Archive for the ‘wireless’ Category

• tech•ed backstage @ BigAU – Tues 13th July 2010!

  Date: 2010.07.09 | Category: Uncategorized, networking, planning, setup, tech•ed 2009, tech•ed 2010, wireless | Response: 1

  

  I will be presenting tech•ed backstage at the Brisbane Infrastructure Group. Guess appearances may include Nathan Wright from GCCEC and Ben Parker from Parker Tech Pty Ltd

  Venue
  Microsoft, Level 9, 1 Eagle Street, Waterfront Place, Brisbane City.
  Time
  1700 for Pizza.
  Date
  Tuesday, 13th of July 2010

  Further details on #BigAU.

  I’ll be covering off stuff that happened last year, stuff that’s happening this year + our wins and losses. Shock/Horror! I actually have some good news re Cisco WLCs this time around too!

  See you there!

• abducted. returned. changed.

  Date: 2010.03.29 | Category: networking, planning, tech•ed 2009, tech•ed 2010, wireless | Response: 1

  Toothless slack-jawed yokels win again

  

  Cisco 4404 Marketing Poster

  Long time readers of this blog (and the tech•ed 2009 team who have to put up with my whinging) will know that we had a significant number of challenges getting the wifi at GCCEC up to a scratch. Today I am happy to announce, however, that we have had a win. The 5508 delivers in the areas the 4404 didn’t. Read the rest of this entry »

• Random wireless network commissioning bits

  Date: 2009.09.01 | Category: networking, tech•ed 2009, wireless | Response: 0

  (This post has been in my drafts since last week … we’re post commissioning on wireless now)

  One of these things is not like the other one…

  We recently mentioned that we completed deleting the WLC from the wireless equation at the venue. In rolling our the custom configs to the 50 autonomous devices we found that one of them returned an error.

  

  One of these things is not like the other ones

  Read the rest of this entry »

• When I said 16 percent I meant … 16 percent

  Date: 2009.08.26 | Category: networking, tech•ed 2009, wireless | Response: 3

  You will recall our earlier posts regarding the performance problems with the Cisco WLC at the Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre. If you’ve not seen them catch up here:

  • Making Wireless Work
  • Diagnosing and resolving extremely high RF utilisation
  • Resolving a Hunch– Wi-Fi Performance @ GCCEC

  Insufficient Traction Error

  We had been working extensively with a number of suppliers to get the WLC issues resolved. To be honest, I reached the end of my tether some time ago as every call seemed to revolve around either co-channel interference (so much so that is now the standard butt of jokes on the tech team … car won’t start? co-channel inteference :\), or some discussion of why there were methodological defects in the reports we’d written rather than just focusing on the obvious @#(*&@ issue. Read the rest of this entry »

• Resolving a hunch – wifi performance @ GCCEC

  Date: 2009.07.22 | Category: tech•ed 2009, wireless | Response: 7

  Previously you will recall we talked about the methodology we used to diagnose why the RF utilisation at GCCEC was so stratospherically high in relation to the actual wifi network utilisation and number of associated clients. In the last moments of that day on site we did observe a few anomalies with regards to real-world network performance. Given that the wireless infrastructure is state of the art and was one of the first “enterprise” deployments of 802.11n in Australia 12 months ago – this was odd and definitely warranted further investigation before the event even if to find there wasn’t a problem at all.

  We left Brisbane bright and early on Thursday the 16th of July to spend a day with the guys from GCCEC to get to the bottom of this latest issue.

  Read the rest of this entry »

• What is CCX and why should you care?

  Date: 2009.07.17 | Category: tech•ed 2009, wireless | Response: 0

  Early on in the history of wifi Cisco created some proprietary extensions called CCX (Cisco Compatible Extensions). These are now an open standard that a lot of network card manufacturers implement. If you’re bringing your own laptop to the event you should make sure you have CCX-4 compliant drivers, here’s why …

  Read the rest of this entry »

• Diagnosing and resolving extremely high RF utilisation

  Date: 2009.07.15 | Category: tech•ed 2009, wireless | Response: 8

  What’s wrong with these pictures?

  

  Per AP TX/RX figures with channel utilisation across the ground floor of GCCEC

  

  Number of Client Associations across the ground floor of GCCEC

  I was given logon access to the WCS console at GCCEC at the start of May this year. Shortly (10 minutes) later I started e-mailing “DANGER, WILL ROBINSON!” messages to the venue and the tech•ed technology team.

  Read the rest of this entry »

• site visit for tech•ed AND APC

  Date: 2009.07.14 | Category: Australian Partner Conference 2009, food, tech•ed 2009, wireless | Response: 6

  This year we are lucky enough to be using the GCCEC for two large Microsoft events, that are a week apart; the Australian Partner Conference (APC) and tech•ed and as you can guess this gives us a huge amount of efficiency on how we run the event with benefits in shared infrastructure and environments. We’ll have a huge breakdown later in this blogs life talking about how we utilise this shared environment and assign the costs, but that’s not for this post. Read the rest of this entry »

• Making wireless work

  Date: 2009.07.13 | Category: tech•ed 2009, wireless | Response: 4

  If you’re interested in tech•ed and have been reading the blogosphere you’ll know that every paying delegate is scoring an awesome HP Mini 2140 as a freebie! This is fantastic news for delegates and a real headache for the propeller heads behind tech•ed. We now know that we’re going to have 2500 laptops, plus delegate’s bringing their own laptops, plus wifi-enabled mobile phones, plus Microsoft staff, speakers, crew, and all of the leechers holiday-makers in Gold Coast apartments across the road to cater for as wireless users.
  Read the rest of this entry »

• Tech•Ed09 Netbooks

  Date: 2009.07.13 | Category: tech•ed 2009, wireless | Response: 10

  So it is pretty well known that for this year Tech•Ed that paying delegates will receive a HP Mini-note 2140 for everyone to experience the Windows 7 Experience. Big shout out to Nick Hodge for his hard work in getting this over the line. But as we’re over the legal and compliance fun, its down to ensuring we give the best experience to every single person that receives a mini-note.

  

  As you can well imagine there are many factors we need to consider when we’re expecting ~2500 machines to be delivered to end users in 5 days… And this will be a main theme of quite a few posts on this blog as it presents quite a few unique challenges.

  • Wireless Network planning – a LOT of work is been done to mitigate risks around this
  • Help Desk – Providing support around these machines including DOA’s
  • Power and Charging – Ensuring these machines will be charged up enough at hand out and there are enough power points around the venue.
  • Handing Out to Delegates – People flow!
  • Imaging – how to get the image onto the machines, luckily we have Jeffa helping us here as the “Build Czar”

  This is a start to the planning we’ve made, let us know what you want to hear about. To start with, the question everyone wants to hear about.. WIRELESS!

  - jorke