Breaking Barriers in Connectivity – Exploring the Latest Advancements in Cisco High-Density Wi-Fi Solutions with Wi-Fi 7

So we just talked about a FC six gigahertz, wifi seven. A lot of things to offer in large public venues. And we have been doing large public venues for a while.

I kind of got in large public venues when we started doing Cisco lives, which retrospect was a good career move, but very challenging at the time. Um, so we've learned a lot about these environments. You've got environmental considerations, a FC indoors, outdoors, there's new regulatory, we've gotta register hardware for one or the other.

So there's a lot of challenges built in, even though we're getting a lot of advantages. Installation complexity, no stadium has ever been built the same. They're always architecturally impressive and they have different lines of sight and they have different sweeping venues.

They don't build 'em to put wifi in 'em. Configuration and optimization. How do you tune it once you get all the aps in it?

Compatibility with client devices. We've got changing specifications, so there's definitely challenging, uh, environments out there in stadiums. One of the things we're doing right now is releasing the CW 91 79 F.

This is now the fourth generation, uh, antenna that we had built precisely for large public venues, stadiums, convention centers. It is the first wifi seven one that, uh, gets everywhere. Part of the problem in stadiums is you're gonna have long distances.

And long distances is tough without hyper directionality. You get hyper directionality. Then you've gotta manage all of that.

Going into this package, we've got wifi seven, it can get everywhere. We've designed it for every venue. We've taken a lot of things that we've learned about.

Gees, that was great for that antenna, but now what do we do for this one? Uh, configurable and flexible installations on-prem or cloud managed. So you don't even have to choose an architecture now.

Real world examples. Well, we took it out and we started testing it. This is Bottle Rock.

When was that? Uh, two weeks ago in Napa Valley, two Weeks ago in Napa Valley. And they all had a wonderful internet experience.

It was a great fan experience. Um, What we did is we hid it in plain view. I know, I remember very well when I saw it show up on LinkedIn and we were like, gosh, we're not releasing that until next week.

We Should've covered that, but we didn't. It's funny because we actually covered the 91 oh fours, which was weird. But anyway, Well live and learn.

Couple of interesting things. One, this is a big one. This is a big one.

So for a FC I've gotta register my hardware as either indoor or outdoor. And that's a challenge if you don't wanna have too many SKUs. You guys got together, this guy got together, they said, you know what, if it's gonna be outdoor, it should be waterproof.

And if it's gonna be indoor, it doesn't need to be waterproof. What if we put a switch on that door and we just made that two different aps. You just way oversimplified what really happened.

I know that means there's, There's great story behind this though. Like Fred Anderson. We gotta give Fred credit.

Yeah. 'cause he's a pioneer in this world. I was frustrated with the, the rules, the, the low power indoor, the standard power, the labels, all these things.

Mm-hmm. And then, you know, several IPAs later, a really good idea came out As it will, and Fred, who lives in Florida, was drinking a Florida man, by the way. I was to let you know, that's a really strong, IPA Mm.

But it was a good idea. Oh, question. I have a question about that door.

Yeah, sure. So, um, in marine environments mm-hmm. If you've got something like that with just the screws, eventually the water will get in.

Yeah. So with enough pressure, you can get water in under there. Is there a gasket under there?

Yeah. How do you Yes. Yes.

And I will tell you that. So, so the, so we call it a, an environment pack. And so the, the AP itself ships indoor mode.

So you'll get it like this. Yeah. Okay.

Right. If you want to do outdoor, you get this environment pack, which comes with all the gaskets and seals. And then even since that time, Actually we gotta go forward.

Yeah. Yeah. Even since that time, we've stiffened up that, that kind of door uhhuh to make sure that it compresses those seals better.

Um, because, you know, we go through our betas, we learn our things, and we're like, you know, that thing should really get in there a little better than it does. So, so, um, what I'm looking at in the picture, you've got the little slots for your cables coming out. Yeah.

And I, there's a, that Has silicon gas, gas And, and there's actually multiple glands depending on your cable diameter. Okay. So, okay.

Right. All right. Then there's this from an installers point of view, everything.

What's that? We went through this as installers. Okay.

Yeah. There's actually some more coming up here. I'll show you that.

