(upbeat music) >> Announcer: Live from San Diego, California. It's theCUBE! Covering CISCO Live, US, 2019. Brought to you by CISCO and it's ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to theCUBE live at CISCO Live in San Diego, I'm Lisa Martin and I did a little switcharoo on you guys, I decided to upgrade my co-host! Susie Wee is my co-host, the SVP and CTO of DevNet. Susie it's great to have you here! >> Thank you it's great to be on this side of the table! >> It's exciting, I'm among CISCO royalty, and partner royalty. So to my right is Ramon Alvarez, the director of strategy and business development for Samsung, Ramon welcome to theCUBE! >> Thank you! >> And one of our alumni, it's great to have you back as well Matt McPherson the wireless CTO from CISCO, Matt welcome back! >> Glad to be here! >> So we're on the DevNet zone. Susie the last three days have been electric to say the least. The energy, the interest, what you guys have built, you can feel it I mean I was telling you, from 9:30 this morning we started to have to yell into our microphones because there was so much interest I every session here. We've been talking a lot about WIFI6. >> Yep! >> The capabilities, the excitement, the opportunities that it brings. It's so exciting! >> It's so exciting! >> So we've had just all of the excitement around WIFI6, around 5G, we know that here at the DevNet zone we've been really pushing forward with our developers, the programmability of the network. But what we wanted to do here today is to bring you some of the making of WIFI6 and some of the making of 5G that happens and what's interesting is CISCO as a networking company, has been working very closely with Samsung as a overall networking company as a device manufacturer, and basically as we've been together to develop WIFI6 and 5G, Ramon and Matt have been working together as we created all of that technology and had some interesting releases. So we thought it would be great to just kind of share what's going on here. >> Awesome, super exciting. Matt let's start with you talk to us about this creation that you guys are doing, leveraging the power of WIFI6. >> Well you know WIFI6 it's really revolutionary compared to what we're sed to when it comes to WiFi. It's really broadening the market, this capability to do more deterministic type applications and services, we're really excited about it. Everybody that supplied WiFi has the positives and have had the struggles and as we go into this next generation we can actually make it easier as we add intelligence to the network. But of course when you make this type of transition, what happens? New technology, new standards, and so there's always these little rough edges in getting that new technology out. So what we did is we reached out to our good partners here in Samsung and we started this very early, you're hearing about WIFI6 now and you're hearing about some of the things that are happening in the industry now, but we started working way back, way back. And in fact it's kind of interesting, how do you get these new devices in peoples hands, so that you can test what WIFI6 can do in real environments, in a university environment, in a hospital environment, in an airport environment. So working with Samsung what we did is we actually had 170 covert devices, they were literally Galaxy S10's, and they were dressed up as a Galaxy S9, because it was before they released these devices they didn't want to let all their secrets out, and so what we did is we put these early on into these new work environments and we got to test, we got to do interoperability, we got to really iron out the spec so that when they released their Galaxy S10, and we released our AP's, guess what, it works. We don't put the customers through the initiation of a next generation of technology. So we're really excited to be working with Samsung and really collaborating on multiple different levels. >> So you said you've been working at this for a long time we met sort of talking about WIFI6 with you guys at DevNet create just six or seven weeks ago. Talk to us before we get into some of the meat with Ramon about some of those drivers that CISCO started seeing awhile ago in terms of the evolution of the network, and we think about some of the numbers that we're seeing for the massive amounts of mobile data, it's going to be transitioning off of cellular networks on to WiFi, talk to us about what you guys saw that vision awhile ago that lead to all those cool covert operations. >> Look a lot of people you say look WiFi works right? So why do we need a sixth generation of WiFi? But you know when we look at the trajectory of traffic it can be a little bit daunting. In 2023, CISCO's VNI index that shows these trends, we will transmit more mobile data in 2023, than every year before it combined. So this is what we're seeing this is what we have to deal with. So it's very important that we get together with these partners whether it be Intel at the chip set level, whether it would be Samsung at the device level because you know what, we can't just answer today, we have to answer the next