3312: WiFi 7 at Cisco Live: What It Means for Your Business

[00:00:04] How do you future-proof networks for an AI-driven world? Well today I'm joined by Matt McPherson, CTO of Enterprise Wireless at Cisco and Jerome Henry, wireless standards experts and author of WiFi 7 in-depth.

[00:00:21] Our conversation today is recorded live at Cisco Live in San Diego and our discussion explored the next evolution of connectivity as Cisco announces major advancements in its WiFi 7 portfolio. From the new CW9179F access point to powerful integrations with Cisco Spaces and Campus Gateway.

[00:00:43] Today I want to unpack how all these innovations are transforming high-density environments like stadiums, campuses and hospitals into intelligent, adaptive and secure digital spaces. And Matt and Jerome will also be discussing the growing role of AI in managing complexity, streamlining network operations and building more resilient infrastructures without overwhelming IT teams.

[00:01:11] So with wireless now touching everything from robotics to real-time analytics, how are organizations preparing for what comes next in connectivity? And it's on that note that I'm going to introduce you to today's guest. Well a huge thank you for stopping by and speaking with me today here at Cisco Live. Matthew first of all could you tell everyone listening a little about who you are and what you do? Matt McPherson Sure. So I'm Matt McPherson. I'm the enterprise wireless CTO.

[00:01:40] And so I look at a lot of different areas. I look at regulatory, what's happening with Spectrum. We're obviously very much and deeply involved in the standards. So WiFi 7 is out and we've released product, but the team is actually working on specifications for WiFi 8 now. So we're the ones that are kind of looking, okay, what's the next generation? And so we're very much involved in the standards as well. And a lot of the wireless innovation that's going on, whether it be WiFi or we're talking about 5G and how we integrate these things,

[00:02:08] how do we auto onboard with open roaming, a lot of that comes out of the CTO team. Matt McPherson Wow, you've got an incredibly cool role there, haven't you? Matt McPherson Already talking about WiFi 8. And obviously, you've got Jerome joining us as well. Jerome, could you tell everyone listening a little about yourself too? So I'm Jerome Henry. I work with Informat and I'm looking into the future of standards. So I'm primarily working for now on WiFi 8 and WiFi 7 is the brand new thing, but WiFi 8 is already in the making.

[00:02:34] And also working on ultra-wide band technologies and BLE technologies for the three to five years horizon. Matt McPherson And you say that, Jerome, you're working on WiFi 8, but I've got a book in front of me here called WiFi 7 in depth. Tell me a little bit more about that book. Jerome Henry Yes, you know, attending the IEEE and the WiFi Alliance meetings on the design of WiFi 7 in 11b, we realized that a lot of people see the result, which is the standards, but they don't understand what were the challenges that we were trying to solve and why we made the choices we made in this protocol.

[00:03:03] So we thought with a couple of colleagues, it would be interesting to give that background, not just explain the standard, but explain how it came to be, what it intends to solve and why we made those choices. Steve McLaughlin And what was the one key takeaway of the book? For anyone that does look it up now as we're talking, what should they be walking away with if they were to buy that book? Jerome Henry So WiFi 7 is more than just multi-link operation. It's more than MLO. It has a lot of things to optimize everything which is real-time and is latency sensitive.

[00:03:33] So it's more than just having tool links and Matt will tell you much, much more about that. Steve McLaughlin Well, I'll look forward to reading that on the plane ride home. But Cisco here at Cisco Live made some pretty big announcements today, especially related to WiFi 7 and the entire portfolio there. So what are the big highlights and what do they mean for enterprise connectivity? Steve McLaughlin Yeah, you know, we're really, really excited about what's going on with WiFi 7. You know, sometimes we see these different releases and we say,

[00:04:01] oh, another WiFi release, but sometimes it's hard to absorb actually some of the capabilities that we're doing. Steve McLaughlin Now, at Cisco, we've been on a journey for a long time to make wireless, especially unlicensed wireless, as predictable and as deterministic as we can. So in other words, how can you have some level of assurance that you can maintain the throughput in high-density environments with all these new things, whether it be a robot or it be an AR headset?

