wifi

Third party visibility into your Wi-Fi infrastructure

Posted on by Mike Bolitho

Wyebot presents at Mobility Field Day 10

It has been over a month since Anil Gupta, CTO and co-founder of Wyebot, presented at MFD-10 and there’s a good reason why I haven’t posted about them quite yet. I didn’t really have the time to get my hands on the sensors and dashboard. Over the holidays I had some time to play around with the sensor on my home network and man, I really like what they have to offer. Let’s get into it.

We’ll start out with the sensor. First off is the form factor, it’s about the same size as your typical indoor omi AP and it runs on .3at POE (mine is currently pulling 11.5W). There are three radios in each sensor. Two are fully passive for PACAPS and spectrum analysis. They will follow the nearest AP channels automatically or you can manually set it to follow a specific SSID or BSSID. The third radio is where you can select what flavor you need. There are Wi-Fi5, 6, and 6E capable options out there for you. The third radio is what they call multiple personality which allows you to perform passive scanning (especially important if you have a 6GHz capable network), wireless backhaul if you don’t have the ability to connect back to a switch, and third which is a whole host of network testing.

The test feature is where the device really starts to shine. It connects to your network via Wi-Fi and over the wire. It is capable of dot1x authentication on the Wi-Fi which is nice because you can actually test against your production WLANs rather than just a PSK test WLAN. You have 11 fully customizable test types available at this time. Tests can scheduled or run them on demand. My favorite so far is the video conferencing test that emulates a Zoom call. This is a great way to prove it’s not the wireless when you’re having Zoom issues on a single client, for example.

Something else I really like is the Link Doctor which gives you a quick snapshot of connectivity, DHCP performance, reachability to the gateway, DNS, and somewhere on the internet as well as resolving hostnames. All of these are customizable but out of the box reaches out to Google for most of these. It’s a super quick “at a glance” style visibility tool. All of the graphical output is also downloadable into reports you can provide clients or your stakeholders which is a really nice addition.

The last thing I want to touch on here is the PCAP function. There are tons of different ways to capture packets and we all have our favorites. I think where the Wyebot sensor brings a ton of advantage over some competitors in the space is with the rolling PCAP function. When capturing headers, you get about three days worth of data using internal storage alone. When paired with an encrypted USB micro SD adapter you can extend that out to several weeks depending on traffic. How many times have you received a call from someone on helpdesk telling you there’s a Wi-Fi problem that happened three days ago with no further information? It is extremely difficult to chase down some of these issues because you have to be sitting there with you capture device in hand and be lucky enough to have the failure happen at that moment. With the Wyebot, you can go back in time to snag the issue. I tested this by connecting to the network on my phone and then going back three hours later to pull the PCAPs and it worked perfectly. I was able to pull them into Wireshark and dig through.

The latest new addition to the Wyebot family is their client application. These app is currently available for Windows machines with a promise of MacOS, iOS, and Android coming soon. If you have ever played around with 7Signal’s Mobile Eye it is very similar. It provides you information from the client perspective which is invaluable data to have.

There are lots of other really cool features available to you on the dashboard and I encourage you to go watch their full presentation here. I mentioned above that there are a couple of vendors in the space and honestly, each of them have their advantages and disadvantages. I really like the easy plug-n-play setup of the Wyebot and especially the PCAP functionality. I think anyone running a large wireless network really does need third party visibility. I’m not saying our vendors are lying to us about the network in their own dashboards, but they can only tell us so much. When you’re using the same devices to test themselves they’re going to work better together. This is where the third party device comes in handy.

Mike vs The CCNP ENWLSI 300-430

Posted on by Mike Bolitho

After reading and re-reading my post I want to add a little disclaimer. Even though I was pretty frustrated with the overall experience, I do recognize that Cisco Learning and Cisco Press are in a weird spot with wireless right now. They had to include two very different ecosystems in the exam and books when it was created over two years ago. They had to somehow figure out a way to assess engineers within those ecosystems with just ~60 questions. That’s a tall order. Yes a bunch of stuff on the exam is EoL and yes it is frustrating having to focus so much energy on platforms most of us have removed from our environments. I’m not necessarily upset with the content creators or the exam writers. They are in a tough spot due to the current product lineup. Now, on with my rant/experience writeup.

