My Wireless Brain Trust

Nobody Does This Alone

Twenty-plus years in wireless has taught me that the most valuable thing you build isn't a network — it's the list of people you can call when something breaks that shouldn't, when a design decision could go either way, or when you just need to argue about where this industry is actually headed. When we lit up McAllen with a thousand APs in sixty days, the knowledge that made it possible traced back through this community: blog posts written at midnight, conference talks on shaky cameras, podcast episodes played in the truck between site surveys. So here's mine — my brain trust. The people I read when I need information, call when I've got a problem, and brainstorm with about what's new, what's now, and what's next. No rankings, no drama. If you're building your own list of the Wi-Fi experts worth knowing in 2026, you could do a lot worse than starting with these folks — grouped by when I reach for them.

When I Need the Community

Keith Parsons — WLAN Professionals & WLPC

Keith is CWNE #3 and the reason a lot of us have careers instead of just jobs. What he does best is convene: WLPC is the only conference where the hallway track is worth the airfare all by itself, and the WLAN Professionals library of recorded talks is the best free Wi-Fi education on the internet, full stop. Start with the session recordings from WLPC Phoenix 2026 — pick any ten-minute talk and you'll see why the format works. I respect Keith because he built a stage and then spent twenty years pushing other people onto it. That's rare.

Peter Mackenzie — MQ Training Services

Peter co-authored the CWAP study guide and now runs vendor-agnostic training out of the UK through MQ Training Services. He's one of those instructors who can take 802.11 frame exchanges and make them feel like a story instead of a spec sheet. Start with his Heavy Wireless episode on vendor-agnostic training — it's a great window into how he thinks about teaching this stuff. I respect Peter because he's spent his career making the hard parts learnable, not gatekeeping them.

Ferney Muñoz — CWNE #187

Ferney is doing something nobody else on this list is doing: building the Wi-Fi engineering community in Spanish. He's a CWNE and certified trainer who teaches on both sides of the language line — catch his bilingual "Better Wi-Fi / Mejor Conexión" sessions with the Hamina crew — plus WLPC stages (he was a driving presence at WLPC Mexico) and Tech Field Day. Living on the border, I see every day how much talent gets left out when all the good technical content is English-only; Ferney is fixing that at the source. Start with his WLAN Pros conversation on investing in your wireless career — good advice in any language.

When I Need the Deep Technical Truth

Rasika Nayanajith — mrncciew.com

Rasika holds a double CCIE and CWNE #153, and mrncciew.com is the closest thing our industry has to a free protocol-analysis textbook. When I need to actually understand what's happening in a capture — not vendor marketing, the actual frames — his site is where I go. Start with his CWAP study post series; the about page links the full index by certification track. What I respect most is the discipline: hundreds of posts, every one built around real packet captures, written while holding down a day job. That's a decade-plus of showing his work.

David Coleman — Extreme Networks

David wrote the CWNA study guide most of us learned from — mine's got coffee stains and dog-ears to prove it. He's at Extreme now, and yes, that's a vendor blog, but David has never let a logo dilute his teaching. Start with "7 Things to Know About Wi-Fi 7" — it's the clearest plain-English cut through the MLO hype I've read, and his author page keeps delivering. I respect David because he's been translating the standard into English for two decades and still hasn't gotten lazy about it.

Jake Snyder — ToDSFromDS

Jake carries both a wireless CCIE and CWNE #161, and he's spent years telling this industry a truth it didn't want to hear: the engineers who script will replace the ones who don't. His "Automate or Die" appearance on Clear To Send aged like prophecy — everything he said about network automation coming for WLAN work is now just... how it works. He writes at ToDSFromDS and teaches automation for wireless folks at WLPC, which might be the single most career-relevant deep dive at that conference. Start with that CTS episode, then take his class before your competition does. Jake saw the wave early, paddled into it, and then turned around and taught the rest of us to surf.

When I Want the Conversation

Rowell Dionicio & François Vergès — Clear To Send

I host a weekly show myself, so believe me when I say keeping Clear To Send going at this quality for three-hundred-plus episodes is a feat of endurance. Rowell and François cover wireless engineering the way engineers actually need it: specific, practical, no filler. Start anywhere in the recent catalog, but CTS 307 on how Wi-Fi tools get built is a great on-ramp. Rowell has a gift for asking the question the listener was thinking, and that's harder than it sounds.

The WiFi Ninjas — Mac & Wojtek

The WiFi Ninjas out of the UK pair a podcast with genuinely useful written content, and their energy is infectious — two working engineers talking through real designs and real mistakes. Start with their WiFi Explained blog series on the site; it's the rare content that works for both the junior tech and the CWNE candidate. I respect them because they built their platform while doing the actual work, and it shows in every episode — no armchair theory, just field scars.