[00:04:28] Steve McLaughlin How can you ensure that you're getting the latency type characteristics that you need for this next generation of applications, especially with the amount of density that we have on these networks? Steve McLaughlin So with WiFi 7, like I said, it's the next step. Steve McLaughlin I mean, if I do a little bit of history with WiFi 5, what do we do? How do we design networks? Steve McLaughlin Really, if I had to put it in very high-level terms, we would over-provision the network and we would under-subscribe it. Steve McLaughlin And then as we started to consume those resources, what would we do?

[00:04:58] We'd go version more, right? Steve McLaughlin And we went into WiFi 6, we had a fundamental change in what we were doing because we enabled a technology called OFDMA. Steve McLaughlin Now, without getting in all the acronym soup, you know, basically what that means is that in WiFi 6, we could schedule both in the frequency domain and in the time domain. Steve McLaughlin So that means we can have multiple conversations going on simultaneously without colliding.

[00:05:24] Steve McLaughlin If we're not colliding, we're not inserting latency, right? Steve McLaughlin So we're providing a much better experience. Steve McLaughlin That came with 6. Steve McLaughlin Now, with 6E, of course, we address what's known as the collision or the interference domain, right? Steve McLaughlin So what do I mean by that? Steve McLaughlin Wi-Fi isn't unlicensed and anything can light up unlicensed legally. Steve McLaughlin So you have all these little things that are showing up and you have all these devices, maybe it's a light bulb, Steve McLaughlin Maybe it's something like a heart rate monitor in a hospital.

[00:05:53] Steve McLaughlin So there's really an incredible number of uses that we have here, but these things have to collaborate. Steve McLaughlin And if you have lots of uses of unlicensed, they can start to interfere with each other. Steve McLaughlin So when we went to 6E, we opened up by the FCC in the US another 1200 megahertz. Steve McLaughlin So there's two things that we had to do. Steve McLaughlin One, we had to make sure we had a stack that could schedule traffic based on the positive Steve McLaughlin So that's the policy of the access network. Steve McLaughlin What's mission critical to you?

[00:06:22] Steve McLaughlin And two, we needed to be able to protect from interference so that that experience wasn't destroyed. Steve McLaughlin So that's really what we did then as we went into Wi-Fi 7 is a new set of capabilities Steve McLaughlin So that enable an IT manager to get a predictable experience even in high density conditions, even when connecting people and things, right? Steve McLaughlin So that you can actually solve that next generation set of use cases. Steve McLaughlin Wow, incredibly cool.

[00:06:52] Steve McLaughlin I'm curious, what kind of challenges are AI driven enterprises facing with maybe current wireless infrastructure? Steve McLaughlin And how is Cisco responding to some of those needs with its latest solutions? Steve McLaughlin Because predictably, we're at a tech conference. Steve McLaughlin Everyone's talking about AI, but there comes certain responsibilities, challenges and opportunities with that, right? Steve McLaughlin Yeah, you know, AI has gotten quite famous. Steve McLaughlin And so, you know, when you walk around a tech conference now, it's AI this and AI that.

[00:07:18] Steve McLaughlin But what I'm excited about specifically in a lot of the work that Jerome is doing, can I actually say that you're working on an AI book? Steve McLaughlin I guess I just did. Steve McLaughlin So we are looking at the next generation. Steve McLaughlin And so, the thing about AI is we've been applying it for a while. Steve McLaughlin So some people don't realize that. Steve McLaughlin If you look at what we do when we manage the channels on a network, if you look up on the ceiling and you see all these APs, that has to be managed.

[00:07:47] Steve McLaughlin That has to be put on specific channels and that has to be put at specific power levels, because otherwise APs will actually interfere with themselves. Steve McLaughlin And so we do a channel management plan. Steve McLaughlin Now, in I'll say the old days, and I remember the old days because you see I have a little bit of gray here in my beard. Steve McLaughlin We had to do that all manually. Steve McLaughlin Now what we're doing with AIRM is that the AI can look at the current consumption of the network and what's connecting and how,

[00:08:15] Steve McLaughlin And then it can manipulate that RRM, that radio resource management algorithm for you to optimize the result. Steve McLaughlin What's that result? Steve McLaughlin The most throughput with the less latency for the most users. Steve McLaughlin So that we've been doing for a while. Steve McLaughlin So Cisco has, you know, some pretty good experience here, right? Steve McLaughlin Now we're going to the next generation and we're applying AI to a lot of additional functions and capabilities.

