626 Kaseya Connect & Troubleshooting Wi-Fi

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[Uncle Marv]
Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast, the show for IT professionals, managed service providers, anyone that is giving support to businesses, and we need to try to help you do your jobs better, smarter, and faster. IT Business Podcast is presented by NetAlly, and as the ad said before the show, one of the things that we work with is the NetAlly EtherScope, and I have a great story about that coming up later in the show. Tonight, we have some very special news.

I'm just simply waiting for the press release to be printed and handed to me. It is exclusive. Next week, I will be heading to the home offices of Kaseya, and I have the press release in my hand, so let me do this.

New, exciting news, Kaseya introduces revolutionary new offering, Kaseya 365, changing the economics of the MSP industry forever. So today they announced the launch of Kaseya 365, a first of its kind subscription that will revolutionize what? What?

I'm sorry. I'm getting a message in my ear. Apparently, this has already been announced, and we're being told that this actually was announced April 30th, which was yesterday, while at the Kaseya Connect conference in Vegas.

So apparently, this is not the exclusive that I thought it was. Wow, what is wrong with Kaseya? I thought I had it.

So anyway, if you weren't at the conference, they are announcing this 365 subscription service. MSPs will now have a seamless access to manage, secure, backup, and automate all of their clients' environments at a fraction of the price currently required. And you know what?

Why don't we do this? I know that I do have somebody that can help us out here. We do have somebody that is on the ground in Las Vegas at the conference.

Michelle Accardi from Liongard is going to be joining us. Michelle, how is it there?

[Michelle Accardi]
Yeah, great. Right here at the Kaseya Connect show. It's been great seeing so many partners, great MSPs, other great vendors.

And I'm actually lucky enough to be with some of the other luminaries in the industry, some folks from SonicWall, from NodeWare, a group of awesome partners that were taken to dinner before the pool party here at Kaseya.

[Uncle Marv]
Oh, sounds nice. Sounds nice. So you're there, obviously, at the show.

You heard the announcement that I was reading off earlier, and glad that you were there. So you're there with all those people. Are you there with, let me ask, are you there with Magic Mike?

[Michelle Accardi]
Oh, yes. I have Magic Mike here with me, for sure.

[Uncle Marv]
All right.

[Michelle Accardi]
We were all on a party bus together, in fact, on the way over to our dinner. Quite the dancing by the Magic Mike.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Well, Michelle, let me at least tell the viewers and the listeners that you were actually scheduled to be on the show for the full show, but you double booked and I understand that, you know, the Kaseya Connect conference comes first. So we're going to have you back at a later date, but I appreciate you.

[Michelle Accardi]
They don't come first. That's why I'm on the show. That's why I'm on the show today.

We're just going to promote the next show. Marv, I never want to miss your show, ever.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So give the listeners and viewers a quick sense of how it's been out there in Vegas.

[Michelle Accardi]
Well, it is definitely making a mark. Their announcement is giving MSPs a lot to think about, another way to try to help drive profitability. That said, there are a lot of other great vendors out there that are offering, I think, good value, potentially, in some cases, better value for the technology that's there.

But Kaseya is, I think, giving ConnectWise and others a run for their money with their new offer.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Sounds good. Well, obviously, you're there promoting your company and product.

So let me go ahead and ask, is there anything that you guys announced while you were there?

[Michelle Accardi]
Oh, yeah. So we recently announced some exciting news in the AI front. So we announced Leo, our AI support assistant that is there to help our partners do everything from understanding support cases, being able to get the latest updates on the product, to have overviews of what the solution can do, even write metrics into our app to help them to deliver insights to their customers even more easily.

And that's awesome when you think about what Liongard does with attack surface management, helping MSPs understand what IT assets part of the attack surface are, what's changing in configuration that can create vulnerabilities and mapping that into a cyber risk dashboard that can give them their customer cyber posture and now having an assistant to sort of walk them through the whole way. From an AI perspective, I think it's game changing.

[Uncle Marv]
So I wanted to ask, I know that your product, it already does a very good job of sending alerts and notifying when there are things happening. So in terms of Leo, what exactly is Leo going to be offering? Remediation steps, what's going on there?

[Michelle Accardi]
So what Leo is offering is actually a support assistant. Essentially, as you onboard with the product, you may have questions along the way. Having someone that's there, an in-app capability, an AI assistant, if you will, that can help you to better onboard, to better train.