In mid-December I finally passed the ENWLSI 300-430. I sat for it the first time back in August of 2021 and bombed the thing with a 754 (back when we were still getting scores). I pretty much swore off the exam at the time and stepped away from certifications for a while. It was a frustrating experience to say the least. Fast forward nine months: My CCNP was expiring in March of ’23 and I already had some continuing education credits. I decided to put aside my pride and get back after it. I took a couple of the free Cisco Learning courses to get enough CECs to put me over 40. All I needed was a specialist exam for the remaining 40.

I did a lot of poking around on Slack, Discord, Twitter, and Reddit and the consensus was that the Cisco Press Official Certification Guide does a pretty terrible job of preparing you for the exam. Agreed. I’m not sure exactly what happened with that book but it was a huge miss which is a bit odd because the first half (ENWLSD) was great. The overwhelming advice was to pick up the CCIE-W v3 book and dig through it. I had recently deployed my first pair of 9800s and we had DNA-C in prod so I had real world time on both platforms. I figured that would help quite a bit since I didn’t have that experience the first time around the previous summer.

I got my hands on a copy of the CCIE book and started working my way through. It’s a great resource, especially if you still have a lot of AireOS in your environment. I was also reading the config guides on the 9800 and in the fall the Understanding and Troubleshooting Catalyst 9800 WLCs book came out so I picked that up too (another great resource, not just for the test). Then I saw that Network Dojo had just released their ENWLSI course and labs. I highly recommend this course, Jeff and the team really put you through the paces. At this point, not only did I have a ton of book knowledge but countless hours on IOS-XE as well as a few years of experience on AireOS. I was ready.

At the end of November, feeling very prepared, I sat for the exam. Result: Failure. Incredibly frustrating but this time I knew I was close. I got my score report back and saw that I had missed pretty badly on Advanced Location Services. I doubled down on CMX/MSE over the next two weeks and took the exam again. I brought that section’s score up which was enough for a pass. Honestly, some of the questions in that category were worded so poorly it was difficult to even understand what they were asking. I hope they read the question comments. I will say this, the 2nd and 3rd attempts really felt like a 1st and 2nd attempt. When I had originally taken the exam a year and a half ago I was woefully underprepared. I had always found that the OCGs mixed with some config guides and command references were enough. After all, that’s how I achieved my CCNA, all three CCNP R&S exams, and the ENWLSD. That just wasn’t the case for the ENWLSI.

Takeaways

There’s a great movie out there called Burn After Reading. The last scene in the movie goes like this:

CIA Superior: What did we learn, Palmer?

Palmer: I don’t know, sir.

CIA Superior: I don’t f***in’ know either. I guess we learned not to do it again.

Palmer: Yes, sir.

CIA Superior: I’m f***ed if I know what we did.

Palmer: Yes, sir, it’s, uh, hard to say

That’s kinda how I feel after this one. If you’ve taken this exam you know exactly what I mean. I don’t really know what the exam was trying to do and I definitely don’t want to take this version ever again. Obviously I’m not going to break the NDA here but that exam is in serious need of an overhaul. It looks like the CCNP Enterprise track is going to get refreshed sometime in late 2023. I certainly hope the ENWLSI is part of that. When I went over the blueprint I admittedly looked past some key items and focused too much on the Catalyst WLCs and DNA family. My biggest takeaway here is to focus ONLY on what is included in the blueprint. Even if a topic takes up a ton of ink in the OCG, if it’s not on the blueprint ignore it. All that said, I really don’t feel like the exam does a good job certifying that an engineer is qualified to deploy and run Cisco’s current wireless ecosystem. At the end of the day, that’s what these exams are supposed to do and why we, as engineers, spend so much time and money certifying. Unfortunately the current ENWLSI misses the mark when it comes to that goal.

2022 Goals: Professional and Personal

Posted on by Mike Bolitho

Getting them on paper is half the battle right?

Professional

  • ENWLSI
  • CWAP

I bit off more than I could chew last year and ran into issues so yeah, gonna set the bar a bit lower this year and actually hit them. Since I landed a full time WiFi gig, I’m going to focus on more things outside of work/career development. That’s not to say that I’m not going to continue to press in. I’ve got quite a bit of training scheduled this year for DNAC/Spaces and Catalyst wireless gear. We’ll see where I’m at after the CWAP. If I’m feeling up to it, I might try to sit for the ECSE Design.