Yep. Thought about on, But I mean fly, like, uh, this is probably one of the things I was the most happy about. Yeah.

Because the idea of having something that you could deploy indoors, get the full 1200 megahertz, but then take the same product and go outdoors and have it standard power only and weatherize it is pretty key. And when we went through the original kind of thing, I think the FCC, you know, that's where we started, looked at us and kind of shook their head at us, like, we're not sure what this is that you just did. Mm-hmm.

And, but we marched forward with it and then they came back later and they said, that's a really good idea. So we like it. So you said there's a switch that signals Standard.

There's a little bios chip. Yeah, exactly. So it's a little chip and it marries up to the ap and it basically, so that was part of the thing with the rules.

You had to make sure that it couldn't be counterfeited, that somebody couldn't, you know, it's like, so it's one of those things where like, hey, So it's not just a like a, like a like a pressure switch? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's a, it's an actual chip that authenticates itself to the AV smart Stare.

You're gonna need to order that cover from me. Wasn't even, that was part of the deal with the FCC. Yeah.

No. Um, it was one of those things where early on I felt like it was almost like Y 2K. Like people didn't want, I don't know what's gonna happen.

So they didn't really give it a lot of time initially. Yeah. And then as things kept progressing, we just moved forward with it.

We're like, we're, we're going. Um, because literally this idea is over two years old. Yeah.

And this is the first product that's utilizing it. So One of the other things, um, you mount these highly directional antennas and they have a very, very dark space behind them and under them, because while that's on purpose, um, I think this was your idea. Yeah.

Well, uh, so, so again, so th through the history of, uh, of high density wifi for us, if you recall back on like a thirty eight oh two P or a 91 30, you could have a breakout or RT r PNCs and a dart. But you had the ability to have two different antennas. And so when we sat down collectively to look at what we were gonna do next, we, we called out the things that bothered us.

And one of the things I was like, Hey, I wish we could do that again. And then some really smart people said, what if we did this? And so we can basically switch the five gig low and the two four to the back and people are gonna ask like, why aren't you doing the six gig?

Well, there's only one six gig radio. And we want that out the front to right to the masses. But, but the idea behind it is that anything that you're gonna use on, on these small patch antennas that are coming outta the back, it's gonna be a short throw.

It's Gonna be a back Fill and it's probably gonna be five gig only. 'cause not too many people are doing two four anymore, but it's there if you want it. So, uh, Is there integrated BLE and would the BLE come out of the bottom Ports?

The BLE would not come out of those ports, not come out the front instead of go out the front. Yep. Right.

Okay. But you couldn't get back there or in front of it without being detected. Right.

Okay. What Happens? Oh, I hit the wrong one.

You hit The wrong line. I did. Oh, here we go.

Alright, so This gives you a little better idea. This is critical. So this is one of those things, if we're like just super honest and we are, uh, when we started going out and we had these early prototype units, uh, I live in Tampa.

I of course put them at the Live Nation amphitheater in Tampa 'cause it's close to my house. And I showed up when this pallet of aps arrived and I was like, all right, we're gonna put these things up there a hundred feet up. And then we're like, Hmm.

Because Seems like a lot to manage. You gotta think about like the Cable is up there, right? So I'm relying on a guy who's not really a wifi guy to be on a lift that might be a hundred to 150 feet up in the air to assemble this and put those glands incorrectly and put that door on correctly.

And that ended up being a bad idea. And we lost a, lost a couple to some water because I mean, it's just reality, right? Like it's hard to, you gotta do it right and you don't wanna do it, right?

Like, so that's why we call it like off ladder installation. We're like, you don't wanna be up in the air figuring this out. Um, so we came up with this extender thing.

I ca I called it a, what did I call it? A dongle, but what did Nicholas call it? Oh, what Did Nicholas call Quick connect?

Yes. Quick connect. Biotech E There you go.

Quick connect. So we're gonna use that term, but basically the idea is, is that on the ground, in a safe place, you can put these doors on, you can properly seal the, the, the, the door. But then you're gonna have this extension that comes out this quick connect, that quick connect has this barrel connector where you can take an ethernet cable and, and weatherize it.

