My #Wifi Journey so far...
Quick thanks to Nick Turner @nickjvturner and Ferney Muñoz @ferney_munoz for suggesting I start to blog. Nick suggested that even if I’m the only one who ever reads it at least I have a quick way to find things I’ve learnt and that if I’ve found a workaround for something or a new feature etc, chances are someone else could do with knowing that info too! I would say, however… I’m not a writer, I’m dyslexic. This will be hard for me!
But here goes…
I started looking into #WiFi more seriously recently after getting frustrated with dealing with poorly designed networks and people blaming our implementation of something else (MDM, Cloud services etc). It became obvious to me that not too many people actually had expertise in #WiFi and it tended to be a ‘finger in the air’ type approach… We’d been a partner with Meraki for a long time and even their (sales) people didn’t give us much support in terms of design, AP choice etc…
After toying with cheap tools to do wifi surveys etc we managed to get a few decent sized networks installs and I learnt basic things along the way. Great, there can’t be too much more to this…
We managed to get a large project that I knew was a bit beyond my skill set and I knew I’d need to spend some serious time looking into how to do this #WiFi thing properly. With the money, we would make from this project I set aside a few days to learn #WiFi and get the right kit to do it properly.
We purchased Ekahau Pro, Connect and a Sidekick… Job done…
I thought it would be good to join an Ekahau webinar where they showed what the sidekick could do… Jerry Olla @Jolla and Joel Crane @Potato_Fi were great and the webinar was relaxed and totally different to the normal ‘vendor presentation’ webinars we’re all accustomed to! One thing it did highlight though… I didn’t have a clue what I was doing!!
Joel was brilliant with me over the next few days as I hounded him with questions (I think I may have had a hand in him deciding to leave Ekahau… at least now he doesn’t feel like he has to answer loads of n00b questions…) but he put me in touch with the WiFiPros Slack channel and told me to follow as many people as I could find on twitter. In the next few months, I’d learned so much! I must’ve watched over 100 hours of YouTube webinars and WLPC recordings. I’ve read more whitepapers and listened to more podcasts than I’d care to remember! But one thing it has done is massively improve my knowledge and understanding. To the point where I feel confident to design and deploy #WiFi networks that I’m happy with.
I’m currently sat in a hotel, just about to do the last day of the ECSE Design course, I’m booked onto the new ECSE Troubleshooting course next week with Keith Parsons @keithparsons and I’m looking forward to meeting up with the UK WiFi Guys (slack) at WiFi Design Day in Birmingham next week.
I’d just like to say a massive thank you to the whole community for how much time and knowledge you’ve shared with me over the last few months. It’s been great to find a group of people who care so much about making something better that they’re happy to give up their time to help someone getting started on their journey.
