Rowell Dionicio

Cisco Unveil’s Meraki Campus Gateway: A Cloud-Managed Overlay for Complex Networks When you think of Meraki, you think of simplicity. Zero-touch provisioning. Clean dashboards. Minimal complexity. And then Cisco announced the Meraki Campus Gateway (MCG). The simplicity model begi…

Thinking of moving to ⛅️ cloud-managed Wi-Fi but can’t re-architect your campus?

Cisco Meraki’s new Campus Gateway (MCG) lets you
👨‍💻 tunnel WLAN traffic via VXLAN
🎛️use QUIC for control
⚖️HA with AP load-balancing.

🔗 rowelldionicio.com/cisco-unveil... #MFD13

Marvis Minis and the Rise of Distributed Observability Sensorless visibility is uniquely positioned in enterprise networking. Juniper introduced a Marvis Minis and just extended the capabilities beyond your network. There is now application visibility,…

Marvis Minis extend beyond the local network. Insights into client-to-cloud experience. We're in the world of end user application experience.

Juniper Networks is now extending into regional CDN PoPs to provide us more visibility into what's happening. #MFD13

rowelldionicio.com/marvis-minis...

From AIOps to Autonomous Networking AI isn’t a feature, it’s an organizational strategy. Juniper Networks is not only embedding AI into the platform (Marvis), but also into their support structure and company culture. Tic…

Juniper’s AI journey—from data collection to Marvis’ auto-remediation—shows what’s possible.

Marvis isn’t just observability. It acts.
1️⃣ Fixes issues automatically
2️⃣ Speeds ops via conversation
3️⃣ Your smart network assistant

rowelldionicio.com/from-aiops-t...

#MFD13

YouTube video by Clear To Send CTS 355: Exposing the Real Wi-Fi Issue

Tales from the real-world - a conversation with François on the Clear to Send podcast about troubleshooting Wi-Fi issues that do not turn out to be Wi-Fi issues at all!

Wi-Fi 7 access points are here - but is it worth the upgrade?

We've been hearing about the promises it brings:

✅ Lower latency for your mission-critical apps
✅ Multi-Link Operation (MLO) for more efficient connections
✅ Higher capacity for IoT & high density environments

You ever cross your fingers when rebooting a switch remotely? Wish you had faster boot times! Juniper Networks came out with the EX4000 with a 2 minute boot time!

⏱️ What’s the longest you’ve waited for a switch to reboot? I’m curious who’s got the longest wait! #sponsored

Output of hashcat status

Trying hashcat to recover a WPA2 PSK from a pcap containing a 4-way handshake. Do I know what I’m doing? Probably not. Just trying to help someone out.

Updating NetAlly EtherScope nXG

NetAlly EtherScope nXG on desk

Update your NetAlly tools to v2.7 to discover Wi-Fi 7 networks!

Just in time for some Wi-Fi 7 testing I will be doing soon.

Features in 2.7:

🛜 Wi-Fi 7 Visibility
🧪 AutoTest improvements
🤝 Wired test enhancements
📍 AirMapper improvements
🐞 Bug fixes

Starbucks coffee mug

Notebook on a desk

MacBook Pro on a coffee table

My Sunday routine:

☕️ Multiple cups of coffee
✍️ Writing to reflect on the previous and upcoming week
📈 Update our company scorecard

I didn’t end up doing it all! But I did think it was a lot for a Saturday

So I’m overdoing it??

Today’s agenda:

🏌️‍♂️Driving range
🛻 Clean my truck
💁‍♂️ Organize my office
🚴‍♀️ Teach my daughter to ride a bike
⚾️ Practice baseball with my son
🍺 Have a beer and take a nap

Can’t go away because that’s how I’m sending you this message

Access point deployment

Wi-Fi validation surveys help to provide a view of what Wi-Fi looks like in a given space.

I always recommend completing one. Also check with your eyes. Are APs mounted correctly? Is the Ethernet plugged in? If so, is the cable plugged into the right access point port?

Had everything go wrong with this network deployment but we got basic internet and Wi-Fi up and running. Then I had to jet ✈️

I’ll let you know how it works 😂

LC fiber patch cable and SFP modules

Isn’t it amazing how we can transport bits as a laser that bounces around super thin glass across long distances at high capacity? Fiber is a wonderful technology. Also, always carry a fiber cleaner with you. I forgot mine 🤦‍♂️

Inside of my packed Peak Design bag of my tools and equipment.

Peak design travel bag

I feel like I’m forgetting something. And as I’m on the plane to my destination, it hit me. I don’t have my labeler. This is why a checklist is important.

Thinking about a career in IT? Start with networking fundamentals. It’s the backbone of everything. It’s in the cloud, powering overlays, and running on every device. Nail networking, and you’ll pick up new tech faster and solve problems like a pro.

Single day trip from San Diego to San Francisco. A final interview with a candidate at a coffee shop and the rest of the day filled with client work. Touchdown back home before midnight.

Using Wi-Fi 6/6E. But we can’t use the 6 GHz band with these antennas yet.

Yeah I’ve seen even larger ones. This antenna is tri-band so therefore larger.

Crate of Mist access points

Moved Mist access points with my truck to a secure location.

External antennas for the Mist AP45E

Selfie for scale

Rushed to finished an order on Dec 31st ‘24. Sent the shipping address to the distributor. But my PO to them had our mailing address. When you move too quickly you make mistakes but luckily it worked out. Got a truck in November and moved everything easily & in one trip to a secure location.

Todays plan:
Water the plants ✅
Eat cheesecake
Play video games w/ my daughter
Teach my daughter to ride a bike
Read Contagious

My thoughts on simple network monitoring with Zabbix. rowelldionicio.com/simple-netwo...

🗺️ Distributed monitoring - w/ Zabbix proxies at remote sites

🚨 Alerting - trigger thresholds & actions to Slack & PagerDuty

🔗 Integration - with multiple platforms like Jira

How are you managing monitoring?

Wi-Fi Trek 2018 in San Diego

Rowell listed as speaker at Wi-Fi Trek 2018

A bit of nostalgia after coming across the CWNP 2018 Wi-Fi Trek conference booklet. It was hosted in San Diego, my hometown, and I had the pleasure of speaking about my journey to become CWNE certified.

Details in the UniFi Access Point release notes.

When reading release notes, I really like it when vendors add in details about what their fixing. Thank you @ubiquiti.bsky.social

15 tasks completed on Todoist

Every time I complete my overall task goals I feel pretty good. This week has been very productive with handling things like

🛜 Wi-Fi validation survey reports
🤑 Auditing expenses
🔗 Integrating cloud applications

Celebrating wins over dinner with my wife.

Locked in a big sale for us right before the ball dropped for the New Year. It was down to the last few hours of 2024. I have to say thanks to the partnership with Juniper and Ingram Micro for getting it past the finish line. Celebrated last night with my wife 🥳 What a way to end the year!

I think that’s where it needs more time to develop. But simple tasks it can handle very well. Even if it was as simple as telling AI to “form a professional response for these 3 emails I don’t have time to respond to right now” type of response. I wouldn’t have it send but I’d like to review it.