Recently, I attended my first WLPC (Wireless Lan Professionals Conference) in Phoenix, AZ! This year's conference marked the 10th anniversary with commemorative events. At the Hilton Phoenix Resort at The Peak, I couldn't help but be green with envy at the meticulous landscaping having a garden of my own.
Flower envy aside, this year's talks mostly focused on practical deployment advice for Wi-Fi 6E and predictions for how Wi-Fi 7 will impact the industry in years to come. Some of my favorite talks were:
The Nitty Gritty Details of OFDMA by Tom Carpenter
Responsibly Breaking the Wi-Fi Rules by Lee Badman
Using Data Science to Troubleshoot Zoom Calls by Bob Friday
Particularly for OFDM and OFDMA, it's a difficult topic for those not from an electrical engineering background, and even more difficult if you have to vet performance issues in products (Hi, that's me). In the future, I plan to look at specific classes that cover these topics from the cellular perspective in-depth.
For the deep dive, I chose Phil Morgan's wireless pen testing class and learned practical pen testing skills for the lab. However, I also learned that no security measures will do anything if your users are vulnerabilities themselves. ;)
There were many giveaways and even more tools to buy that either have low availability or were massively discounted. I came home with many new things to tinker with and will report back on my lab activities with them. Some of those include the WLAN Pi M4 Wi-Fi 7 upgrade kit, APs, and a fist full of stickers.
After an exhausting red-eye flight home to VA, I plan on sleeping all weekend. My biggest takeaway was to make achievable goals for all the Wi-Fi side missions so I can keep the WLPC momentum going throughout the year; side missions are the activities like mentoring, documenting in this blog, and lab time that require extra effort outside my normal work duties. I was ecstatic to meet everyone and hope to see you all next year!
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