Aruba Networks Airheads conference.

Last week myself & @mrs_Bopp had the pleasure to attend the Aruba Networks Airheads conference in Nice France. We were there by invitation of Aruba Network resulting out of our work done through Haiti Connect to which Aruba had donated a substantial amount of hardware back in 2010. I had a good amount of communication with Aruba staff prior to the event and was really looking forward to the event. The fact that it was in Nice might have contributed to that also. The flight from Dublin to Nice was quite uneventful but the arrival was slightly dampened by grey skies and rain!! As we had just left a *sunny* Dublin this was not what we expected. Luckily this was compensated for by the welcome in the hotel which Aruba had arranged for the conference attendees. The venue was very slick and polished and the Aruba crew was all smiles and very helpful. We finally got to meet Jeanie, Sue & Bart with whom I had contact prior to the event. As our flight hadn’t arrived until 4 pm there was no opportunity to attend any of the Monday workshops but there was the cocktail party that evening to look forward to.  We brought our bags up to the room, plugged in a multitude of devices to charge up and discovered that the *free* wifi was limited to 2 devices per room. The signal wasn’t very strong either. Clearly they weren’t using Aruba equipment

The cocktail party was very entertaining with copious amounts of food & drinks. It was great to meet so many different “Airheads” from all over the globe. At one point we were in a discussion with people from Ireland, the UK, South Africa, Saudi, Sudan, Netherlands and Austria. The discussion ranged from wifi to politics, the price of petrol, taxes and more. All in all a very invigorating and entertaining evening. Bed came at 1 pm and was very much needed after a 4:30 am start.

After breakfast and some excellent coffee Tuesday started of with a splash caused a James Bond type opening show followed by the opening word by Duncan Fisken (VP EMEA) followed by Keerti Melkote (Aruba Networks founder & CTO) who spoke about Aruba Networks’ Technology Vision. Keerti’s talk was very interesting as it gave a clear insight Aruba’s approach to the development in user connectivity requirements, device ownership, usage patterns and how to make all this manageable.  (I’ll ad a link to the presentation when it is available online). Next there was a short break followed by a client panel on BYOD issues after which it was time for me to take the stage to talk about the use of WiFi in disaster response and about the work of Haiti Connect. I wasn’t sure how the presentation would be received but I can now safely say that it went down very well. The slick set-up with two monitors displaying the slides for the speaker as well as very visible timer made it very easy to speak in a coherent manner. I easily filled the 45 minutes allocated.

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After lunch there were a number of break-out session giving some hand-on experience of different WiFi related technologies and applications. I first attended the one on “Designing Outdoor Mesh” which was a delight as it clearly dealt with issues such as antenna modulation, signal propagation, interference etc which area areas that are not covered often enough in WiFi network design. It also provided a good insight in the various mesh network topologies and applications as well as use of Arubas Outdoor RF planner.  Next were two sessions on “Advanced wireless security” (interesting but I was starting to flag a bit and needed coffee) and one on “Clearpass access management”.  The Clearpass session was a real eye-opener. Aruba is clearly on to a winner with its solution to the BYOD issue.  While it allows for excellent user & network management the really impressive feature for me is the easy device “onboarding” which allows a user to easily connect to the network and authenticate after which pre-set network policies are applied according to user, device and application. This means less work for the network support department as well as the fact that users can do this in “remote” locations where there is no direct access to network/sys admin people. I can see this working very well in disaster response scenarios where a network is rolled out quickly and where a very heterogeneous user environment exists. Policies can be pre-set or easily added or changed by network admin staff without the need to come close to any of the users or client devices.

After a long day of seriously getting ones geek on it was time for some top class relaxation and Aruba had really pulled all the tops out on this one! We were bussed to “Chateau de Cremat”  which is in a stunning location on a hilltop North of  Nice with magnificent views across the mountains and the Mediterranean in the distance. After some Casino Royal themed entertainment we were treated to yet another excellent meal and some very drinkable wine from the chateaus own cellars. Around 10 pm the busses departed again and while some hardcore people wanted to go clubbing in downtown Nice we decided to go back to the hotel and have a few more beverages on the rooftop terrace.

Wednesday unfortunately heralded the last day of the Airheads conference but luckily it went out with a bang in the form of tow excellent presentations by Dominic Orr (CEO, Aruba Networks) and Mike Wiley (Manager Global Networks @ Google).  Dominics presentation was titled “License To Win” and ran us through Aruba’s technical & strategical development right from the beginning to into the next few years. It gave an excellent insight not only in Aruba Networks but also into the market that it operates in.  Mike Wiley’s presentation was titled “Google’s Global WLAN Deployment” but it dealt with more than that. It illustrated clearly how people require ubiquitous connectivity, how they benefit from this and how to best deliver this.