[00:08:41] Steve McLaughlin So I think it would be great to actually talk about some of the things that we're doing there, like how are we applying this in the next generation, even in the Wi-Fi 7 protocol set. Steve McLaughlin And I'd love to hear more and bring to life some of the technology that we're talking about here. Steve McLaughlin As an ex-IT guy, every concert I go to, stadium or anything, I'm looking for the APs, trying to work out where all the tech is that's making this experience possible. Steve McLaughlin And I suspect that you guys are the same.

[00:09:08] Steve McLaughlin So for anybody that has a digital experience anywhere, can you tell me a bit more about how this technology is changing the game for anything from stadiums to large campuses? Steve McLaughlin Is there any stories you can share to bring that to life? Steve McLaughlin Yeah, you know, it wasn't that long ago we would talk about high density and how we would implement enterprise class APs to address high density.

[00:09:29] Steve McLaughlin And so when you think about something like a stadium or a venue, like Cisco Live, for example, that we're sitting at right now, high density meant that there were a lot of people in a tight space that are all trying to connect to the same network, that all are expecting certain capabilities. Steve McLaughlin And of course, those use cases and those applications are demanding more. Steve McLaughlin All made up of water as well, 80% water, those people. Steve McLaughlin It's amazing that you actually say that, because when you set up a venue like this, it is a challenge. Steve McLaughlin And why is it a challenge? Steve McLaughlin Well, you like to test the network.

[00:09:58] Steve McLaughlin So you put in the APs and you test the network. Steve McLaughlin When do you test the network? Steve McLaughlin Before the event starts. Steve McLaughlin You kind of want to know what you're going into, right? Steve McLaughlin Yes. Steve McLaughlin So when you set that up, everything seems to work pretty good. Steve McLaughlin But guess what? Steve McLaughlin In one week, all these exhibitors come in and they build booths. Steve McLaughlin We put in all these walls. Steve McLaughlin And to your point, tens of thousands of people come in and what are they? Steve McLaughlin They're basically sacks of water that are walking around that are changing all the RF.

[00:10:26] Steve McLaughlin So you have to be able to respond to that in a dynamic way to make sure that you're still, even though the RF characteristics have changed, are able to make those adjustments so that you can address that connectivity to still meet those needs, even as things are changing out from under you. Steve McLaughlin Wi-Fi 7 also promises or promised to reduce latency, faster speeds and stronger security. Steve McLaughlin From a business perspective, for that business leader listening, what makes these advancements so timely, would you say? Steve McLaughlin Yeah. Steve McLaughlin Yeah.

[00:10:56] Steve McLaughlin Like I said, if we looked at the older generation of Wi-Fi, we get back into Wi-Fi 5, we did this over provisioning and under subscribing, and we got a pretty good experience. Steve McLaughlin And because the way Wi-Fi would work is that it would just go on the network, and if you have very low utilization, that's actually very responsive. Steve McLaughlin Because if most of the time you can get on the network, it works pretty well.

[00:11:19] Steve McLaughlin But in situations like what you were mentioning as you go into a stadium, or even enterprise now, because with the advent of things and everything connecting to Wi-Fi, what we find is that more and more, high density is happening everywhere. Steve McLaughlin So we have to be able to better manage that.

[00:11:36] Steve McLaughlin So what we've done in the next generation of Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi 7, is implement mechanisms so that we can actually shift where we're putting traffic in the spectrum in real time in order to assure that that traffic is getting through, and it's getting through in a very timely way. Steve McLaughlin And so we can actually get into a couple of things. Steve McLaughlin I mean, I have Jerome sitting here that's wrote the book on it. Steve McLaughlin You know, he mentioned MLO.

[00:12:01] Steve McLaughlin I mean, it's kind of interesting, because, you know, Jerome was saying, you know, there's more to Wi-Fi 7 than MLO, because everyone immediately goes to MLO. Steve McLaughlin But actually, I want to take a second to touch on MLO, because MLO is actually pretty cool. Steve McLaughlin So why don't you tell us, Jerome, a little bit about MLO, and then we can talk about what we're building on it. Jerome McLaughlin Yeah, because, you know, MLO, you know, as a technology, it sounds simple, you just connect to two radios at the same time as a station.

[00:12:27] So it looks like, okay, so what have more more bandwidth? And technically, it's true, but it's actually a bit more complicated. Because if you have two radios in your phone, for example, that means you consume twice as much energy. That means your antennas have to be separated. So there is a lot of complexity that appears when you do that. So doing it smartly means that you enable multiple connections at the same time, but you only use the one you really need.

