40. Networking Editorial IoT is Going to Make Things More Difficult – Tech Field Day Podcast

The explosion of IO OT devices in your network is only going to grow larger as time goes on. People need these things to be able to do their jobs, which means that we have to be able to do our jobs to support them. In this episode of the Tech Field Day podcast, we explore the idea that IOT is just gonna make things more difficult.

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On this episode, we'll be discussing that IOT is going to make things even harder than they are. Now. Before we jump into this discussion, I would like to take a moment for our guests to introduce themselves, starting with Denise.

Hi there, it's Denise Donahue. I'm a a network architect slash business architect. Um, and you can find me on Blue Sky at Lady Networker.

Um, Pete Welcher, CCIE, longtime network architect and designer, um, person who can't handle getting mute off on his own computer. However, And of course, I am Tom Hollingsworth. I'm an event lead here at the Futurum Group in Tech Field Day.

So let's jump into the premise of this episode that I've already hinted at. We are being inundated with a variety of IO OT devices, and if you think that Internet of things is just a simple thermostat or perhaps a garage door opener, you're sorely mistaken because in the enterprise, IO OT encompasses so many other things. It can be badge readers, it can be temperature sensors, it can even be the access points and the other devices that we have around us with extra added features that we never could have thought possible.

But with all of those extra added features and connectivity come, networking challenges, and Lord knows the network was complicated enough before we added a few billion devices to it. So as stated, the premise for this episode is that the internet of things is just gonna make things harder, honest us networking people. So I wanna start off, uh, talking to two people who've been doing networking for quite a while.

Um, how has the explosion of connected devices made networking harder? Because I, I remember a time when, you know, in order to get something on the network, it literally required to go us, go have us go out with a vampire tap and poke holes in cables, and now it's just like, oh, boot it up outta the box, connect to the wifi, and everything works just fine. Exactly.

And, uh, part of the, uh, pleasure of having iot devices and sensors, and particularly in medical environments, there are lots of stuff getting tacked onto the network is, uh, a lot of the vendors don't have deep experience with, uh, being on a network. And some of them expect multicast to just work with some strange variation, uh, other pleasant surprises like that. And so staff can end up, uh, having to scramble.

Uh, the other thing that kind of happens is that people don't think about the constraints of wifi. And so, gee, um, my whatever it is, stopped working when I rolled into the, uh, loading dock. So you get surprises.

Um, and so the volume of devices, the number of things that you have to manage has gone up. Uh, but the environmental sensitivity of these things, they're, they're also all have their quirks and you have to deal with that. And so, uh, it's an increasing burden on staff, um, which is a whole topic for another, uh, discussion at some point.

But, uh, yeah, staff have to, you have to figure out a way to make it easy. Uh, the other part of that is maybe getting ahead of the loop on it, where you can test devices if there are alternatives being considered, figure out which ones are gonna make your life easier rather than, uh, just having whatever, um, some panel of doctors or who knows, uh, imposed on you that happens to be really quirky or flaky. Now you're assuming there, Pete, that people in it, in the IT departments actually have a say in what's, what's imposed on them too, which I think is, is part of the thing is, is trying to get that representation and with the decision makers, with the ones who are doing the evaluations and try and having it and having manageability, usability, et cetera, be part of the criteria.

So I think that's some of that comes down to networking staff, uh, sometimes, uh, seem to be hesitant to communicate upwards. And you really need somebody that can speak for you and be present in meetings and, uh, surface concerns and also be aware of what's coming so you can get ahead of the, uh, maybe get into the evaluation cycle rather than, um, ha having something thrown over the, um, the cubicle divider and having to deal with that, so to speak. Which may be one of the reasons that that, uh, all this iot coming, iot things are gonna make these so much harder on the network staff.

Mean, I guess I think you've got two, two ways, two things going on here. Then you've got the actual network itself and the impact on that, the amazing capabilities that, that they will, that new devices are bringing to the enterprise. And then it being able to manage control, help with the decision, like be part of the business, dis business conversation.