Personal

  • Less time on the phone
  • Read more non-technical books
  • Run 500 miles
  • Road bike more

I really need to take care of myself both physically and mentally in 2022. I had big plans to run more last year and failed totally failed. I’m not sure why but in 2020 I totally fell off the bandwagon and did basically nothing for two years. If ya run, you know how hard it is to get back into it. I always had excuses and just never got into the rhythm again. I need to get back to that 2016-2018 form. No more on-call duties in 2022 means no excuse to be near my phone at all times which will be huge for a lot of these goals. When I’m exercising it helps a ton with physical (obviously) and mental health so that will be really big. Being in better shape mentally and physically will help me be a better husband and dad too. I won’t be as tired, there will be less anxiety, and less need for escapism (reddit/twitter/etc). So yeah, here’s to a much better 2022!

2021: A Recap and Looking Forward

Posted on by Mike Bolitho

2021 was an interesting year to say the least. I had some big plans for career progression and a handful of certifications to knock out along the way. I wanted to get both CCNP-W exams done (ENWLSD and ENWLSI), start playing around with Python, and get the DevNet associate taken care of to launch into network automation. The CWAP was a moon shot target for the end of the year/early 2022. After that I would look to make a career move into WiFi full-time. As they say, reality gets in the way sometimes and only one of those goals was crossed off the list. It is important to remember that it’s OK to “fail” at these sorts of things which is a big reason I mostly “write goals down in pencil”. At the end of the day they are just goals, don’t beat yourself up too much if you don’t hit them all. Projects ramped up at work, some disappointments left me disillusioned with an exam, and personal stuff slowed me down quite a bit. That didn’t mean the year was a waste or that I didn’t see any progression.

A busy year at work

The first year of COVID saw a ton of projects put on hold due to the potential risk to infrastructure stability during a pandemic. Once we had a better understanding of what we were facing as a country and a hospital system, the floodgates were opened up. We had a big backlog to get through plus everything planned for ’21. Some of these ended up being quite the mental drain and I just didn’t have the drive or capacity to open up a book at the end of the day. It seemed like one thing after another was last minute or on a very short timeline to begin with. One of my largest projects was bringing a new tower online at one of our hospitals. We dropped in nine 9410s, a pair of 5520s, and an additional 150 APs to support ~100 new patient beds. With all of the supply chain struggles and COVID restrictions it dragged on. This project ended up being a lot of fun and a huge pain all at once. It definitely felt good to get it done and it is probably the one thing I’m most proud of so far in my career. Less so for the complexity and more so for the community impact.

The entire left side past the ED is all new.

Frustrations with certifications

On the certification front I had some fairly ambitious goals. I was coming off of my CWDP in late December 2020 and was able to roll that momentum straight into the ENWLSD. I passed with flying colors in March. That exam was really straightforward and accessible after the CWDP. Honestly, it may have been TOO easy for a CCNP level exam. If you’re thinking about targeting it, maybe go get it out of the way before Cisco figures that out and makes revisions. I kept pushing to finish my CCNP-W track with ENWLSI and absolutely bombed it in August. This was very demoralizing after spending hours upon hours studying. Without getting into too many of the details (NDA and all that) the OCG (and frankly some of the blueprint) really didn’t line up well with the actual exam.

I vented on Twitter and /r/networking and found that I was in pretty good company. Most people found the exam to be troubling from an expectations perspective. The OCG was woefully inadequate making things much worse. I had been passing my Cisco Press practice exams in the 80% to 90% range setting me up for a false sense of security. I got frustrated early in the exam and things unraveled from there. My score report is below, needless to say, it was rough. I ended up walking away from that one unsure if I would ever sit for another Cisco exam because of how frustrated I was.