three, five, seven years and WIFI6 is going to give us that platform. >> Alright Ramon tell us about some of the cool meat here that we really want to dig in to. >> So actually one of the things that you kind of touched up on but I would like to mention is that one of the reasons why WIFI6 is here is actually the congestion on networks. So when you go with your smartphone, you go to an event, sports venue, concert, etc, many many people are trying to connect to WiFi, the signal and actually the throughput degrades very, very quickly with the number of people who actually get into the network. So WIFI6 actually solves for that, so that's one of the top pain points that actually we have from our users, our consumer research. The second pain point we actually tried to solve with WIFI6 in our collaboration with CISCO, it's the battery life. So one of the top pain points again for smart phone users it's well my battery doesn't last for a full day, I take lots of pictures, I upload videos, etc, that's going to drain my battery. So actually WIFI6 is a mode where the devices can actually sleep and the AP's can sleep, and only wake up the device and transmit data when that channel is actually available. So that essentially for the user is actually longer battery life. There's more advantage but those are kind of the two key ones. >> There's more and actually if I can just ask both of you, as we were testing between our companies, what kinds of things were we learning and how is that going as we're developing it? >> Like we said it's a new specification, if you look really even at the ground level, all previous versions of WiFi were based on OFDM, this next generations on OFDMA. So that adds some new complexities, but also a lot more capability. Now what happens all the time when you have a new spec is people can read that spec in different ways. How we implement the spec may not be exactly how they implement the spec, and if we don't do that testing beforehand what happens is we discover that out at the customer when that phone call drops or that connection doesn't work like you would expect it to work, that AP to AP handoff doesn't work the way that you expect it to work. We found over 60 critical differences, it's hard to say bud right, but 60 critical differences in how we were interpreting the spec and how the device players were interpreting the spec, and we resolved that so the customer didn't have to go through it they just get good access. >> So it's been an amazing partnership as we were kind of working out all the kinks and I remember, nobody expects WIFI6 or WiFi to be different. Everyone's like it performs the way it does, can it be different, and then one of my guys went into the lab and he tried it and he came back, his eyes were this big. (gasp) It's fast! And he couldn't believe it and so we were able to do it, but that makes us be able to do a whole new set of applications so I think there's some new applications that we can jump into because WIFI6, it does enable new applications. >> In our case we are consumer companies, we sell devices to consumers so the number one application for us is well any kind of consumer application, social media, uploading videos, etc. So that's our established market but we also try to go into other B2B verticals, like public safety, like hospitality, financial, retail, etc. Where actually having that reliability on the network it's extremely important. So one of the reasons why hospitals, hotels, etc deploy their own WiFi network versus just using LTE or 5G is because they can actually control the user experience, they can actually control the throughput, they can control the availability, the coverts, etc. So WIFI6 actually enables that especially when there is a congested situation. >> And we've never had that deterministic control within WiFi before. >> That's right so that's kind of at the network level, and then in terms of more applications at a higher level, so I think that gets you very excited. So we actually have you know Samsung it's a device manufacturer, we have many many devices, smart phones is one of them, we have laptops, wearables, VR headsets, TV's, appliances, etc, they're all getting connected to WiFi. So one of the things that we have seen over the last few years is that the number of WiFi devices in a typical US household has increased from five per household to nine per household today, and it's going to be about 50 WiFi devices per household in 2022. >> 50? Five Zero? Whoa! Should I get my dog a smartphone? >> Your thermostat, door lock, cameras, all kinds of devices have a WiFi connection. In a home we need to be able to support that, but also in an enterprise. >> That's a shift in the industry to think of those things having WiFi connection. >> That's right sensors, motion sensors, open/close sensors, all kinds of humidity sensors, etc. They're all getting connected to WiFi so we need to be able to support that kind of growth. >> So that makes me think, sorry Susie, of security. We talked a lot within the last few days about the integration and the embedding of security to the CISCO suite, but when you're talking