What I have come away with from this conference is the impression that Aruba is very much on top of their game with both their hardware & software products. Both are excellent product ranges which complement & support each other. There is the obvious debate about controller vs controller-less architectures but with the Aruba Instant AP’s they are moving in both areas now. While I’m very much a hardware kinda guy I have learned through experience that a network deployment & management tool which is intelligent and adaptive is worth its weight in gold. Aruba’s MOVE & Clearpass hold great promise in that area and I can’t wait to test it in the live environment!

Related articles

• BYOD Adoption is Growing Amongst EMEA Enterprises, Despite Security Concerns; Survey Shows (sys-con.com)
• Aruba Selected as Part of Test Bed for New Wi-Fi Alliance Voice over Wi-Fi Certifications (sys-con.com)
• Golf Clap for Aruba Networks (fool.com)

2012 hotel WiFi report; the good and the bad.

HotelChatter.com has just released their 2012 report on WiFi in hotels. There is some good news bit also still a lot of bad news. Charges as high as $20 per day (or even worse per day AND per device) still exist! On top of that many hotels still use a “regular” DSL line to backhaul ALL their wifi though….

I plan to write a detailed blogpost soon on hotel wifi, what to look for and how to maximise it but for now this excellent infogram contains some interesting details.

Dublin gets “free” WiFi. Again….

Last week Labour Councillor Oisin Quinn announced that his proposal to provide free public wifi in certain parts of Dublin had gone out to tender. This is further than the proposal by FG councillor Naoise O’Muiri in 2007 had gotten when his proposal was dead-ended out of fears that it might be seen as illegal interference in the public telecoms market.

Now as anyone who knows me will confirm I am a staunch supporter of free public WiFi and have come out in support of schemes like this on several occasions. However, while Councillor Quinns idea is in essence well-meaning the whole execution of the tender process is ham-fisted and devoid of any bit of understanding of what providing public wifi actually entails.  DISCLOSURE: I have on several occasions offered councillor Quinn my assistance in speccing and preparing the tender. All on a pro-bono basis. This has not led to any meaningful discussion on the topic.

So, when the RFT was put up on eTenders I quickly logged on to have a look. The RFT consisted out of two documents; the actual tender document and a map of locations where Dublin City Council had decided that the service should be provided. I won’t discuss the actual locations any further than to say that some of them make no sense to me. However the “where” decision is totally up to Dublin City Council as they know Dublin better than me.

The locations are as follows:

• Smithfield Square
• Barnardo’s Square
• Clarendon Street
• St. Patrick’s Park
• O’Connell Street Plaza / GPO
• Temple Bar Square
• Wolfe Tone Square
• Frontage to the Convention Centre Dublin
• Merrion Square
• Henry Street
• Grafton Street (on conclusion of current works planned in the Grafton St area)
• Outdoor amphitheatre located at Civic Offices.

However what really annoys the hell out of me is the utter and complete lacks of any technical specifications from the actual tender document. There is no single attempt to set out the technical & performance criteria for this network. The closest that the document comes to this is by using the terms “wifi” (without any further elaboration if it should be 802.11 a,b,c or n), “Quality of Service ” (without describing what quality this service should be) and “minimum standard of broadband speed” (again without specifying what exactly the minimum acceptable broadband speed is). Futhermore, while it clearly states that the service should include a “The number of minutes of connection per day and/or per session which will be provided free” it also states that Dublin City Council will NOT pay for any of the wifi service or infra-structure. Hence the conclusion can be drawn that whichever bidder is succesful in their bid will only offer the absolute minimum amount of free access and thereby rubbish the claims of “free public wifi for Dublin” that are bandied about. What is absolutely clear by all this is that whoever drafted the RFT had no knowledge whatsoever of what the provision of wifi entitled. Also they didn’t try to get some qualified advice on the matter. This becomes even clearer when one reads the follow-up questions on the RFT and the replies given.