[00:12:52] And so if you're in a home and you are streaming, you know, some video, so maybe two links is what you need to just get, you know, a good buffering structure on your, you know, video that you're watching. If you're playing a game, maybe you want to have those two connections as well. If you're an enterprise, as Matt was saying, the deal is more about what traffic matters, which one is latency sensitive, and how do we organize all these devices connecting to the network so that you give the best throughput to all of them,

[00:13:19] not just, you know, satisfy one single device requirements, but all these devices together. And that means that in the standard itself, there are multiple modes of MLO, which depends very much on what is the complexity of the device connecting. So the access points support all these modes, but the clients do not. And then, you know, in the architecture of the network, the question becomes, how do you orchestrate these different possibilities? How do you understand the traffic they send? And how do you make sure that you optimize for their need? That is to say, not everybody needs to have, you know, very low latency.

[00:13:49] It depends very much on the traffic. And that's where things become much, much richer in an enterprise environment than just, you know, MLO or just I just connected twice. And I would ask everybody listening to see how many devices are connected to their Wi-Fi network. Now we go back 10 years. There was probably a handful. Now when you take in that urgent work call and video conferencing, somebody could be downloading a 100 gig game on their Xbox, 4K streaming, smart doorbells, eating, and the list goes on and on.

[00:14:17] It's not uncommon to have 100 plus devices just in a home. So when we've got Wi-Fi 7 and the technology in place. So from there, what are you building on that? So, yeah, and all these devices, some of them are moving, some of them are not moving. Some of them have, you know, requirements, which means that they need to send a packet at special time because some server needs to receive it. And it has to be now. You know, you cannot just miss a packet. So understanding all these requirements is fundamental to the organization of the network. So once we have these basic things, we have three radios to work with.

[00:14:46] We have 2.4, we have 5 gigahertz, we have 6 gigahertz, and we have different types of applications to work with, which means that there is a lot of things we can do to optimize, you know, the experience of these devices. One of them is to reduce the latency. And in Wi-Fi 7, beyond just this dual connection, there are multiple features that were developed to say, can you reduce the latency by allowing some communication on radio, on organizing who really needs to get to 6 gigahertz, for example.

[00:15:14] If you are, as you were saying, a door sensor, and you kind of keep alive every minute, but I don't need you to go to a band that is super clean, like 6 gigahertz. I can just leave you on 2.4, maybe on 5 gigahertz. Now, if you are a nurse and you are having some paging communication, you probably need to be prioritized and therefore be sent to that 6 gigahertz band. If you're in a hospital and you're a patient playing a game, maybe your game requires low latency, but is it the same type of low latency that you need as the nurse?

[00:15:43] So, you know, the structure of what we build is the orchestration of all these needs together in a network. Yeah, and, you know, one of the points that I would make is, you know, if you listen to those examples that Jerome gave, what is prioritized is very vertical dependent. So if you're a big warehouse and you're moving equipment or you're moving your inventory around using robots, that's their mission-critical application. If you're in a hospital, like Jerome was saying,

[00:16:12] then the doctor paging and the communication system, the ability to send x-rays, ability for the nurse's station to talk to the rooms, the medical equipment that's connected to the patients, that's their mission-critical application. But then you go into a K-12 school, and you know what? It might be Roboblox. Yes. So what we have to do, you know, that's what I mean is when we're connecting that upper layer policy to that lower level scheduling, that is really venue-by-venue specific.

[00:16:40] And we want to give each IT department the ability to specify what's important to them and then schedule that on the network before we schedule the other traffic. Now, that sounds like some basic quality service, but it's not the same. So when we talk about basic quality of service, what we mean is we have a flow when we mark the flow, and then based on that, we queue it, right? I'm talking at the lower layer when it comes to the scheduler that's moving packets actually into the air interface,

[00:17:10] being able to send that traffic in a way that's low latency. So this gets right down to the lower layers and how Wi-Fi 7 works to achieve these types of things. And how have these industries and examples that you've given, how have they responded to some of these changes? Oh, extremely, extremely positively, right? Because in some of the new announcements that you've heard, we also have some technology that Cisco's been doing a while, like CURB or sometimes ERB, right? So that ultra-reliable wireless.