And, and, and it has some other, you know, it's one thing like if you're gonna do it one time, but there's other customers out there that do this like kind of daily every week, like concerts. Think about like, uh, Josh and I are heading to the US Open on Thursday and we have a bunch of these out there. Well, guess what?

At the end of the open, do you want to take that door off to get your AP back? No, you don't. So we came up with this idea.

So if you order the, uh, environment pack, which is a separate part, we will ship you one of these. Environment pack is $2,000 per ap? No, I don't.

That would be, that would be the PM's job to get Talking to guys. We're just here to tell you how awesome they're Sam on that. Okay, fair point.

Good. Is that, you know, obviously it looks like it's some sort of oddball connector. Is it, um, industry standard of some sort?

Oh, Uh, it's actually a, a cable that's been used in the past that we slightly modify. Okay. Yeah.

But, but it, it's not like something that just got dreamed up last week. It, it was like, oh, we used to have this thing and we just made it. Because I'm assuming you can, you, you can go somewhere and get the cables that connect to it in various links and whatnot, depending on what you're Doing.

Or if, if you needed something different you could, but the thing is, is you just need to get the actual, you know, receiving end of that ethernet connection outside of that door. Right? Yep.

That's the key. So, Alright, performance comparison overhead or under seat, while we've been big fans of line of sight for a long time, um, you can do it on your seat. You're gonna have more coan interference if you do it on your seat.

What I don't like about it is, I call it lumpy cell. It it very fast as you expand away from that AP, you find different lump. I'm not calling you lumpy, Matt.

Okay. I called that. Are you okay today?

No. Oh, Sorry, just checking. Checking.

Um, but your performance degradation to distance goes way up. When you have higher code channel interference, you're putting more bodies in between you. Everything about non-line of sight just makes wifi harder.

Does it still work? Yes, but the guy three seats back from me, he is having a very different experience than I am sitting on top of the ap. If we do line of sight, we get much more fidelity, we get a much more even distribution of the bandwidth in the cell.

We get lower coach channel interference, which is why we get more distribution of, of performance. So we do believe that line of sight is probably the preferred way to go and it's held up really, really well and some very high overrun conditions. Um, go Ahead.

I was just gonna quickly explain what you see here. Yeah. Fast there on the left hand side, this is an undersea deployment.

This is a Super Bowl. These are aps that's time. Yep.

When the, when the building is empty, it is very contentious because they're all Omnis. Oh, it's horrible. They all hear each other.

Yep. The the radios are super busy. You put a bunch of water bags and, and other, you know, people in the way and the best it ever operates is actually when it's full.

So during a Super Bowl, you have more people than you've ever had in that building. You have extra press, you have all these things. So that's the best it's ever done on the right side.

That's a directional only deployment. So you can see that it's super quiet, like when it's empty and then it heats up when, when, when there's something going on. Um, and that's, that's what we want over here.

What you'll see is like if you're going around with like a air check G three or one of net I think it is now. Mm. But, but you would see, and people had us chasing our tails that like non-WiFi interfere.

There was no non-WiFi interfere. It was wifi from really far away fragment that that, that the device couldn't decode. So you're chasing your tail looking for this thing, then it's wifi.

So things like that were happening. So we just wanted to call that out. Where I really think you're gonna end up is in hyper directional.

If you're in like say an arena maybe 20,000 or less, you're probably gonna be overhead everywhere, maybe, maybe a little bit under seat in the really big stadiums. You're gonna be hybrid. Yep.

You're gonna be overhead everywhere. You can be under seat where you can't be. That's how we see it.

You just haven't lived till you start pointing aps at each other. All right. So this is a lineup of directional antennas and right now from a six gigahertz, uh, standpoint, 91 66 D one, which has been out there, we're using a lot of that in warehouses, uh, integrated AP with directional antenna and wifi seven is a 91 76 D one.

Um, still got a lot of attraction higher ed warehouses, places that you don't want to have the complexity of mounting external antennas or the regulations of mounting external antennas. Um, if you're doing six gigahertz, um, still the good dual band wide patch patch antenna. The, uh, 91, 21, uh, 20 A XCP.

We've got a lot of 91 twenties running this venue. Um, so that's still a solid solution. And we've got a lot of customers that are like, God, I don't want the complexity of six gigahertz yet.

