Let's Ginger-Fi it!

After a break came the presentations by Nile. This will again not cover everything that was said, just the bits that stood out to me. All of the videos can be found at https://techfieldday.com/appearance/nile-presents-at-mobility-field-day-12/

I only had a small bit of knowledge about Nile before this moment. I knew they offered network as a service (NaaS) and they made some networking people nervous. I’d also found out that their “first referenceable customer” was just across the bridge from me in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Small world.

I’m definitely going to fall in the middle on my opinions of Nile’s offerings. I can definitely see a good use case for NaaS and I don’t really see it as a threat to my personal job. I’d also like to mention that I found it very hard for us to ask questions. I feel like maybe they didn’t understand that asking questions during the presentation is how field days work or maybe we just had too many questions. But, some of the times we tried to ask questions they made it seem like we were interrupting them and didn’t fully answer. I’ve tried not to make this affect my opinions.

Below is the Nile service block and what they offer. To get guaranteed performance they deploy physical sensors throughout the building. These sensors act as end users, constantly testing the network. The sensors do one transaction per min to check for issues, so you are notified right away.

They offer a Layer 3 only network. No VLANs, just groups/segments are how you would separate things.

A digital twin is created when the network is designed. This is used to create the BOM and installation instructions.

All the equipment is pre-configured when it arrives. Someone just needs to be on-site to do the installs. The physical installations are still done by the client’s current method i.e. in-house or by their own install partners.

*There are no configuration documents available on any of their equipment.

To deal with non-Nile issues, they offer tools for both helpdesk troubleshooting and ticket creation. Other things like physical issues (cut cables/fiber, water damage, etc.) would be the client’s issues to resolve. Because of the constant sensor checks, Nile would be able to notify you of the issue almost right away, but you would be responsible for getting the issue fixed.

Nile’s AI automation centre:

They built this on 3 principles. First, driving towards a zero incidents service. Second, if an incident does happen they want Nile to be the first to know, and lastly, no ticket is ever resolved manually. They are using the single network architecture, physical sensors, virtual sensors, deep instrumentation, and single unified data store to accomplish this.

I giggled at this 😊

Nile’s eXperience intelligence (NXI ) – brings the power of Generative AI to network management to enhance user experience:

The use a stochastic digital twin and information diffusion to understand the overall experience of the user.

They have trained a small to medium sized transformer model (time-diffused model) to consume the networking data and then use this to predict client event on the network.

And finally, who wouldn’t love this!

They have a number of checks in place to ensure a seamless upgrade and have already performed upgrades on hundreds of customer sites.

So, I can definitely see the many use cases for Nile’s NaaS. It seems like a simple and efficient solution for small to medium sized organizations. From their presentation, it sounds like it would offload things like hardware installation, configuration, and maintenance. Depending on the size and complexity of your organization, this could reduce costs.

To me things like customization limitations and subscription-based costs would be a hindrance to large organizations or any sized organization that has a complex, quickly changing environment.

I want to end this by saying I had an absolutely amazing time attending Mobility Field Day and definitely recommend that you apply to be a delegate. It was just such a great experience. I was able to meet new people, learn new things, and catch up with some of my favorite Wi-Fi people all in one short trip.