[00:17:39] And that's what's going in some of these announcements and these APs. And so we've already had the ability with very good reliability to apply mobility. So you can think of it as a stationary AP and then a connection that's going to a mobile IP. So you can mesh these APs together, but you can also have nodes that are moving, right? And you're maintaining that connection very much in real time. Now, at the same time, the industry is going towards that more deterministic,

[00:18:07] that more reliable type connectivity, and that's what we're doing in Wi-Fi 7. So if you combine the capabilities of CURB, that mesh type technology, also with now N devices, you know, the typical things that you want to connect, here's an iPhone, a Galaxy, you know, your laptop that you have there. So now what we can do is we can connect standards-based devices, and we can also apply specialized software so that we can move things around the network in a very seamless way.

[00:18:37] Wow, incredibly cool. Cisco Campus Gateway, that's something that also offers cloud-managed capabilities for large-scale networks. How does that, or how is that helping reshape the way that IT teams can manage things like mobility, scalability, and that user experience we're talking about? Yeah, this is very important because if you look at a network, you can kind of look at it in layers, right? So you have an AP, and it's talking to multiple devices.

[00:19:05] So the device itself has a view of the network, and we can talk a little bit about that as well because we do work with our partners to pull in specifically device analytics. And then you have an AP. It has a little bit of a broader view, right? Because it's talking to all the devices that it's currently connected to, and so it can manage across those devices based on these policies that we're talking about. So now you go AP to AP, right? And you have to be able to move across that.

[00:19:33] So you need something that's looking at that broadly. Now, your cloud management system is going to be able to manage that. It's going to be able to run the latest code. It's going to be able to display all the analytics that you want to see so you know what kind of experience is happening on the network. But when it comes to doing real-time things, right, and in some of these cases, some of the AI that we're applying to this, whether it's AI, RM, but specifically mobility as you're moving across the network, you'd like to be able to manage that locally.

[00:20:01] And so you would do that with an on-prem gateway, right? So you see how it's solving that problem. You know, as you go towards the edge, you're going to be more real-time. And as you go towards the center, it's going to be more comprehensive as far as the information that you have, but it's going to become less real-time. So just to further bring this to life, how are you seeing Wi-Fi 7 and maybe AI-driven tools like Cisco Spaces, how are you seeing these things converge and help build a more intelligent

[00:20:30] and responsive work environment? Oh, I have to say, we are so excited about Spaces and the capabilities that we can do in Wi-Fi 7 that actually enhance the Spaces experience. So that's a really loaded question. It's almost hard to know where to start. But I mean, if you look at our Wi-Fi 7 AP, you know what it is? It's actually a radio platform, right? So we do .11, sure. We have Wi-Fi, and that is our key connectivity metric. And we have all these features

[00:20:59] and prioritization and densification and latency capabilities to provide the best experience. But you know what else is in there? You've got a 15.1 radio that's doing what? BLE, right? You have a 15.4 radio that can do IoT-type technologies. You have an ultra-wideband radio in there that's giving you incredibly accurate blue dot. And so you have a GPS radio that's in there so that the APs can self-locate themselves. So think about that, right?

[00:21:28] If you talk to most of our customers and you say, do you know where all your APs are? And they're like, well, we kind of do, but you know, when we painted that room, it got moved, or whatever that wall moved. Especially big customers that have thousands of APs, right? So you know what the APs can do now? They can self-locate. So they're using these next generation technologies like fine timing measurement. So think of it this way. So GPS isn't indoors, right? You can't see the satellite,

[00:21:56] but these edge APs can, right? So they pick up the satellite, they locate themselves, and then based on their location, they locate all these hundreds of other APs on where they're actually installed. Now, you can say, well, that's great. Now I know where the APs are. It's easier to manage. I know where to put the ladder if I need to, you know, do something. But it's not just that. Everything that Spaces does anchors on that location of where that AP is, right? Because what is it doing?

[00:22:24] It's determining where people are, where devices are, based on triangulating using these signals. FTM, we'll talk about it in a second. Using those signals to find people. If the AP is not where they think about it, where they think it is, then it's going to get a miscalculation, right? And it's going to say you're someplace you're not, right? So the first thing you have to do is actually have accurate location in the network where those APs are, and now they're locating themselves.