It's like, do wifi six. I mean, it holds up. Um, and then we just introduced the CW 91 79, which we are already seeing really good things out of this.

I was really happy when we turned the wifi on on this, this radio. Um, it's built to handle pretty much everything. We know we're going to run into 200 feet, no problem at all.

Um, in fact, I got a video up here, we'll show you. They're pulling almost 400 megawatt per second. We tested 200 feet and we did that on the 91 0 4.

Yeah. Just to make sure that it works. We went through all the predominant clients.

We're like, we're not saying go and deploy it at 200 feet everywhere. I mean obviously it's a big sell, but we want to know, right? Yeah.

So when we did the 91 79, we were deciding what we were gonna test and I was like, ah, that's a no brainer. We're gonna do the same thing we did before because we want to have that delta. Uh, what we found was the 91 79 outperforms the 91 0 4 in every single test we did.

There's reasons for that. Some of it is we, we had a lot of capabilities in the 91 0 4 and we felt like people weren't using all of them. So we went to a, to an easier, simpler Model.

Simpler Yeah. Kind of configuration option, which actually, you know, improved the performance by not having as many switches and things like that. So that was kinda key.

And then the other thing about like the whole hyper directional term, what it really is is, you know, will wifi go that far for sure all day every day in high density it's different, right? So on the 25 thirteens and all the predecessors before the 91 0 4, we had these narrow antennas, but they had these side lobes. And so it, we were like, wow, what is going on here?

So what was really happening was those side lobes that east west contention was killing us. So we were using features like Rx, SOP to knock that down, but when you turn that knob, you, you basically reduce your throw in every direction. So that's why we're like, Hey, if you're beyond like 75 feet, you probably shouldn't do that.

Um, so, so what we did is we spent a bunch of time, a bunch of time at rock lit. It's in the cla building, raising and lowering gear. And I think there's a video in here.

There's a video. Um, and we got all into band filters and all into like minimizing our side lobes, which increased our throw, which in the marketplace I think is pretty critical because it's just way cheaper to be up and outta the way than to be Swiss cheese in your arena with four drills everywhere. Alright?

One of the things is it still has configurable options. Beam steering is configurable. Um, and we have fewer, we had two separate beam steers and then a wide mode on the 91 0 4.

And that confused a lot of people. The other thing on the 91 0 4 was the first hyper directional antenna. It was, it was very sharp on the edge.

And I, I had an experience with one deployment where they didn't build the roof, right? And if I took two steps to the right one meter over, I lost six db. And if I took two steps to the right, again, I picked up six db and I lost 150 meg of, of throughput in the process of doing that.

So it was very tight. Um, this one's a little more forgiving and that forgiveness hasn't cost us any performance, like you mentioned. Um, the other thing is we've got the back mode.

So it's very easy to understand. We've got three modes. One of the things that people overlook on this, I've got a design right now with a convention center that's got a hundred of these aps hanging.

I can shut down two thirds of those aps and go to wide mode on the rest of 'em and still cover that convention center when it's not busy. So it's got applications and software for sustainability. Um, and you can read all of that directly from the dashboard or from the controller.

Um, it says I on both stacks and it's actually implemented at parody on both stacks right now. Uh, I think we're still awaiting the release on the dashboard. No, it's there.

Uh, we just unasked it. So perfect. Now it will actually show up as a 90 79.

It was massive. We Did that with the Release. I will point out two things.

The, um, the kind of boresight slash narrow versus wide was, that was a thing where, again, if you go back in the history of HD wifi, we've been doing it since around 2008. Um, distance is everything when it comes to antenna selection, right? So like, it was very complicated for people to figure it out.

You're like, all right, well what's your distance? Okay, well then you need that antenna and it's like a wide patch or oh, you're further out. Okay, now you need this antenna and there's a lot of installation errors and things that happen, but to create a fully integrated antenna that can switch beams.

And so now if you're close, you just go wide. If you're far, you go narrow things like that, You change the feeling simpler. It's, it doesn't have the configuration errors.

I mean there's a lot of reasons, uh, that this is really powerful. You can't get the wrong AP in the wrong place. So the same AP can, it can be short, it can be far, it can be indoor, it can be outdoor.