And I think that it's important that people understand that sometimes these decisions are made, kind of like you said, outside of the purview of it, because there's not a lot of room for negotiation. So you might be thinking, oh, well this is a, a factory milling machine that we're trying to bring online, but I want you to put yourselves in the hands of a hospital administrator or actually in their shoes because hospitals are filled with IOT devices, insulin pumps, um, are probably the, the most common, uh, piece of equipment that I hear about. But when we start doing things like asset tags on, uh, wheelchairs or laptops or those, uh, rolling mobile nurse stations, those are other good examples of devices that, you know, we want to keep track of and we wanna make sure are able to connect to the network anywhere in the building.

But they have their own unique challenges. And especially in the hands of an insulin pump, it's not like you're gonna be able to log into that insulin pump and change the firmware on it or modify much at all because it is kind of a self-contained unit designed by that organization that allows it to get online. And if it needs something like, oh, I don't know the lowest 8 0 2 point 11 data rates re-enabled like an old Xbox or something, you could conceivably cause a massive impact on your network because you have to turn those things back on.

Well, are you guys seeing that, that things like infusion pumps, um, you know, other iot devices are, are more network aware now. You know, when they first started being adapt adopted by the, by hospitals and other, and enterprises that, like they were, the manufacturers basically had no clue as to how to handle a network, how to handle, um, VLANs, even to the point, you know, remember the whole layer, it has to be layered two connectivity. I can't claim comprehensive knowledge on that topic, but, uh, I think it's all over the map.

Vendors are all over the map and it's not just hospitals there where it seems to be hitting our customer bases, uh, the most, but just tracking locations and temperatures and stuff like that, tracking equipment in an office, um, uh, getting feedback from your printers, whatever, um, everything wants to talk on the network now. So, uh, but iot specifically, um, the stuff, there are more and more sensors out there, so temperature, did the temperature start dropping ridiculously in some part of the building or is it way too hot? Um, and people are gonna be upset when you don't get the readings on that.

So, um, I think people have to, I think the next 10 years maybe are gonna be full of people coping with, um, a variety of iot and other devices, sensors and sensors, cameras, all sorts of things, uh, getting put on the network and, uh, people coming outta the woodwork complaining that it doesn't work well. Well, yes, to your question, Denise. I think that, um, medical device manufacturers are becoming more network aware, but that's not exactly saying like it's, it would've been almost impossible for them to go any lower.

And it's for the same reason that a lot of people who install other iot devices are finding challenges in their network is because the, the network pieces are just a component of the device, right? Um, think about your average, I don't know, like a raspberry pie, right? Uh, does a raspberry pie have a wifi seven card in it?

Well, probably not because it is a $35 computer, and in order to get that price point, they have to make some compromises, right? So it has a, a different, uh, you know, wifi chip set. I mean, something even a, like an Apple watch does not have the latest and greatest hardware.

And when I say latest and greatest, I mean like wifi six or six E, like they don't have those. Or LTE radios is another good example because we're starting to see some iot devices that have L-T-E-C-B-R-S uplink capabilities, but they're enterprise IOT devices. They are expensive.

And, and so like, I don't necessarily know that I want my insulin pump to have a 5G radio in it. Uh, just as I get why you might wanna put it in there, but I don't think the insulin manufacturer insulin pump manufacturers want those either because it raises the average, uh, unit cost and they then they have to raise their average selling price in order to be able to, to get them out there. So I think that they're, they're understanding that they need to adapt with the times, but it could also be that, you know, if they've been ordering these radios from, I don't know, Qualcomm for years, like the reason why the, there's more or better support in there is not because they've sought it out.

It's just because Qualcomm said the base radio in this now has these extra features And costs keep dropping. So, uh, they can build more functionality into the chips. Uh, location in particular I think is gonna start popping up over the next few years, but, uh, right now it's a little bit pricey for just absolutely everything.

Let's talk about that for a minute, because location is another thing that we, we deal with a lot, and I kind of mentioned it earlier, but, um, there's been a big push, uh, to be able to do location tracking. Now, obviously, we have two different kinds of things that we have to worry about here. The first thing is we need to track devices.

