. Bring coffee. He's already read the release notes so you don't have to.
linkedin.com/feed/update/urn…
Catching up at Wi-Co Texas: Jeff O'Bryan of Oberon on healthcare wireless and code compliance, then Brad Howell of Wyebot on why clients roam. The AP can suggest, the client decides, and most roams happened in standby or right after wake. Sleepwalking, not misbehaving. 😂
Kevin Franzen at Wi-Co Texas on putting AI to work: "Am I testing the tool, or protecting my identity?" His NanoPi thermal lab caught a TX power cap that was never actually applied. Read back the setting, verify the effect. Good advice for AI and survey data alike. 😄
Wi-Co Texas, afternoon edition: Bill Halpin on why private 5G and Wi-Fi are better together, then Peter Mackenzie telling a room full of Wi-Fi engineers to stop saying CCI. With a Mars lander. Peak Wi-Co.
Wi-Co Texas has left the atmosphere 🚀 "Professor" Troy Martin is using the interstellar medium to make the case for PRA as an alternative to LCMI. Before that, Komal Singh demoed NetPreFlight (netpreflight.com) for catching deployment blockers before you're onsite. Great first talk!
Wi-Co Texas is underway 🤠Kevin Robinson of Wi-Fi Alliance kicked it off with a call to bring real deployment data into certification, and now David Coleman is breaking down how phones fuse GPS, Wi-Fi, BLE and sensors into one location. Survey data talk from me later today.
New in Hamina Planner: a Network Connectivity heatmap built from Orb tests the survey device runs as you walk. RF coverage plus real client experience, with roaming events drawn as clickable arrows on the map. Walk the building, measure the experience. docs.hamina.com/planner/rele…
Every design looks great until the 2017 barcode scanner clocks in. One spatial stream, power save set to nap mode, and roaming logic from another era. Design for the worst client in the building, then go measure it on site. The scanner has never once read the heatmap.
The device that breaks your design isn't the laptop. It's the barcode scanner from 2017.
Constrained clients are the ones nobody plans around. Handhelds, scanners, embedded controllers, medical carts, badge readers. Old chipsets, single spatial stream, aggressive power save, firmware that hasn't been touched in years, and roaming logic that makes decisions you would not make.
Design for the phones and laptops and you get a network that tests beautifully and fails in the warehouse aisle.
The practical issues are consistent. Constrained clients often hold onto an access point long past the point where they should have roamed. They may not support the fast transition mechanisms you configured. Their receive sensitivity is worse than your survey device, so your coverage map is optimistic. And their power save behavior interacts badly with settings tuned for throughput.
Tom Carpenter pulled the research together in a CWNP whitepaper, and covered the practical design and troubleshooting side. Both are free.
Whitepaper: zurl.co/sEpto
Webinar: zurl.co/7Gubl
Which constrained device has caused you the most trouble? Scanners seem to win this one most of the time.
#CWNP #WirelessDesign #EnterpriseWiFi #WiFiTroubleshooting #SiteSurvey #NetworkEngineering #CWNA #CWDP #VendorNeutral #WLAN
lswifi escaped Windows. Josh's CLI scanner now runs on macOS and Linux too, with 6 GHz RNR decoding, roaming event watching, and Wi-Fi 7 MLO link info on Linux. One pip install and your laptop gets nosier about every beacon in the room. python -m pip install -U lswifi @joshschmelzle
✨lswifi v0.3.1 released!✨
lswifi isn't just on Windows anymore! Can run on macOS and Linux too: scan 2.4/5/6 GHz, --get-interfaces with link stats, and --watchevents. On Linux, should show Wi-Fi 7 MLO links.
- Upgrade: python -m pip install -U lswifi
- PyPI download link: pypi.org/project/lswifi/
- GH: github.com/joshschmelzle/lsw…
Coverage map says green. Users on the stairwell say otherwise. Floors leak RF in both directions, and clients happily roam to an AP one floor away that they really shouldn't. Jussi's example is a good one, and he says there may be a misconfig hiding in there too. First correct answer in the comments gets bragging rights (and maybe a sticker).
linkedin.com/feed/update/urn…
More screen, same Clip. Onsite and Wi-Fi Explorer Pro both look great on the Duo, and seeing the whole 6 GHz band without scrolling is a real quality-of-life upgrade. I'll be over here pretending I don't want one.
linkedin.com/posts/jussikivi…
Next stop, Wi-Co Texas on Oct 28. I'll be talking about survey data: what it's actually telling us, and what we tend to read into it. If you've ever stared at a heatmap and thought "that can't be right," this one's for you. Big lineup, good people, and I'm hoping for good brisket. See you there.
wi-co.org/upcoming-events/te…
🤖 Made with AI
Over half of home Wi-Fi between 6 GHz capable gear is already on 6 GHz, and stadiums use nearly every channel. "It's empty up there" is officially aging like milk. Survey the whole band.
A new report shows 6 GHz Wi-Fi adoption has grown at an unprecedented pace, with more than 4.1 billion devices expected to ship worldwide by the end of 2026. The future of connectivity depends on preserving access to the full 6 GHz band. Read more: wififorward.org/news/press-r…
The US went from "6 GHz someday" to "wait, my phone is on 6E at the coffee shop?" pretty fast. Good to see @OliviaTrustyFCC bringing those lessons to @WiFiAlliance Europe in London. Europe still only has the lower half of the band, so here's hoping the upper half follows. Is your survey gear ready?
The guy who helped build Speedtest says stop using speed tests to measure your Wi-Fi. Orb to Orb measures the network you installed, not your ISP's bad day. Great one from Josh Hardy at @TheWLPC Prague. @orbforge
thewlpc.com/presentations/st…
Zero coffee, but I still made it to Matt Glosson and John Kicklighter's session at #CalixConneXions. Outdoor Wi-Fi across a neighborhood, then an apartment complex. My inner heat map nerd woke up first. Booth 109 tomorrow, bring your weirdest floor plan.
Jussi took a crusty floor plan from an image search and got a 4-floor model with APs, cabling and a BOM in seconds. Then he validated it with Onsite and the Wi-Fi 7 hardware, and showed it live across Meraki, Mist, Aruba, Extreme and Arista. Claus Hetting's write-up: wifinowglobal.com/resources/…
