IoT… Ugh.

Being a Tech guy, I'm into home automation and gadgets.. How can you not be!?  I live in a small 750sqft apartment but have close to 50 devices on my network (wired, wireless, ZigBee ,ect…).  With all the different home automation products out there I have everything from Bluetooth and ZigBee to Z-Wave and Wi-Fi all working somewhat together to automate everything.  Wireless products are my favorite ones, aside from needing a charge every now and then most work pretty well and are easy to setup if you have a little bit of a technical background.

Being a Wi-Fi guy and living in an apartment my wireless network used to be 802.1X and only broadcasted a 5 GHz SSID.  If you live in an apartment you know why I only use 5 GHz.  The 2.4 GHz band is way over crowded with all my neighbors SSIDs, half of which are using channels other than 1, 6 or 11.. A few are even doing 40 MHz in 2.4 GHz (too bad for them they can't see those speed gains do to some devices having 40 MHz intolerance set).  My 5 GHz is also crowded but only in UNII-1 and UNII-3.  I'm the lone network running on channel 100 at 20 MHz (I'm not greedy).  The overcrowding of 2.4 and 5 is due to FiOS and optimum in my area that set everyone's router for non DFS channels and 80 MHz channel bonding… it’s a little rude to do if you ask me but I get that consumers want to see high data rates when their devices connect.

Unfortunately with all the consumer grade products running on my Wi-Fi I needed to dumb down my network security by enabling a 2.4 GHz PSK network with 1 Mbps data rate (I'm a little upset that I have devices that require 1 and 2 Mbps).  It's not really a surprise that the devices don’t support 802.1X but not supporting 5GHz and needing 1 and 2mbps on in 2.4 is just a pain in the @$$! Some of my products even require me to be on the same subnet to control them from my phone.. (Damn Haiku fans). Luckily most of the devices that require 2.4 GHz and low data rates don’t use a lot of bandwidth making the delay over a crowded network negligible. All the devices function as they should and I rarely have any issues that I can say are Wi-Fi related. As smart home products progress and hold more and more data about us and our routines, better security needs to be addressed.. Perhaps WPA3 can help with that. I've yet to read much on the WIFI Alliance new certification but I'm hopeful that everything I see about better security holds true and makes IoT a whole lot safer.

On a side note I'm starting to see IoT in my enterprise networks. These devices are slowly coming onto my networks and forcing me to reconfigure and open up holes to allow them to function properly.. It's like BYOD crazy and apple bonjour with iPhones and Apple TVs all over again.