So insulin pumps, wheelchairs, laptops, uh, we need to know where those devices are in the network. And, uh, I'll give you an example. Uh, anybody that works in a maternity ward or in a, in a birth center, now, all of the babies that are there are tagged with, uh, tracking devices basically.

And that way they, if they get too close to an exit to that area, um, there's an alert that pops up and that, that's a, I hate to say it, but a baby is a thing, right? Because a baby is an inanimate object as far as the system's concerned, it can't interact with the system itself. But then you have the next level, which is, uh, mobile devices.

So laptops, phones, tablets, that kind of thing. And when you look at solutions like, I'll just pull one outta the hat, like Aruba's old meridian system, like being able to know where Dr. Jones was at any point because you, he was logged into a tablet running an app that would give the location, you know, Dr.

Jones is on floor four. Um, we're starting to see that evolve. Uh, one of the most recent, uh, mobility field day events that we had, uh, Cisco showed off technology where their access points now have barometers in them so that they can tell the elevation of an access point in a given space in addition to GPS.

'cause GPS gives you latitude and longitude, but not elevation. And a barometer gives you elevation above sea level so that, you know, for example, um, you know, this is on the eighth floor of a high rise. So that changes the way that your, your patterns match up, but also it helps with location.

So did this, was this device detected with this signal strength? Does that mean that it's on four seven or four six? And that could be, uh, useful and, uh, you reminded me of a war story, but that could be useful in troubleshooting.

Uh, one thing that, uh, we ran into a while back was the CEO of a company was getting poor wifi in his office. Turned out he was associating with something 60 feet down the hall rather than the AP that was right outside his door, which for some reason wasn't functioning on the five gigahertz band. Um, so he was far enough away to have a very weak signal.

But, uh, being able to locate the AP that somebody's associated with without having to physically go out there and eyeball it, uh, could be pretty handy in circumstances like that part of your troubleshooting loop. And then, uh, just marking locations of things on maps, uh, anything mobile, uh, as opposed to playing find the wheelchair, find the, uh, smart board, find the whatever. It's, um, and we're seeing that in other areas.

Uh, I just saw that, uh, air tags and United Airlines, uh, will give them the ability to track your lost luggage, allegedly, kinda curious how that's gonna work out. Are they planning to lose my luggage? I don't know.

Um, They don't have to plan to That happens. That happens anyway, But I, and it's a good point that you bring up there because just like we've seen with other things in the industry, a lot of these changes that people are expecting in the enterprise are being driven by consumer grade technology. So like, yes, it's nice to know where the insulin pumps are, it's nice to know where the wheelchairs are, but even that, you know, has resolution of meters, right?

Like I can tell you it's within four feet of me right now, which most of the time is good enough. But when you look at what people are doing, and apples find my network is a perfectly good example. Um, it used to be that find my could give you like a, a three meter bullseye, right?

Well, that's great if you're trying to find a car. It's not great if you're trying to find a lost AirPod. And so with the addition of a, with things like ultra wideband chips, like you can zero in, in, you know, within inches and, and that helps, you know, and, and not just, hey, it's, it's somewhere in this vertical section.

Like you can literally take out your phone and, and it'll say, you know, do the warmer, colder thing. And I think a lot of people are wanting that kind of functionality in their network for certain things, right? Like, you know, I, I laugh because it used to be, remember the, the movie cart at the school that had like the projector and everything on it, and you'd wheel it to a classroom and you could, you know, think back then how easy it would've been.

Oh, well, who has the projector today? Or, you know, well, so and so checked Denise checked it out, but it's in Peter's classroom, I don't understand what's going on. And so people just kind of assumed that enterprise tech should be able to do that because it's more expensive and we are not there yet, Which brings up another way that the, the iot explosion is going to make our lives harder, and that's managing it, using it.

What do you like? Who's, who's the one who, who looks to see where that is? Who's the one who, who, you know, make sure all that information is, is up to date?

Who's the one who's checking to make sure when something's going offline, who's, you know, who is, who is it that's finding use cases for this, this technology? Well, there's also, uh, the dark side, which is, uh, customer tracking. Oh, gee, they paused for, uh, quite a while in front of the display case for a new Mac.