Sam Clements — The Contention Window

Sam holds CWNE #101 and a wireless CCIE, which would be enough for most people — but the reason he's on this list is that he built the community's living room. The Wi-Fi Pros Slack he champions is where half the industry's real troubleshooting happens at two in the morning, and his podcast The Contention Window is sharp, current, and honest about what's hype and what's real. Start with the Slack — find your people — then subscribe to the show and his long-running blog at sc-wifi.com. Infrastructure for humans is still infrastructure, and Sam's built some of the most important we have.

When I Need Field Wisdom — and Better Tools

François Vergès — SemFio Networks

François gets a second mention because his day job deserves its own entry. SemFio Networks is what a modern Wi-Fi consultancy should look like, and his blog is where design theory meets billable reality. Start with the Wi-Fi 7 MCS table — I keep it bookmarked and I'd bet half the industry does too. When I'm scoping high-density work like a festival build, his warehouse and design write-ups are the sanity check I trust. François shares the reference material other consultants would keep proprietary.

Lee Badman — Wirednot

Lee is the conscience of this industry. Wirednot has been running for well over a decade, and it's where you go when you want somebody with real operational miles — he ran Syracuse University's network for years — to tell you the truth about a product, a licensing model, or a vendor trend. Start with any recent post; then scroll the archives and watch how often he was right early. I respect Lee because he'll say the uncomfortable thing with his name on it, and he's earned the standing to do it.

The Hamina Crew — Jussi Kiviniemi, Joel Crane & Team

Team blogs usually read like press releases. The Hamina blog doesn't — Jussi and Joel came out of Ekahau, and they've carried that educator's instinct into building a design platform and writing honestly about the craft along the way. Start with their WLPC Phoenix 2026 recap if you missed the show, then poke around the design content. I respect them because they're proof you can build a commercial tool and still teach openly — the education isn't the marketing, it's the mission, and the tool happens to follow.

Mark Houtz — Marko Does Wireless

Mark runs networks for Northeastern Utah Educational Services, which means he fights the same fight I do: real connectivity for real communities, on public-sector budgets, across terrain that doesn't care about your link budget. He's a WLPC regular and a Tech Field Day delegate, and his "Secrets in the CBRS Airwaves" talk from WLPC Phoenix is the best field-level CBRS content you'll find — start there, then go down the rabbit hole at markhoutz.com. And yes, he deploys COWs too; his Heavy Wireless episode on COWs, COLTs, and WOWs should be required listening for anyone doing temporary or emergency connectivity. Education networks and shared spectrum, done by someone who climbs the ladder himself — that's my kind of engineer.

When I Need the Big Picture

Everyone above makes me better at building networks. These four are who I call when the question is bigger than a network — where the industry is going, what the market is actually doing, which standards will matter. The analysts and strategists I read even when (especially when) they disagree with me.

Dean Bubley — Disruptive Analysis

Dean is the industry's designated hype-deflator. While everyone else was writing breathless 5G decks, he was asking who was actually going to pay for it — and he's been right often enough that when he pushes back on conventional wisdom about spectrum policy, private networks, or the next G, I stop and listen. His Disruptive Wireless blog and his LinkedIn essays are required reading; start with anything he's written on 6 GHz and spectrum sharing. You won't always agree with Dean. That's the point of reading him.

Siân Morgan — Dell'Oro Group

When I want to know what's actually happening in the WLAN market — not what a vendor's press release says is happening — I look for Siân's numbers. As Dell'Oro's Research Director for Wireless LAN, she tracks the enterprise Wi-Fi market quarter by quarter, and her analysis of the Wi-Fi 7 transition has been the sober counterweight to a lot of launch-event enthusiasm. Start with her WLAN market updates — it's the closest thing this industry has to a scoreboard.

Bruno Tomas — Wireless Broadband Alliance

Bruno is the CTO of the Wireless Broadband Alliance, which means he sits at the junction where operators, vendors, and enterprises argue their way to interoperability — OpenRoaming, Passpoint, converged Wi-Fi/cellular, all of it crosses his desk. I've been on WBA's Wireless Global Congress stage myself, and what strikes me about Bruno is how practical he keeps conversations that could easily float off into standards-body abstraction. Follow the WBA's work through him; if you want to know what seamless roaming will actually look like in three years, he's already working on it.

Joel Lindholm — InfiniG

Joel has been on the commercial front line of CBRS since before most people could expand the acronym — Ruckus's LTE business, the CBRS Alliance years, and now InfiniG, building neutral-host coverage as a service. Anyone who's read my SignalRoam story knows why I watch this space closely: indoor cellular over shared infrastructure is one of the biggest quiet shifts in wireless, and Joel has been consistently early about where the business model actually works. Catch him on conference stages wherever neutral host is on the agenda — he's the guy explaining how it pencils out.

Your Turn

This list is who I call — now go build yours. Start with one voice from each group, put the podcasts in your truck rotation, and when somebody on this list helps you solve a problem, tell them. And if there's a voice you call that I should know about, my line's open: drew@drewlentz.com. The tide rises when we all row.