Taking a break

I put the ENWLSI book on the shelf and haven’t looked at it since. I did not even crack open the DevNet Associate book and I didn’t write a single line of Python in 2021. Things were pretty crazy around here with an insanely busy year at work, both kids in school, extracurricular activities for them, my wife ramping up from part-time to full-time work, and just the mental drag that has been the last two years of living in a pandemic. I let myself relax for a while which was a great decision. It was a very good season for me personally. It really is important to make sure you’re taking care of yourself. Grinding all of the time is hard. I’ve spent the last decade chasing certifications, promotions, and that next raise because I started this career later in life. I had to play catchup. I honestly don’t think I’ve taken much of a break from pushing for the next thing since I started in 2012. The rest was long overdue and I plan on working that in more over the next few years.

A new gig

There was one pretty unexpected win that came in November. Through some discussions and a possible opportunity outside of my org, I ended up landing on the wireless team here at my current employer. I had been having conversations with leadership about this for the last six months and we were trying to put together a road map to get there. Staffing in a very large organization is complex and slow but a window opened up and I was able to get placed on the team. I officially start with them in the new year and I’m really looking forward to expanding my wireless experience.

Looking forward

Even with the job change, I’m not going to stop pursuing progression. After taking all of that time away from certifications, I am feeling much better about jumping back in. A common piece of advice among those who eventually did pass the ENWLSI was “Pick up the CCIE-W v3 book”. I purchased that and started on some Anki cards this fall and will ramp up heavily in January. The plan is to finish the ENWLSI and then get after my CWAP. As for DevNet Associate, I think I got caught up in that whirlwind. Although it does look very interesting and there’s a ton of use for automation in my job, I’m going to focus on settling in over the next year. I’ll approach automation again sometime in very late 2022 or early 2023 if, and only if I have the capacity to do it right. Like I mentioned above, I’m going to slow things down a little and focus more on other aspects of life outside of work and career.

I hope everyone had great Christmas with family and friends. Here’s to a happy and healthy 2022!

A bit of background on me and my career

Posted on by Mike Bolitho

I figured I might as well kick this thing off with an intro post. I live in Phoenix, AZ with my wife and two kids. We have a son and daughter that are both in elementary school. We’ve been here for over a decade and although both my wife and I are transplants, we are fully rooted here in the desert. Most of that has to do with our amazing church community. That and it doesn’t snow. We are what you might consider “mildly outdoorsy”. We like exploring the parts of our state that we can drive to. If you could do overlanding via minivan, that would be our jam.

I’m originally from a small mountain town in Colorado. In classic angsty teen fashion I left immediately after high school and spent the next decade or so bouncing around the country pursuing a couple of different degrees and careers. Neither the degrees nor careers worked out for me. IT was actually a bit of a fall back. I had always liked tinkering around with technology but never seriously considered it for work. A good buddy of mine is a sysadmin, I knew he enjoyed his work and made a decent living so I asked him for some advice. He sat down with me and we worked out a path forward so I could try to get a start in the field. I built an ESXi homelab and started diving in.

Through a mutual friend, I was able to land a job in a NOC at a VAR doing server support. We also handled networking and security. I quickly found out that networking was much better and started working towards my CCNA. I ended up falling in love with the technology and began looking for a pure networking role.

My next stop landed me at a Tier I ISP doing break/fix in their national ethernet NOC. I spent four years there honing my craft and working my way up to a senior technician. I picked up my CCNP and was able to jump back to the enterprise side as an operations engineer for a large hospital system.

My team was tasked with implementing, maintaining, and fixing the campus network. I was heavily involved in all things break/fix as well as a ton of project work deploying technologies around the region. It ended up being around 40% break/fix and 60% implementation and project work. The job was really fun and fulfilling, and I had the privilege of working for a great boss on an incredible team.

Early on in my time here, I knew that wireless was my weak spot so I picked up a CWNA book and the rest, as they say, is history. Once I got my first taste of WiFi, I found that I enjoyed it immensely. I put myself in situations to absorb as much as I could from our wireless design team, volunteered for any sort of WiFi trouble tickets, and continued pursuing my CWNP and CCNP-W certifications. I subscribed to about every wireless podcast out there, have attended countless webinars, and watched dozens of videos from past conferences. An opportunity recently opened up on our wireless team and I was selected to fill the position.

I’m very excited to see where my career takes me as a wireless professional. I’ll be using this space to chronical the things I’m learning, labbing, discovering, and building on my path to CWNE. So, that is my life and career in a nutshell. I hope some of you find some value in what’s to come!