It also can help you that as you have support tickets opened and such, it can help you actually get the latest statuses. It can also help you with, within our application, you can write new metrics for reporting. It can actually write those metrics for you.

You know, you can say, hey, write me a metric for all the Microsoft 365s that are disabled, and it can write that metric. So you can report on those things out of our app.

[Uncle Marv]
Nice, nice. Okay. So I don't want this to turn into a little mini interview.

I know that you were there and you spared a few minutes. I do want to thank you for taking the time.

[Michelle Accardi]
I want to make sure you get to actually be part of our dinner here though. So I want to just have you come say hello to all the industry luminaries who are here with us. And I will just take one minute.

So let's have you say hi to Magic Mike here from SonicWall.

[Uncle Marv]
Magic Mike, how are you, sir? All right.

[Michelle Accardi]
We've got Michael. We've got Miss Michelle McBain. We also have Lisa from SonicWall.

[Uncle Marv]
Lisa, loco.

[Michelle Accardi]
We've got Jason Macias from Liongard.

[Uncle Marv]
Hello, hello.

[Michelle Accardi]
And let's see, who else we got at this table over here? We got even more partners. We got Matthew.

Everybody say hi to Uncle Marv. We're live podcasting. So there you go, Marv.

You've got the MSPs. You've got the vendor community. We're all together.

[Uncle Marv]
Nice, nice, nice. Well, if I hadn't already scheduled a trip west in the Mississippi, I'd be there. But I will see you in about a month as we venture out to PAX 8 Beyond in Denver.

So I'll see you there.

[Michelle Accardi]
Yeah, we'll see you there. Well, thanks for having me on. It was great to catch up.

And I look forward to the June interview as well.

[Uncle Marv]
All right, Michelle. Thank you very much. You guys have fun out there.

Go easy on the bird.

[Michelle Accardi]
Bye.

[Uncle Marv]
All right, folks. There we have it. Michelle Accardi from Liongard giving us a live perspective from Las Vegas to Kaseya Connect.

All right. So let's go ahead and move on with some news. I did mention that the show before we got the breaking news that it is sponsored by NetAlly.

We are also happy to have our good friends Super Ops. And they are sponsors of the drinking cup that I use every show as I take a sip of the beverage here. And they are the future ready all-in-one RMM PSA tool to help you supercharge your business.

Our live stream is presented by Computers Done Right. If you're looking for reliable IT solutions to streamline your operations in Venice, Florida, they can help you, but they can also help remote. They have a comprehensive suite of managed IT service tools.

They do computer repair, and they can also help with social media and web stuff. So thank you to our vendors there. Wait, wait.

I have, oh. That music says that we have more breaking news. So here we are, another exclusive here on the IT Business Podcast.

It looks like we have a change in personnel that is disrupting the channel here. Brooke Lee is leaving PIA and heading to ScalePad where she will be the Director of Channel Development. And that is a shocker in the, in what?

This was already announced too? She did it herself. Okay.

So again, folks, sorry, not breaking news. But of course, if you haven't heard it, you heard it here first. Brooke Lee is heading over to ScalePad where she is the Director of Channel Development.

And thank you very much for what? She's going to be on the show next week? Oh, so we do get an exclusive interview with her.

Okay. All right. That sounds great.

So Brooke Lee will be joining us here on the show next week. So we will get more information on that and keep right on going. All right.

So let's see what else is going on in the news. Let me go ahead and tell you. Actually, let me show you.

So I'm going to bring up a split screen right now here. And why don't we go back and talk about what I was able to do today while at a client that was having some Wi-Fi issues and they were trying to blame the access points that I had. This was a case where I had ruckus access points there.

And as you know, I carry my bag of tools with me everywhere. So I basically went out to the car, got my tools, brought in my EtherScope, and said, let's check your connection here. So let me bring up.

So what I'm doing, folks, if you're not watching live and listening and wondering why I'm stuttering and umming and ahhing, so I'm bringing up link live and I am turning on my EtherScope and I'm going to do a remote connection here because I want to show you something that I found. Obviously, one of the things that comes up when you have a customer that says they're experiencing Wi-Fi issues, the one thing you want to do is try to figure out, okay, what exactly is the problem you're having and where can we identify what the problem is? And yes, I know that I've talked with techs in the past that talk about the fact that, hey, look, I can check the connection with my phone, I can check the connection with my tablet, I can see if I'm getting connection and everything will be fine there.