[00:22:51] So the whole idea is to make this as easy for IT as we can, right? So I'm going to let Jerome talk a little bit about FTM because FTM technology now is in all the chips. If you have a Wi-Fi chip, then you have fine timing measurement, and it's some of the best location we've ever had. So now that we have that location, we can actually apply that location to how the network operates, and we'll talk a little bit more about Spaces. All right, and it's really great because FTM,

[00:23:21] we initially started using it for AP to AP ranging so we can measure the distance between access points. And as Matt was saying, maybe the AP on the west wall sees some satellites, but not all of them, not enough. And the AP on the east wall sees some other satellites. With this AP to AP ranging, we form a sort of graph where the APs combine their understanding and knowledge to form a sort of a gigantic floor-wise GPS receiver to know their own position. But then, of course, as Matt was saying, most of the client device chipsets

[00:23:49] have support for this fine timing measurement technology already. So when we enabled it for the AP to AP use case measurements, we made it available also for customers to use it, which means that now you can navigate in a venue and find your position, even if GPS is not available indoor, you can still find your position within two meters-ish accuracy. And with ultra-wideband on top of that, and all the major brands also have ultra-wideband technologies as well, you bring this accuracy down to a few centimeters, a couple of inches,

[00:24:19] which means I can know if your phone is on the left side or the right side of your laptop. And I say, I, it's me, the user, because the way we designed it is privacy-respecting, which means that you know where your device is because you have access to that device. The infrastructure just provides you the support to get that knowledge, but the infrastructure cannot track you. So it's, you know, it's a very interesting mix of navigation and privacy at the same time. And then you're looking at that and the power of that technology,

[00:24:48] and what excites you about how that's been used with the spaces, if we go back to that? Yeah, I mean, so there's a whole lot of use cases. You know, a lot of people will immediately go to some of the basic ones that we've heard about before, like you want to have a blue dot indoors, you want to do indoor maps, you want to be able to do wayfinding, things like that. But what we're doing now is optimizing, say, take an enterprise space, we're optimizing how that enterprise space is used so that we can increase the productivity of the people that have the user space

[00:25:17] and we can optimize that space. So what's the occupancy in a room? When I come into a building, where do I find a free room? Over time, how are the rooms used? Are we making efficient use of them? Do we need more rooms that are small, that are for four people? Do we need more rooms that'll hold 20 people? So all of these types of things allow you to then optimize your floor plan for how your business and the employees you have work. So now you can find where people are, you can find where the availability is,

[00:25:47] and you can do it as soon as you walk in, connect to your phone, scan a QR code, and it'll tell you how to get there and find it. So it's integrated with all the wayfinding as well. I can hear light bulb moments going off and people listening around the world. When enterprises look at future-proofing their wireless networks, what role do you see simplicity, automation, and security, all these things playing in that process? Anything that you'd recommend or advise? You must get asked these questions a lot. Yeah, so this is, again,

[00:26:17] this is where AI really comes into play because you're getting so much data off the network, it's actually hard to peruse, right? And what is AI really good at? Going through a lot of data and then giving you a result. So what you're doing is you're enhancing the ability to manage the network based on the conditions that are currently happening in your network, even in real time. So AI is a tool, and it's an extremely effective tool, right? And you're going to get to better conclusions

[00:26:46] than if you're trying to figure it out and you're trying to look at all those details yourself. I mean, just take into the case setting alarms. You know, when we set alarms, you can get a lot of alarms on your network and if you set things too sensitively, all of a sudden there's all this stuff that's actually noise and not really telling you what's going on in the network. What can AI do? Tell you what to look at, why it's important, and even make suggestions on what you might want to change in order to improve that particular situation.

[00:27:15] And a question to both of you to close out our conversation today. If we look beyond today's announcements, are there any trends or breakthroughs that you're most excited about, especially when it comes to the future of wireless connectivity? And Jerome, I'll let you go first. You know what? Wi-Fi is changing all the time, right? You know, a couple of years ago, we're thinking everybody's going to have AR, VR headsets. It didn't happen as fast as we thought. However, what we see is that, as you were saying before, everything now is connecting over Wi-Fi,

[00:27:45] which means that no longer you can just afford to have connectivity. You have to custom design your network in near real time for whatever is showing up in your network. And what is exciting is that with this advent of AI, we are now getting to a scenario where you can achieve that kind of customized real-time optimization of your network for each of your devices. And that is exciting because, you know, my ambition is to be forgotten that, you know, one day things will just work and we won't care that, you know, it didn't work before and we had to have experts

