Your ClearPass Intune Integration Probably Authenticates Nothing
Most ClearPass and Intune builds look up a MAC address and call the result authentication. Here's the version where the certificate does the authenticating, Intune does the authorizing, and the two are tied together by something the client can't lie about.
What a Radio Actually Sends
Frequency, wavelength, and the dBm math you can do in your head. Then a lab where you walk away from an AP and watch the number fall exactly the way the formula says it will.
Your Survey Tool Can't See Channel 173
A client sat on one AP for 49 minutes while the signal fell to -69 dBm, and every heatmap said coverage was fine. The radio it was stuck to was on a channel the survey never scanned.
Your ClearPass SAML Login Validates and Still Fails
Admin MFA on ClearPass means SAML to your IdP, and every guide you find is about Onboard instead. Here are the three places an admin login fails silently, in the order to check them.
One Pilot AP Converts All Hundred of Them
Someone with a hundred Instant APs on AirWave wanted to move them to a controller cluster and, sensibly, test on one AP first. The virtual controller had other plans.
Your VSX Upgrade Is Hitless Right Up Until It Isn't
Everybody has heard a VSX upgrade is hitless. Almost nobody has been told what hitless is conditional on. It's a single cable and a 180 second timer.
When the Docs Disagree With Themselves, Somebody Has to Decide
Three official minimum versions, a withdrawn release note, and a command renamed without a memo. How to get to a decision you can put in a change record.
84 Percent of Your Airtime Is Printers Saying Hello
Someone counted. 269,253 mDNS frames in under six minutes, 84 percent of an uplink, and every one of them going out over the air at 6 Mbps. Here's the math nobody does.
AOS-8 to AOS-10 Is a Rebuild, Not an Upgrade
Three threads in one week, three symptoms, one cause: people planned an upgrade and got handed a rebuild. What doesn't come with you, the pre-validate defect everyone blames on DNS, and the order of operations.
Your New AP Isn't Broken, It's Hungry: PoE Budgets in the Wi-Fi 7 Era
Wi-Fi 7 APs don't fail when they're underpowered. They negotiate, shrug, and come up in a reduced mode with the 6 GHz radio dark. Nothing turns red.
Field notes, not a newsletter
Campus networks, wireless, NAC, and the forum threads that keep asking the same question.