Maybe I should get a salesperson over there to sell 'em the new Mac or whatever. Uh, why am I picking on Apple? Well, That says, yeah, I saw that yesterday.

You you looked in a new Mac. Oh, no, no, no, no, it is more nefarious than that. So they can track you through the store if you're using their loyalty app or what have you.

They know how long you paused in front of a given section. And with the advent of digital price tags, if they notice that there's an area that's getting more traffic, they can increase or decrease the price. And this is one that I've heard, I can either confirm nor deny this has happened, they'll increase the price in a given area and then text you a coupon to give you a discount to encourage you to buy the thing because you're spending more time over there.

And so it, granted, there's a lot of integration that has to happen in order for this to occur. But we've seen instances of this for a very long time. Uh, just think of something as simple as, uh, Costco recently rolled out a new change where instead of you showing your membership card to the person at the door, you scan it when you walk in to verify your membership.

And I thought, oh, well, you know, that's a good idea. I guess they really wanna make sure that the people who are in there are doing that. But I watched a video where someone said, it's not just that they know how many people are in the store in a given time, so they know how many people have to be working up front to run in the checkout lanes, or if they can be on the floor stocking items or things like that.

And I remember working a retail job where it's like, yeah, there could be a hundred people in the store, there could be 10 people in the store, and if it's big enough store, you won't know until they all go try to check out at once. Yeah, boy, that's an awesome use for, for iot and for technology to be able to do that to help consumers. I'm assuming then that would then go further as to say, okay, we know that this person has shopped here, we can kind of track this person around, et cetera.

Or, you know, sympathy as simple as, uh, Walmart pay you, you can pay with your phone because they don't support electronic, uh, uh, NFC payments. They don't support Apple Pay or Google Pay or anything like that. They have their own version, but it also means that because the phone connect, the app connects to the, uh, register, they can see what you've bought so they can kind of get a a, a buying history, which I'm sure is probably the reason why they're doing it.

But the integration of that technology, which is also IOT related, is just gonna continue to drive these new insights and this data, which is what people have wanted for years, right? Uh, that was the original goal behind Facebook ads. I can tell you what people like, so you can target your ads to the people that they're the most effective for.

And you know, think of all the times that you've heard stories about Facebook popping up the ad for the thing you were thinking about buying, or, you know, you, you searched for something on Amazon and then suddenly your, uh, your Instagram feed is full of those things. And, and it's kind of frightening to see the intersection of all of those things. But that's from us as a consumer perspective, us as IT professionals, we have to support that infrastructure.

So what happens when it goes down, or worse yet, what happens when it creates other problems? Because as we've seen over the years, just pick a random technology, whether it's the, uh, thermostat in a, in a fish tank or the point of sale system or what have you, they're all security. Uh, they increase the security attack surface because it turns out it's easier to hack those things than you realize.

So are we opening ourselves up to even more problems having these devices on our network and creating security, um, exploit potential? Good change. I was just about to bring up security, uh, because you have to secure the devices, but as you said, bigger attack surface.

And so we gotta deal with possibly crude, um, operating system stacks or hacked operating system stacks, freeware that's built into devices, stuff like that. And, and as computers get better, I mean, you know, look at the stuff that's happening with Quantum, um, then it's gonna get more, there's more and more capability if we're doing that for a hack, cracking passwords, et cetera. So then the downstream effects of that, I, I was thinking as you were talking, Tom, the downstream effects of all that data that's being gathered at the, you know, on the data center side, on the compute storage, et cetera, um, side, that just leads to then, okay, what are you gonna do with your, with your data?

How are you gonna manage that on the IT staff is another, that's another thing that we need to be preparing for. Yeah. Because one, once you know that data is there, it's a very tempting target for people to want to take a look at.

So I guess the best question would be, 'cause I, I love doing this on the podcast that I'm part of. What is something that enterprise IT admins, enterprise network admins and engineers today, what can they do to start preparing for this oncoming wave of IOT? Because let's be honest, we're going to see it.

There's no way around it. We've been seeing it for years, whether it's, uh, you know, intelligent building HVAC systems or you know, uh, I don't know, like, you know, connected lighting, whatever it is. What are things that people can do today to make their networks more ready to have that technology and not be overwhelmed by it?