But one of the things that is tough to do is when somebody is having an issue that they cannot connect, it's hard to duplicate because you don't have the device. So one of the things that the EtherScope as well as the AirCheck will do is kind of simulate issues. Now, what I'm going to do is, if you're watching the screen with the video, I'm actually remoting into my unit so that I can show you what I found today.

I'm not going to run through the whole thing, but I want to bring up a screen that for the very first time I was able to see something that I had not seen before Now, on the screen here, you see one of the options is Wi-Fi. And as the unit powers on, it is automatically going to be discovering items in and around the network. So if it's connected by cable, you're going to see devices on the network.

If you've configured the unit to be part of the domain where you get the IP address and the DNS settings are going to be pushed out, you'll see the devices, the device names, you'll get SNMP information. But also what happens, whether you're on the Wi-Fi or not, you'll start being able to detect what Wi-Fi SSIDs are available. You'll see the number of access points.

And it's not just the customer's access points, it's access points in and around the building. So if you walk into a building where there's 100 access points, you'll know if you're getting overlaps. You'll see what clients are connected to Wi-Fis.

Now, obviously, you can't do a whole lot of stuff with it because you're not actually authenticated to the Wi-Fi network most of the time. But one of the things that I was able to do, and I'm just going to bring up a screenshot here because I couldn't duplicate this here at my office, but the customer was having an issue connecting ring cameras to the Wi-Fi. Every other device was connecting just fine.

And in the list of the Wi-Fi clients that I saw, I saw that there were problems. And it obviously is indicated in red with a problem. And it will give you a description of what that problem is.

And this may be hard to read, but the problem detected says that this device and one other BSSIDs report country, and it puts the country code in parentheses, WW, and then 48 other BSSIDs report United States, U.S. So the problem description says the BSSID has reported a country code that is inconsistent with others in the area. The country code determines which channels are legal within the country's regulatory domain. And then the recommendation is removing devices that are reporting the wrong country code.

If multiple country codes are expected, this problem can be disabled in the Discovery app, and it tells you where to do that. Now, I had never seen this before. And if you hadn't seen this before, let me tell you what I did.

I just quickly went and Googled ruckus country code WW. And what was showing up in the results after going to a ruckus support forum basically said that the WW is, it didn't say illegal. I forget the phrase.

I should probably have looked that up and copied it. But in a sense, it is saying that only Wi-Fi devices with a U.S. code are allowed in the U.S. And some manufacturers like ruckus and Meraki block countries like WW. And WW stands for worldwide.

So if somebody is purchasing this outside of the U.S., then it should work everywhere. However, the country code for WW is actually not allowed by the FCC. So I'm not able to pull it up now, but I do know that I remember it saying that.

Now, it doesn't say it's illegal, but it does say it is not authorized. And if you are able to make the change on the device, then you can see if it works. But in a sense, you would be violating FCC rules.

So the FCC, as you know, authorizes what happens in our airspace. And usually it's related to airplanes, but it also applies to drones and it applies to air signals. And so of course, Wi-Fi is one of those types of things that is an air signal and certain channels are simply not allowed to be used.

And devices that have the WW are not allowed in the U.S. So I was able to tell the customer, no, there's nothing wrong with the ruckus. It is actually performing as it should. And they asked, well, can we disable that?

And I did find another place inside of the ruckus forum that said, no, this is hard-coded and cannot be disabled. So this actually was pretty good. So I was able to not only test the Wi-Fi with my EtherScope, show that it was obviously working with my phone, my tablet.

I did a thorough test with the EtherScope, show them the signal strength, all of that stuff. And then was able to dig deeper into the actual device that they were having trouble with and show them, no, it is not the ruckus that is the issue. It is that possibly illegal device that you purchased on Amazon, which might not be from the U.S. or whatever. So they're going to return the unit to Amazon. And I don't know what they're going to do about their cameras. It was just a ring camera.

And this is one of those things where customers, of course, are always trying to bypass us and get things on their own. So we'll see if they continue to do that on their own or if they come back to me and say, hey, can you get us some cameras that you know will work wirelessly and we'll go from there. So, oh, wait a minute.

