NetAlly WAS the secret company. We tell you all about it in this episode.
If you want to catch back with the presentations and watch them, here are the links you need:
- NetAlly Company Introduction: https://vimeo.com/showcase/6218644/video/354018315
- NetAlly Technology Perspective: https://vimeo.com/showcase/6218644/video/354018633
- NetAlly Product Portfolio: https://vimeo.com/showcase/6218644/video/354021245
- NetAlly Product Update: https://vimeo.com/showcase/6218644/video/354021719
For more insights from the other delegates, please read the following articles:
- NetAlly’s AirCheck G2 gets a facelift with version 4.0 firmware from Timothy Dennehy: http://justdowifi.blogspot.com/2019/08/netallys-aircheck-g2-gets-facelift-with.html
- NetAlly- a Familiar Line of Networks Tools Reborn from Lee Badman: https://it.toolbox.com/blogs/leebadman/netally-a-familiar-line-of-networks-tools-reborn-081919
- New Coverage: So The MFD4 Secret Company Is NetAlly from Haydn : https://thewlan.com.au/2019/08/27/so-the-mfd4-secret-company-is-netally/
- Say Hello to NetAlly- a New Old Friend from Lee Badman: https://wirednot.wordpress.com/2019/08/14/say-hello-to-netally-a-new-old-friend/
- New Coverage: Welcoming netAlly from Scott Lester: https://blog.theitrebel.com/2019/08/14/welcome-netally/
New Company!
Mike Parrottino is the CEO and the new company has been announced the week of Mobility Field Day.
The new company is a new curve out of the old parent company Netscout. Employees and products are coming from Netscout. Some of them were even already there when the company was still under Fluke Networks.
They want to take advantage of being smaller and more flexible in order to propose new products and be more entrepreneurial.
Core values of the company: simplicity, visibility and collaboration.
Does this mean a new Air Magnet Solution?
Three avenues that they are exploring:
- Build a brand new product using their R&D resources
- Acquire a company and partner to bring a solution to the market
- A true partnership, provide something unique and not have too much overlapping
We talked about it on the podcast!
What else are they working on?
James Kahkoska, CTO talked on a lot of different technical subjects in his 1h presentation. Along the way, he was sharing some screenshots showing us a glimpse of they are working on.
So it looks like they are working on a product that would fully embrace their core values (simplicity, visibility and collaboration).
Simplicity
- Tool or application looks very easy to use
- View the status of a device on one screen
- View of the channel map to include retry %
- It feels like there is a lot happening behind the scene to analyse the data collected and present it in a simple fashion
- Ability to define and create reusable test targets and profiles
- Ability to filter and only see what you care about
- Ability to sort the results
- Time Machine
Visibility
- Visibility of the client detection (Find out the device manufacturer from the MAC address)
- Using both L2 and L3 information to show the state of a device
- Leverage all the available L4 ports opened as well as SNMP to find out and refine what the device is
- Trying to make something complex (modern Wi-Fi) into something that is easy for the user to understand
- Channel changes
- Wi-Fi 6 and its 80 Information Element and 2880 Data Rates
- Correlate information coming from different sources to provide better visibility
- It looks like it is able to see more of how the network (LAN ) is configured as well
- They even showed us a WLC View where you can see the number of APs, numbers of VLAN, numbers of SSID
- Some more insights on the Wi-Fi side
- Ability to go back in time
- Ability to see roaming events and calculate the drop out emulating voice traffic
- Ability to perform active tests and see the details logs
- Ability to perform a WI-Fi packet capture and see the types of frames + upload the pcap in Link-Live
Collaboration
Link-live is being improved:
- Ability to upload results adding comments and job comments
- Adding support for an open API. All results in Link-Live are now available to be imported in other tools
- Adding connection and roaming logs
- Adding more Wi-Fi Analytics options to help you analyze Wi-Fi remotely
- Channel utilization
- Number of APs per channels
- Number of clients per channels
- Number of interferences per channels
Product Portfolio
The product portfolio looks very familiar as it is, for now, the same as the one under Netscout. They did work on the branding to update the packaging and logo:
AirCheck G2 Update
NetAlly released a new firmware for the AirCheck G2 (v4). This new firmware upgrade offers the following new features:
- Wi-Fi 6 Supports
- iPerf Test results on Link-Live
- Log Files on Link-Live
- Wi-Fi Analysis through Link-Live
We can see here a lot of focus on the collaboration and improving Link-Live. I’m already a big fan of Link-Live as it is today and I am very happy to see that they are working on improving it even more.
I’m also very happy that they are adding support for Wi-Fi 6 visibility. Wi-Fi 6 access points have been shipping for a year now and we are starting to see more of them in the wild.