Honesty requires that I admit that the last question was posted by myself but the reply given clearly illustrates the issue. Nobody in Dublin City Council has any idea and they are relying on the tender submission to provide them with sufficient background to make a valid judgement. This approach simply to stupid for words but typifies the general approach by the Irish public sector to technology projects. Not only do they not have any idea that there are different wifi standards they also haven’t got the slightest idea what minimum performance standards to expect. What makes it even more ludicrous is the fact that they really only speak about “internet access” and seem to be ignorant of any other services that this network could be used for. They could take an example from the network being build in San Jose, California. This network will not only provide wifi access, it will also support a myriad of new applications such as high-definition video, parking meters and digital parking guidance signs, video surveillance, and traffic signaling. The network will also play a key role in offloading mobile data traffic from congested cellular networks and will be used to backhaul data traffic to the Internet. By not demanding the inclusion of at least half of these services Dublin will get an outdated network and service and rather than an asset to the city it will be an embarrassment.

What I suggested to councillor O’Muiri in 2007 and what I still see as a valid option now is that Dublin city builds the network itself and keeps the ownership of the infra-structure BUT that they provide a number of operators access to the network for the provision of public wifi services. A proposal like this will *not* breach EU legislation in regards to a public sector entity operating in the private market, it will ensure a healthy & ongoing competition in the provision of public wifi and it will also allow Dublin City Council or any commercial operator to provide the above mentioned additional services (high-definition video, parking meters and digital parking guidance signs, video surveillance, and traffic signaling). All this will also generate revenue for the city.

The current plan will almost certainly lead to a sub-standard service with limited free access. What’s more it will have to compete with commercial operators such as BitBuzz who have announced that if they do not win the tender they will provide a competing service in the same areas and Eircom who recently announced an expansion of their wifi hotspot network from 700 to 4000 in the next few years.

As a closing I just want to re-state my offer, if Dublin City Council is interested I am still willing to provide pro-bono assistance. This could even be in evaluating the tender applications. (NOTE: I am not submitting a tender application myself or am in any way linked to any other applicants).

20,000,000 wifi connections in 11 days!!!

The below figures were released by AT&T last month but I’ve only come across them today as I am seriously behind on my feed due to a house move..

Anyway, the figures released by AT&T show a number of very interesting trends. First of all there is the totally amazing number of 20,000,000 (yes 20 million) individual wifi connections in the space of just 11 days. That’s 1,818,181 connections per day or just over 21 wifi sessions per second! That in itself is an amazing figure but if you want it in perspective; in 2008 it took 1 whole year to reach this number…

It also shows that the prediction that 3G/UMTS would overtake wifi has been proven wrong. To the contrary wifi usage is growing faster than ever. I predicted as much over a year ago. While 3G coverage has become almost ubiquitous the ROI isn’t adding up. 29 euro per month “all you can eat” dataplans have overloaded the networks and operators are frantically looking for ways to offload data. Wifi is really the only game in town offering an acceptable alternate network.

Another interesting figure is the huge increase in connections at hospitality locations. These have tripled within the space of 3 months. Now I have no figures on if and how fast AT&T was extending their network in this period but even a taking into consideration that this includes an expansion of the network it still makes for an impressive number. This again confirms that not only do people expect wifi at a hospitality location, they will also actually use it and use it frequently.

This last infograph shows the rapid rise in wifi usage per quarter from Q1 2008 up to Q2 2011. Usage went from 3,400,000 connections per quarter in Q1 2008 right up to 246,800,000 connections in Q2 2011. That’s a whopping 32 wifi connections per second in Q2 2011! Calculating that over a network of 26,000 wifi hotspots breaks down to 103 individual wifi sessions per hotspot on average. A very respectable number indeed.

Free wifi? Yes we can!

Everyone around here is talking about President Obama’s visit to his ancestral village of Moneygall which is only a short drive away from where I live. As is to be expected his visit will generate a substantial amount of press coverage on local, national & international level. News-crews from all over the world are expected to converge in this tiny village to report on Obamas visit. Considering how much news reporting has moved online both in content and delivery method it is clear that there was a need for service giving Internet access to these journalists. The easiest method to deliver this service would be by using wifi as this would allow seamless access for all the laptops, iphones, android devices, blackberries and all other devices used by the visitors.

Surprisingly enough I had not heard a mention of any such service so I decided to ask around and yes indeed, nobody had thought of this. Rather than wait if someone would come up with a suggestion to address this I decided to offer my services (and equipment) to install a number of wifi hotspots servicing parts of Moneygall (free of charge). I first called a number of local councillors and politicians but when their feedback was too slow it was time for a different approach. A call was made to the owners of Ollie Hayes’s pub in Moneygall and an offer was made to install wifi equipment inside and outside the pub. This offer was eagerly accepted as I also suggested that I would see if I can leave the equipment in place after the visit.

