You can have my Cognio card when you pry it from my cold dead hands

January 19, 2015 by 7 Comments

There is a group of WiFi Professionals (me included) that just can’t let go of their Cognio based products. With the Cisco purchase in 2007 (which ultimately manifested itself in the CleanAir product) we have seen a slow but steady decline of high-fidelity PC based spectrum analyzers. We’ve seen people try to compete in a variety of ways; with lower fidelity devices (Metageek) or with the high cost BandSpeed based product (AirMagnet Spectrum XT) but it’s not rare to find a wireless professional still lugging around an old laptop to use their Cognio based (AirMagnet Spectrum Analyzer, Cisco Spectrum Expert, or Cognio Spectrum Analyzer) CardBus Card. It seems unlikely that we’ll see a USB based Cognio product anytime soon (if ever) so I thought it was high time to figure something else out.

Option 1) For years many of the lager laptops from Lenovo (and even Apple!) have sported ExpressCard slots. By using an Addonics ExpressCard34 to CardBus converter, you can load the Cisco Spectrum Expert software on in Windows and your card works just fine!

Pros)

  • It works!

Cons)

  • It requires an ExpressCard34 slot on your PC.
  • There are several converters on the market. Some work, some do not. Make sure you get one that maps the PCIe bus, not the USB bus.
  • It’s bulky the whole card fits outside of the machine and it’s not very pretty.

Cognio adapter in an Addonics converter

Option 2) The Sonnet Echo ThunderBolt to ExpressCard34 adapter will allow you to take the above Cognio/Express card solution and map it to ThunderBolt compatible interface on your laptop. This means that any MacBook past the Early 2011 MacBook Pro (which I’m using) or any PC with a ThunderBolt compatible interface (many modern Lenovo machines) now have a cable-attached (important for flexibility) way to use their Cognio, PC-based Spectrum analyzer on new hardware!

Pros)

  • It works without having a built in ExpressCard slot!
  • It’s cabled so you can move/relocate the whole bulky assembly to the back of your laptop lid easily.

Cons)

  • It requires a ThunderBolt port on your laptop.

Big, but relocatable thanks to the cable!

It should be noted that both of these solutions will not work through a hypervisor (VMWare Fusion or Parallels, for example) and require direct access to the PCIe bus – this means running Windows natively on your hardware. You Mac users, this means BootCamp. It should also be noted that many people call ThunderBolt many things and there are several varieties of the bus. Make sure it’s not a DisplayPort only interface!

In short, if you’re still lugging around an old laptop just for this (or any other wireless CardBus based adapter), you now have a solution that’s cheaper than an new AirMagnet card and far less bulky than carrying around that crusty old XP machine. It’s time to upgrade!

Make sure it's ThunderBolt!

Filed under AirMagnet, Cisco, FCC, MetaGeek, Spectrum

My wireless literally burns me.

January 7, 2015 by 53 Comments

WARNING: this post includes uncensored pictures of a potentially provocative area of my body. While not Rated R (or even PG-13) you are hereby warned to avert your eyes if you believe that you may be even mildly offended or worse, intrigued.

When I was younger I had a lighter leak in my pocket. Unbeknownst to me, lighter fluid leaked all over my upper thigh and by the time I realized it, I had a hand-sized chemical burn where my pocket normally rests on my thigh. After some time (and discarding an otherwise perfect pair of pants!) the irritation went away.

Fast forward to several years ago and I noticed a similar ‘irritation’ forming on both of my upper thighs underneath my pockets. Since I’m a fairly light skinned guy – not albino, but still pretty light and pretty susceptible to sunburns in general, I wrote it off as pocket irritation. I couldn’t find any reasonable rhyme or reason to the general pocket-sized redness and irritation that I was experiencing but didn’t pay it much attention. Being, what I consider a professional in my industry, I recently decided to ‘up my wardrobe’. As a reasonably tall fellow I opted for custom pants among other things and the particular pants that I received included a right-hand pocket-in-the-pocket that was a perfect fit for my wallet! (Follow me here) When I started wearing said new pants, I consistently kept my wallet in the small right pocket which had the side effect of keeping my left pocket as a perfect place for my phone! I started getting into the habit of keeping my phone in my left pocket even when I wasn’t dressed for work. Then one day I noticed, the light, even, and spread out irritation that I used to carry on on both of my upper thighs started getting really bad on my left side – immediately under where my phone fit and has completely disappeared on the right!

Now, I’ve been around the wireless industry for a while now and I’ve heard it all the way up to wireless gives me headaches, so I’m not one for conspiracy theories, but the skin irritation that has followed my phone (and cleared up where my phone no longer is!) has given me a good reason to re-consider the potential risks that may be involved in wireless networking. My phone has not gotten hot, so I’m left with assuming that the skin irritation I’m experiencing is being caused by nothing short of energy radiation burns (not radioactive, silly!). Maybe it’s WiFi, maybe it’s cellular, maybe it’s bluetooth? Does it matter?

Now, I’ve not been to a doctor to have my burns officially evaluated (trying to not get a ‘don’t stick your finger in your eye if it hurts opinion) but there is a clear correlation between the location of my phone and the burns and irritations I’m personally experiencing.

IMG_6008 FullSizeRender

Having said all of that, I’m curious what you, the reader thinks. What do you think about my burns that have clearly followed my phone? Are short-range, long term exposure issues real? I for one will be distancing myself from my device until my burns go away, and likely for some time to follow.

Filed under FCC, Wireless