[00:28:15] doing all these things because it will just be automatic. It's funny because when I arrive at this hotel, the first question I want to ask is the Wi-Fi password. I'm hearing the spiel about breakfast is served at the bar, opens up. Hold on. What's the Wi-Fi password? That's all I need. Over to you, Matt. Yeah, I was just sitting here thinking, the problem with forgetting Jerome is he needs to quit publishing books, you know. He's got all these technical books out here so I think it's going to be

[00:28:44] pretty difficult to forget them. But, you know, look, you know, look at this book. This is Wi-Fi 7, right? I'm flipping through the pages, right? And there's so much there and it's every time we do another release, you know, some people when they look at something like RF technologies, they see a little bit of black magic. And in RF engineer, there's only so many of them, right? And we don't want everybody to be a rocket scientist. And that's why what we're doing is we're improving these tools so that you can be given

[00:29:14] the information, even pointed to the information that is relevant to you so that you can better manage the network. You know what's happening with a lot of IT departments? They're being asked to exponentially increase the number of devices and things that are connected to their network. But what they're not given is a lot of additional headcount to do it, right? So we have to do these things smarter. And what Wi-Fi 7 does is it gives us this platform to achieve that, right? A platform to actually be able

[00:29:42] to put power back in IT's hands to specify what's mission critical, to see if it's getting it and to make adjustments when it's not. And so that's something that used to be so manual. You know, I hate to say it, but I've been in Cisco for a while. I can remember doing this in the command line, right? We're in a different world now. We have to move much faster. And so having this platform where we can do some of that functionality and then do it intelligently is incredible to build on. I'm actually excited to see

[00:30:11] what next things are developed on top of these capabilities. Because as the capabilities go up, the use cases expand, right? You were talking about spaces. Look at what we're achieving with spaces. That wasn't a Wi-Fi thing in the past. Now it is a Wi-Fi thing because even Wi-Fi can detect presence of people that are in different rooms and whatnot. And it becomes very operational and it becomes very efficient. So we're very excited about what's going on with Wi-Fi 7 and what our customers can do with it.

[00:30:41] I think our customers are very excited about it as well. And hopefully as we build and AI helps us to build these next generation of networks, we'll meet those demands and new applications and services will come through it. Well, the book is Wi-Fi 7 In-Depth. I urge anyone to type that into their bookseller of choice. I'll also include a link in the show notes so people can find it nice and easy. But anyone interested in some of the huge announcements, there's been a lot coming out this week about wireless

[00:31:11] and connectivity and just keep up to speed with the work that you're both doing. Where would you like to point everyone? So obviously go to the Cisco webpage, right? And if you look at Cisco Live, you actually, you'll see all the announcements. So we have a pretty good overview of what's going on there. And there is really a lot going on because you come to Cisco Live, obviously, you know, I like to think it's all about wireless, you know, because that's my field. But obviously there's a lot of things that are going on in switching and what's going on in collab and how we're integrating these solutions together.

[00:31:39] So visit the Cisco Live website, see what some of the sessions are, learn some of the new technology and of course, talk to your account team. Well, thank you for passing me the book. I'll be reading that on the way home. And we'll reconvene. We'll meet here in 12 months time and you can hand me your AI book. How's that sound, Jerome? Thank you to both of you for joining me today. So what does the future of wireless look like when AI automation and location intelligence all converge?

[00:32:09] As we heard from Matt and Jerome today, Cisco's Wi-Fi 7 innovations are not just raising the bar. They're setting new standards for how enterprises think about performance, scale and user experience. And whether it is a smarter spectrum use, ultra precise indoor positioning or just the ability to dynamically prioritise traffic based on your business needs. I think it's clear that we're moving into a phase where wireless isn't just about access.

[00:32:38] It's actually about strategy. For IT teams, simplicity, automation and security, they're no longer optional. They're foundational. And with technologies like Cisco Spaces and fine-tuned scheduling powered by AI, the network becomes an active partner in shaping better business outcomes. So as devices multiply and demands grow, how ready is your wireless infrastructure to respond in real time

[00:33:08] and evolve and adapt with you? Email me, techblogwriteroutlook.com LinkedIn, X, Instagram, just at Neil C. Hughes. Love to hear your thoughts on this. So I look forward to speaking with you all again very soon. Bye for now.