I was very surprised to note however that politician Michael Lowry was making public statements today asking if someone would please provide Internet access to in Moneygall so that the visiting press could use it. Mr. Lowry’s information is obviously not up to date. I also find his statements typical of the approach that Irish politicians have to the availability of broadband service; when they stand to make political gain they are quick enough to demand it but when the limelight moves on the need for this essential service is quickly ignored…

Relief through digital media…

Shortly after the earthquake in Haiti I decided that it was my time to do something and try to help out in a way that went beyond the usual “effort” of donating some cash to a charity. Having a background in wireless (wifi) networking has had me thinking about the applications for wifi networks in disaster areas for some time. Wifi networks can be deployed quickly, cheaply, require no spectrum licenses and most of all have been proven to work. The fast roll-out of wifi networks after Hurricanes Katrina & Charley in the US had shown the benefits of such technology.

Anyway I digress, this is not a blogpost about technology. What I want to write about is how digital media can be used to organise a disaster relief effort. The first thing I did after the idea started formulating in my head was to put up a blogpost. After this blogpost went up it was important to drive traffic to it. Twitter is the best way to do this so I tweeted a link to my post (including the title). As expected this led to an increased number of visitors to the blogpost and shortly after that it also spun out into a good number of comments. Comments are the real lifeblood of a blog. Without comments there would be no discussion or exchange of opinions and your blogpost will just fade away into the grey mist of time. Comments will also increase the page ranking of your blog as keywords used (and repeated) will be picked up by the search engines. It’s a bit of a vicious circle. More comments will drive more traffic which will result in more comments….

I also put direct contact details (email, twitter and even phone number) in the blogpost. I would normally not include all this but the point of this blogpost was to raise awareness & create action and support so it was essential for readers to not only be able to comment but to also contact me. So now I had lots of traffic coming to the blog, plenty of comments and an increasing number of emails, tweets and phonecalls. In other word people were becoming aware of what I was trying to achieve and the support that I needed was starting to come in. No time to relax though. I next setup a dedicated website, Linkedin group & FaceBook page. My aim was now to move traffic away from the blogpost and direct it to the website which was now the hub of our online activities. The website would contain the “who, what, where & how” while twitter, Facebook and Linkedin would give updates on progress and create discussion.

I was not alone in working digital (online) media for these means. The updates and “calls to action” in regards to Haiti was ever increasing. There was a constant stream of updates on the situation in Haiti. There were even people in Port-au-Prince using Twitter to distribute information about aid distribution or to offer to share their meagre resources. News of any of the aftershocks also made it onto Twitter long before the mainstream media picked it up.

We are now 6 weeks into our relief effort and the results have been astounding. Through the use of social media we have now a pool of 45+ qualified volunteers, around $250,000 worth of donated equipment ready to ship, a forward staging area in Florida and air transport from Florida to Haiti. 95% of our communication internally and externally goes via email, twitter & Skype. We have also been in constant contact with NGO’s & relief organisations on the ground, ISP’s & Telecoms companies in Haiti and what’s most important we’ve bene talking to Haitians directly.  The greatest advantage of this is that our “organisation” is working with people spread across different continents, across different timezones without being bound to location. I can be anywhere but as long as I have internet access I can use my trusty Nokia E71 or my laptop to communicate, arrange and stay in touch. This also means that there is no need to spend funds on office space, equipment or other overheads. That way we can ensure that almost every penny we receive in donations is spent on actual aid to Haiti.

Now I am not saying that this is groundbreaking or in any way pioneering but I hope that it goes some way to showing other people how it is possible to organise something like this by using free digital media tools. It lowers the treshhold to actually making a difference and reaching halfway across the globe to help people in need. Now Haiti Connect is by no means “there” yet. We are now in urgent need of flights to fly 4 volunteers & equipment from Ireland to Florida. Only then can we actually start building the much-needed networks. So if you read this and are in a position to help us with this please do not hesitate to contact me! And off course we need to keep up the ongoing fundraising during the 6 month duration of our initiative to ensure we can cover all our expenses. Again, most of the costs are incurred in Haiti so the money spend on them will benefit the local economy.

Interesting numbers on wifi hotspot usage in Ireland..

First off all congrats to Bitbuzz for a very succesful year. I have disagreed with them in the past on charging for wifi access and other issues (and will probably disagree with them in the future) but they are very good at what they’re doing and are a solid commercial success.

Yesterday they send out a release announcing revenue figures over last year as well as data on the size of their network. There are some interesting figures in there.:

Bitbuzz had a total of 173,747 registered users by the end of this period [first half of 2009], indicating an increase of 22% since the end of 2008.  Revenues for the six months to end June amounted to €501,350 compared with €433,950 for the corresponding period in 2008, representing an increase of 13.4% per cent. Full year revenues for 2008 amounted to €926,560.