Well, you have to have a well operating network. But the other thing that really comes to the front of my mind is you have to have a frank conver staffing conversation with management, I guess, and management tools come into that as one part of it because either you automate it and, uh, manage it with good tools. If you go l cheapo, you need manpower person power, and you can't, you, you can't just keep dumping more work on, uh, the poor networking staff because they'll quit.

So you, you have to staff for it and, um, be prepared for, for that. And as the technology broadens, the other thing that comes into play is expertise. How much knowledge can you fit into the set of heads that you've got working for you?

Um, and so this is not to knock anybody, but this is where there seems to be increasing business for consultants where you bring in somebody one day a week or as needed to deal with, uh, stuff that's a little bit out of, um, too esoteric for your staff or to design it right in the first place. Um, which is sometimes a, uh, overlooked skill. And I don't think it's bad.

I know a lot of people look at bringing in a consultant is like kind of something that's giving up or whatever, but I don't think that's bad given a specific set of skills that the consultant might bring that would help you then prepare your network, uh, at troubleshoot an issue, you know, change the network somewhat as, as you need to, to handle the, um, the growing, the growing demands on it. But yeah, I think skilling up being aware of this, being aware of what's happening in the industry and your company too, trying to get a seat at the table or enable your boss, help your boss, you know, some get a seat at the table when these things are being decided. Yeah, I, I would wholeheartedly agree that you, you've gotta be able to have a say in the changes.

You gotta know that something is coming and you can't just accept that you're gonna, you're not gonna have any control over it. I mean, if there's only one device that you can buy that does this, then great. You already have a list of requirements you know, you're gonna need to worry about.

But if there's multiple devices, if there's multiple ways that you can, um, you know, get the conversation going and maybe select one over the other because it's gonna be easier on your network, then absolutely do that. But if you don't, if you don't understand what's out there, then you're gonna be playing catch up the whole time. And it's important to do research.

It's important to understand where that is and, and for certain organizations like a hospital that's real easy to do because you know, you're gonna have lots of iot devices, but don't think you're gonna be immune from it just because you work in a, a standard office, you work for a law office or what have you. Um, just like, uh, looking at what the most popular gift items are for a given Christmas season will tell you what's gonna show up on your network in January. Uh, looking at what is being released at things like CES or the NAB show will tell you what's gonna wind up being something you're gonna have to support by March or April when it gets released.

You know, if I'm somebody listening to us talk about this, I, I think if I'm a network person listening to this, I think my, the thought would be running through my mind was, oh, holy wow, I have so much going on right now running like crazy on the treadmill trying to keep up and now you're telling me I have to go further. But I think the answer is yes, we are sadly telling you you need to at least carve out some time to think about the future, to not just be reactive, but I think as you said, Tom, be proactive in figuring out what's, what do you think is coming and where do you fit in that, what do you need to do to make sure you're still fitting in that? Yeah, thinking back to consulting at some organizations and some of my peers, uh, stories, uh, a bunch of organizations are kind of missing, uh, middle to senior management just in the networking group.

So they have a few, a couple, a few networking people that go move cables and install stuff, but they're sort of in, yes, boss, um, which fire do you want me to put out next mode? As opposed to using their brain and providing feedback and well, they're probably using their brain, I don't need to slam them, but, um, they're, they're not integrated with the, uh, the budgeting and the senior management levels, uh, that need to be involved in buying appropriate net management tools, hiring more staff, uh, that sort of thing. Deciding whether you have enough staff, uh, to handle the, uh, all the devices you've got.

Alright, well I want to thank you both for joining me on this episode of the Tech Field Day podcast. Before we go, where can people connect with you and continue this conversation, Denise? Well, LinkedIn, you can look me up there and I think it's Denise dash Donahue with A-D-O-N-O-H-U-E, um, and Blue Sky Lady Networker, LinkedIn and Blue Sky.

My login, my user ID is my initials, P as in Peter, J as in Joseph, and then my last name weer at whatever it is so easy to find. And of course, uh, I am on the socials pretty much everywhere as a networking nerd. net, uh, which is also the name of my blog.

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