I'm sorry. I'm being handed another. All right.

I have another breaking announcement and exclusive here on the IT Business Podcast. IT Nation announces the 2024 Secure Conference. IT Nation, a global community of peers, thought leaders, and experts dedicated to elevating the IT ecosystem to new heights is hosting its annual IT Nation Secure Conference.

The conference will be held on June 3rd through the 5th at the Grand Palms Resort Convention Center in Orlando. Wait a minute. This has already been announced, too.

I actually did this with Sean Lardo earlier today when we were talking about pitching. Why am I getting old announcements? Cheese and crackers.

First, it was Michael Crane promising me the scoop on SonicWall. That didn't happen. My goodness gracious.

I feel like a black sheep of the channel not getting good timely news. So IT Nation Secure happening June through the 5th. I'll be there.

I'll be talking with Sean Lardo and some other vendors will be promoting PitchIT and that will be the official beginning of swag season. So I guess that's the announcement we have. So all right.

Once again, another bogus announcement. Let's see here. Well, I do have an announcement.

There is an organization, a group, TEKnowledge, is having their TekFest and that is this week. Of course, I don't have a link for it, but I do have the announcement that that's what they're going to be doing. Let's see.

TechKnowledge.org slash TEKFest-2024. Let's see if it even comes up. See if I have that information right.

Be nice if I got some information right. So yes, TekFest, an annual fundraising trade show and product showcase event led by TKW, which is TEKnowledge, and partnering with key community members, suppliers, vendors, and manufacturers. They actually start, oh, look at this.

They start tomorrow, Thursday, May 2nd, and continue through Friday, May 3rd, and they are at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center in Nashville, Tennessee. So I'll put the link in the show notes and if you are near there, it looks like there are still tickets and they've got nice little sessions here. Let's see, Uniview.

They've got a network lab, Security 101, a fiber lab. Oh, lots of nice things happening there. So here we go.

TekFest 2024, also an announcement that you probably already knew about. So, all right. Well, I guess I don't have anything else for tonight's show.

As you saw earlier, Michelle was going to be on, but she's all the way in Las Vegas, Nevada at Casaya Connect. Interesting. So I will be at the Casaya home office next Thursday, May 9th.

If you have anything you'd like for me to ask, I don't know how much of the brass I'll be able to see. I'm sure I'll be pitched on some stuff. Obviously, I'll be pitched on Casaya 365.

We'll see how that goes. I might even try to do a live podcast from there if they let me, but I'm sure it'll probably have to be checked and scrubbed by the PR and marketing department. So that may not happen.

We'll see. Anyway, that's going to do it, folks, for our show this evening. It's a short little show.

My guest is all the way out in Vegas and all my announcements have already been given out. So hang on, hang on. I'm being handed one more thing.

Let's see here. Oh, the IT Business Podcast is very nice. So on April 18th of this month, the IT Business Podcast hit its highest ranking ever in the podcast charts.

We hit number 40 on the tech charts in Latvia. Where is Latvia? Is that a country?

I've never heard of that. Latvia, a country in Europe. Okay.

So apparently that's the only place we're popular. Well, I'll take it. Number 40 on the charts in tech.

So for those of you listening and watching in Latvia, I thank you and please be sure to share the show. And of course, if you're here in the U.S., I would really appreciate it if you share the show with friends, family, colleagues, co-workers, all that stuff. Well, that's going to do it for tonight, folks.

I thank you all for hanging out. This is the Wednesday Weekly Live Show. And I don't even think I have a good Florida Man story.

I'm just so bummed out. Let me see what Florida Man stories are today. Because I probably should at least let you know that Super Ops is the Florida Man sponsor, and I've got nothing coming up.

But you know there are Florida Man stories, all berserk. I'll put the links in the show note. They'll be great.

I'm sure you'll check them out. That's going to do it, folks. We'll be back next week with another live show Wednesday, 8 p.m. Eastern. Of course, we'll have some audio shows sprinkled in throughout the week. Head over to itbusinesspodcast.com. Check them out.

Follow us on your favorite pod catcher. And then you can follow us in the social medias, LinkedIn, YouTube, and the Facebook and be notified whenever we have a show go live. I thank you for tuning in.

I thank you for listening and downloading. We'll see you next time. And until then, holla.