Deals announced in the period included contracts with the Fitzwilliam Hotel Group; the Templeton Hotel; Mooney Hotel Group; Ibis Dublin West Hotel; StayGroup Apartments; BB’s Coffee and Muffins and The Streat Café Franchise — all of which have contributed significantly to growth.  The total number of Bitbuzz Wi-Fi hotspots across the country at the end of June ’09 was 194, up from 178 at the end of 2008.

Now these figures make for some interesting sums:

• 926560 : 173474= 5,33 euro spend per registered user
• 926560 : 178 = 5205 euro annual revenue per wifi hotspot
• 926560 : 178 : 12 = 433 euro per wifi hotspot p/m

The last figure is especially interesting, I don’t know how much it costs Bitbuzz to run their hotspots (or how much they charge the venues) but I would be surprised if it is more than 433 euro. So one can assume that the average hotspot is making a profit. I also would very much like to know if Bitbuzz operate a profit share arrangement with their location owners and how much this is.

However seeing that the installation costs for a wifi hotspot are relatively low (we/Airappz charge 250 eur) and the monthly costs are only 10′s off euros it is still my opinion that charging is counter-productive. The increased footfall generated by offering free public wifi combined with the, quite often, higher spend of the clientele attracted make providing free wifi a winning proposition.

Intel on WiFi

Wifi in hospitals.

Throughout the last few years I have sat in quite a few meetings discussing public wifi access in hospitals. I have also read quite a few reports on this subject. Still there are very few hospitals offering public wifi access to their patients and if they do it is limited to recreation rooms or the likes.
I do not see why. Patients are generally “forcibly” tied the to hospital location. Having Internet access will go a long way to making their stay more enjoyable and productive.
I find it especially lacking that children’s’ wards do not have this type of access.
I am at the point now where I will install wifi in the first (Irish) children’s hospital ward to contact me. For Free!
Yes, they will have to provide their own Internet connectivity but I will supply, install and configure the wifi part at no costs.
So if you work in a children’s hospital ward or know someone who does please point them at this post and tell them to contact me.

Update: While I have so far not been contacted by any hospitals I have had some interesting chats about my “initiative” with a few people. While my idea in itself is good and helpfull it would be great if there would be some way of getting a complete “package” together consisting of wifi connectivity, laptops, video conferencing hardware etc. So here’s a callout to anyone who can has any contact that work with any of the laptop manufacturers or distributors as well as suppliers of video conferencing facilities etc. Please send them a link to this post or tell them to contact me.
And if you don’t have any contacts in those areas you can still help by generating publicity; forward a link to here to your friends, write about it on your blog or Twitter about it!

LeWeb: another disconnected conference…

All the net & web heads of the world seem to have gathered at “Le Web” 09 in Paris. While I think that conferences like this are great for people to meet in realtime and for start-ups to showcase their products I am again disgusted by the reports coming from Paris on the disfunctional wifi at the conference.
Feedback through Twitter indicates that the wifi is more down than up. This is not the first time as the wifi at last years events was innitially just as bad. It is also not the only technology conference with lacking connectivity. TechCrunch had similar problems and it seems to be the norm that working wifi is more a sporadic luxury than an essential service at most conferences.

As a someone who has been working as a wifi provider for nearly 10 years now this disgusts me. It is not rocket science! What’s needed is for someone knowledgeable to carry out a site survey and to use the results of this to work out a radio-plan. Take in consideration all possible sources of interference, the network load (i.e. amount of bandwidth needed) and make sure that you implement correct channel management and you should be OK. Coverage area and number of users can just be plugged into this matrix as it is scaleable.
Provide a number off VLAN’s for the different access groups (attendees, conference staff, press etc.) and don’t forget to add redundancy.
Yes, you need to do some prior planning and preparation but so do all others areas of organising conferences.

What is also amazing is the amounts of money alledgedly paid out for this. Rumour has it that the sum off 100k(euro) changed hands for this years Le Web wifi connectivity. Has anyone ever looked at what this really costs or is it just sponsors money wasted?

I have offered our services to the organisers of these events via Twitter and other channels before (without any feedback) and will do it again. We can provide working wifi at any event at a cost well below the one mentioned above. I will also provide a guarantee that it will work. On top of that I will talk to anyone organising an event and explain to them what to look out for when organising wifi connectivity.

Really people, crappy wifi at a technology event is just a very poor show…..