about whether it's data from my nest system, or a camera connected to my alarm system, data privacy it's blown up, every generation in the workforce today is aware of it. Can you talk to us a little bit about what you guys are doing to ensure that security's pegged in? >> There's so many places that you can implement security, and the fact of matter is in a good network you have to implement it in all those places, because you don't know where that breach or where it might be subject to somebody coming in and compromising your system. But one of the things that we're doing that I think really revolutionary, is this ability to pull analytics out of the network and actually baseline the behavior of that network. So we know what's normal, we know how devices communicate, we know how that light switch communicates or that light bulb, even these very simple things. And sometimes it's kind of scary you think what if someone were to hack into that really simple stack in a light bulb, how many light bulbs are in a building? And what if they actually went across those light bulbs and started basically spamming into the network? You wouldn't be able to get anything done. Well you can't just turn off all the light bulbs, we're going to disconnect all the light bulbs in the building from the network, you can't do that. So what Cisco is doing with this digital network architecture and what we call SDA or software defined access is the ability to segment and separate things out based on their function. So we can put all of that building management in one segment we can put your mission critical applications in another segment and in fact if somethings misbehaving, don't turn it off but segment it out so it can't in fact cause problems further in your network. I was talking about a light bulb, what if you're in a hospital and it's a heart monitor? >> Right or an MRI machine. >> And you don't want to turn that off, but you don't want ti do infect the rest of that hospital room or the rest of the hospital. So moving into a segment, isolate it, let the function go on, alarm the administrator so that they can address it and contain it. >> And this is exciting because what happens is if you think WIFI6, oh yeah it's an access point and it's what's in the client, and that's it. But actually now we're talking about using the capabilities of a whole network to ensure the security and things like that. Ramon you have an interesting new app that our viewers might want to see. >> Yeah actually I wanted to just continue this talk about security so sometimes we think about security and user experience as a trade off, and we don't like that. We want to maximize especially as a device manufacturer we want to improve and enhance always the user experience. So one of the things we're working on is open roaming, and I like kind of the motto that you guys had was well it's easy to use, but it's secure as well. So essentially open roaming it's a way for users WiFi to connect automatically to a WiFi network, without having to enter in a login and password information, and kind of sign in page, without going through that process. A user will get automatically authenticated, and of course we have to have some security so one thing we've done is using Samsung account in our devices as the authentication system for the user. >> And where are we doing it, right here! >> I'm actually connected through open roaming with my phone right now. >> So almost 50% of all attendees that came out to CISCO Live just automatically connected to the network. They didn't have to go through a portal, they didn't have to get out usernames and passwords, they didn't have to go to their connection manager and pick the right network, they're just connected, they're transmitting traffic, they're getting their emails. >> That happened to me this morning on another device I brought in. >> There you go, and that's a security thing because what you're doing with that is Samsung users have Samsung accounts when they provision their device they save their configuration is there, they save their preferences there, they provision it into a device it pushes it out and now you get this profile, this certificate that allows you to do these types of things, and with partners like Samsung guess what, they have a pretty big market. Go to Mobile World Congress last year, everyone with a Galaxy S9 just connected to the network. So this really broadens across the ecosystem it's changing the way we will experience networking. >> It's going to impact every persons live on every level, this is so exciting. So you guys have to come back cause we're out of time but this is, I feel like we're just getting started. But thank you guys so much. Susie thank you for being my awesome and steamed co-host. >> Thank you for giving me this opportunity to be a co-host. >> Awesome you guys, Ramon, Matt, thank you so much for your time we appreciate it. >> I'm going to hold you to bringing us back. >> Deal! Shake on it! Alright for my guest and for Susie Wee, I'm Lisa Martin you're watching theCUBE live from CISCO Live San Diego, thanks for watching! (upbeat music)