Recap of WLPC 2022(US)

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After 2 years of no in-person conferences, I was able to attend the first in-person conference of the year WLPC 2022 in Pheonix, Arizona. It is one of my favorite events and this year was no exception.

Here are some of my highlights of the conference this year. As an individual, you could not attend all the sessions/deep-dives/bootcamps, so the post is based on my own experience & you should look for different perspectives blogs of the event to see how others view it. You should watch recorded sessions of the main conference once it is published here.

Since the conference did not hold in 2021 (due to Covid), it is 2 years of WiFi updates, and a lot of exciting updates were announced. Here are some of the key highlights of the conference.

Product Updates
There were some cool product announcements made during the conference. Here are some of those I think you should pay attention to and have a look if you are a Wireless Professional

1. Hamina Wireless Design Tool
This is one of the newest products and it came as a surprise to many of us. It is a web-based Wireless design tool and got a lot of cool features. Not sure that the announcement is in a recorded session as it was not part of the WLPC schedule.

2. WLAN Pi Pro
This was one of my favorite. WLAN Pi has got its latest update and it is super cool. You can watch the recorded session here. I picked WLAN Pi Pro deep-dive session and was able to play with it closer with the guidance of Jerry Olla, Nick Turner & Scott Mcdermott who are part of the team behind this product. It is priced around 1k USD (WLPC had a promotional price of 750 USD). As we were part of deep-dive, we got one unit as part of session materials. I was able to get my first 6GHz PCAP during this session (see this tweet if you like to have that PCAP). Here are some key features & technical specs of the product.

3. Metageek Tonic
Metageek has announced its latest update & new product called “Tonic”, a real-time WiFi packet analyzer. It is still windows-based software and Mac support is coming. You can watch this 30min session to get full details of that product. Here is Ryan & Joel presenting it.

4. nOversight

This is another great product if you are interested to see what happens with Apple clients. You can watch the full session here. Here is Ben Toner presenting it at WLPC

WiFi6/6E/7 Updates
There are many sessions about WiFi6 (11ax in 2.4/5GHz) & WiFi6E (11ax in 6GHz).If you are interested, please watch the recorded sessions.
1. WiFi6E-It’s almost like WiFi is being born again by David Coleman (Extreme Networks)
2. The Impact of 6GHz on Network Design by Wes Purvis (Juniper/Mist)
3. 802.11ax Channel Access by Jim Vajda (7Signal)
4. Preamble Puncturing in 11ax(WiFi6) and 11be(WiFi7) by Jatin Prakash (Arista)
5. Practical Considerations for Deploying WiFi6E by Jatin Prakash (Arista)
6. WiFi7 Multilink Operation by Metak Dragos (Arista)
7. Zen and the Art of 6GHz WiFi Design by Jason Hintersteiner
8. World Peace between 6G, WiFi7 & CBRS by Bob Friday (Juniper/Mist)

Interesting Talks
Pls note that I listed based on my interest, I would suggest checking through all of them and this is not to say other presentations are not good. I encourage you to go through them.
1. It is impossible to calculate WiFi Capacity by Peter Mackenzie
2. How to really get started with Python by Francois Verges
3. Impact of MAC Randomization by Jim Palmer
4. WiFi Kraken-Lite Extreme WiFi monitoring by Mike Spicer
5. Wi-VR See your Wireless by Timo Sass
6. Seven misconceptions about 5G & WiFi by Marcus Burton
7. How WiFi & Going to the Bar are the same thing by WiFi Ninjas

WiFi Awards
WiFi Award was the first thing on the Day 2 of the conference. Here are the awards category and finalist in each. The winner is highlighted in each category. You can read more detail from this page.
1. Company leadership of the year (Aruba/HP, Cisco, Extreme, Juniper/Mist, WiFi Training)
2. Product of the year (Ekahau Site Survey 2.0, Extreme AP4000, Mist Marvis, Ruckus CloudPath Portal, Ventiv-Venvolt 2.0)
3. Innovation of the year (Aruba 300AP, Cisco 9104 Stadium Antenna, Ekahau Insights, NetAlly LANBERT, nOversight)
4. WiFi Rookie of the Year (Dan Jones, Jason Goodson, Keith Miller, Michael Hilton, Mohammed Razavi)
5. Content Contribution of the year (Amy Arnold, Lee Badman, Joel Crane, John Kilpatrick, Tom Hollingsworth)
6. Lifetime Achievement Award – Chuck Lukaszewski

Deep Dive Sessions
These sessions run 3hrs for 2 consecutive days in the main conference. You have to pick your sessions in advance (at the time of registration). I am glad I picked the WLAN Pi Pro. Here is the list of deep-dive sessions we had this year.

3D Printing for WLAN Pro (by Robert Boardman)
Antenna 101 (by Jim Palmer)
CBRS (by Celona team)
Intuitibits WiFi Toolset (by Adrian Granados)
Going down the AI/ML Rabit Hole (by Bob Friday)
IoT Home Lab (by Landon Foster)
LoRaWAN Home Lab ( by Troy Martin)
Pentesting & Hacking WiFi (by Phil Morgan)
VXLAN for WiFi Engineers ( by Jonathan Smith)
WLAN Pi Pro (by Jerry Olla, Nick Turner, Scott Mcd)

WLAN Pi Pro – Deep Dive, the most popular deep-dive at WLPC2022

Bootcamps
Prior to the main conference, 3-day bootcamps were held and around 40% of the attendees participated in those bootcamps. If you need in-person training, it may be more convenient to attend and exchange your learning with other participants in the classroom.

CWAP (by Peter Mackenzie)
CWDP (by John Moen – my friend from WiFi Training)
CWNA (by David Coleman)
ECSE Advanced ( by Francois Verges )
ECSE Design (by Matt & Mac – WiFi Ninjas)
Pentesting & Hacking WiFi (by Phil Morgan)
Python for WLAN Pros (by Jake Snyder)
Rockstar Cisco 9800 (by Chris Avants, I did teach QoS, Multicast & WPA3 🙂 )
Wireless Adjuster (by Devin Akin)

Here are some of our bootcamps pictures

WiFiTraining Happy hour & Other Social Events
We held our WiFiTraining Happy hour on Monday 21st along with the main conference registration. It was the time to meet a lot of friends & have some fun. During the main conference, Day 1 & Day 2 you had social events organized by vendors after 6:30PM. I had to join dinners with customers, WiFi training family each day & missed most of those events.

My Personal Experience @ WLPC
I met most of my old friends (who I knew through past events) & met some new friends too (they know me via my blog, but I haven’t met them in person). Here are some highlights

With Keith Parson, the WLPC organizer

My personal exprience pre-confrence
Like the 2020 event, I took a week off from my work and came to the US early. I always enjoyed seeing my friends in the WiFi community. Chris & Bruce came to pick me up from Dallas. Our friend John joined us a few days later from Norway and 4 of us traveled to Pheonix on Friday 18th as bootcamps were held on 19-21 Feb. Here are some of those happy moments prior to WLPC.

To finish off my trip, on 27th Chris & john dropped me at Fortworth where I caught up with Damith (a Sri Lankan friend who dropped me at DFW for my flight to AU)