I mean, it's literally a game changer. Another thing we know if you're running dual five gigahertz interface is clients, well, anybody can build a network. Getting clients to connect to it becomes the challenge.

And what we learned several years ago, if you balance the power on those cells, even though they are just slightly offset, once everybody quits moving, they gravitate, they gravitate to the right place, they end up splitting themselves up on the cell. So a lot of thought was given to the design and the power ranges that we're running. You'll notice that we're running a low range and a high range, uh, radio on five gigahertz.

That's to get complete isolation works like a champ. We've run this dual five gigahertz everywhere we go. Uh, but that pallet, that power.

Yeah. And the balancing is key. If You're three or four DB hotter on one side, that they will Go for it.

And you need to realize that. And you kind of just lost the capacity of the AP by loading up one radio. Yep.

So, so be cognizant of balancing the power. All right. Again, there's another shot of the, uh, WLC Accelerometer.

Yeah. And the accelerometer giving you the angles. So yeah, there's an accelerometer built in.

We can tell you the tilt of the ap, which is super cool. We have some really cool patents on, you know, 30 degrees above the horizon. Well, we can raise our power because we know we're pointed down, things like that.

But, but the other thing is from just like a installation standpoint, if you go and you tell the installer, Hey, I need it at this, you know, angle, you don't have to go and walk and validate everyone. You can be like, Nope, you're wrong. Um, or, or to, to be more, I'm not trying, there's some installer out there that's gonna come and tackle me, but, um, all I'm getting at is, or something else could happen.

Maybe something hit the AP or something. You lift the bangs into it or something like that. Alert on it.

If it, if It changes. Yeah, I think you could do like, The answer is yes, we could alert. Thanks Jim.

You're welcome buddy. He's here for me all the time. All right.

Enabling the accelerometer. You've got, you do have to enable it. What to expect.

This is the fun part, Boy. It's the coolest place we go. It's, this is on the rock lit.

Its campus a picture. Our movie. It should be a movie.

Hit the button one more time. There we go. I got it right there.

But the, the key that we basically went in, we took the 91 0 4, we took the 91 79, we paired them up four different times and we had this huge trus with motor mounts. And at the click of a button we could raise and lower them to different heights, and then we could do all sorts of isolation testing. And the other thing is the grid in the ceiling is etched on the floor.

So we get where high resolution surveys. So like, you're not, it's really hard in a, in a hundred and, you know, 10 foot building to figure out where you are when you're looking up, but not when the grid's right on the floor. So this is our favorite place to go and, and figure our things out.

You forgot the best part. There was snow and ice in 20 degrees outside of that building and we were in t-shirts inside. That's, it's pretty Nice.

That's, it's a huge bonus. The, the two times we've been there to test. We did the 91 0 4 and the 91 79.

There we're both in January. Yes. Yeah.

Pretty Nice. Well, that's when they get a little time to do it. We're Running low on time, Jim.

We are, We're getting hooked. Uh, real world data. Tell us about it.

Matt, you were there. Well, This is at Bottle Rock. Uh, my, my co-presenter and colleague Josh sir got there before me and ran these surveys and basically, you know, narrow mode firing across, you're at like a 65, uh, foot wide cell, 150.

This was in the, I think like the VIP uh, section where all the food was. And then he had another one next slide where he switched it to wide mode. Yeah.

And you can see the difference there. It's much wider, shorter things like that. So just the, the configurability of it.

This part's really cool. So that arrow right there, so this is bottle Rock just a couple weeks ago, I think Green Days on a stage. This is what we call the soft chewy center.

That's at least what Josh calls it. And it's really, really hard to do good wifi right there. Um, but the power of six gigahertz.

So we went and we have really good friends in the audio industry that let us get into the front of house sound. Let's go to the next one, and then you're gonna have to play this somehow. There you go.

So this is what six gigahertz looks like. Um, in the middle of all those people. I mean, you're ripping like 400, 3, 400 megs in, in a middle of just a sea of people in the hardest kind of place to put in ap.

So six gigahertz rocks in high density, and we would've let you hear the sound, but Billy from Green Day said a bunch of bad words, so we had to mute it. I thought it was cool, but I figured it'd probably get me in trouble. All right, so Campus Gateway, it's ready to go for that.

And that's all we had.