Journal

Field notes on the New Enterprise, Connectivity101, projects, and the travels along the way.

  • Peplink Firmware 8.6 RC4: IPv6 Arrives, Plus a New Router API

    Peplink pushed Firmware 8.6 RC4 to the open beta, and this is not a minor point release. Two changes in it matter enough that I would start testing now rather than waiting for GA.

    IPv6, finally treated as first-class

    8.6 brings real IPv6 support across a wide range of cellular and Ethernet WAN interfaces. If you run dual-stack environments — or you are staring down a carrier that is quietly deprecating IPv4 on its 5G core — this is the build that lets you stop working around it. Native IPv6 handling on the WAN means fewer tunnels-to-fix-tunnels and a cleaner path as the networks underneath you keep moving.

    A new Router API

    The bigger story for anyone running fleets: 8.6 ships a revised Router API. If you manage more than a handful of devices, the difference between “log into each box” and “the network configures itself” is the difference between a hobby and an operation. A real API is how connectivity becomes automatable — provisioning, health, and policy driven from your own systems instead of a pane of glass.

    There is also Multi-APN support for 5G cellular devices and the usual list of fixes, but IPv6 and the API are the headline.

    The documents

    My take

    It is a release candidate, so it belongs in a lab and a representative staging deployment before it touches anything a customer depends on. But if IPv6 or automation is on your roadmap, RC4 is a concrete build to evaluate — and the earlier you get reps on a release candidate, the fewer surprises you hit at GA. For the kind of distributed, always-on operations I build for, both of these features move connectivity in exactly the right direction: more resilient, more automatable, less hand-holding.

  • Connectivity101, the New Enterprise, and Why I Bet on Both

    For most of business history, “the enterprise” was a place. A headquarters. Wiring in the walls, a server in a closet, and a single internet line everyone quietly prayed would stay up. When it dropped, work stopped — and that was accepted as the cost of doing business.

    That model is gone. What replaced it is what I call the New Enterprise, and it is the lens behind everything I build — including Connectivity101.

    The New Enterprise is not a building

    It is defined by where the work actually happens — which is everywhere. A job site in Shreveport. A broadcast truck. A pop-up clinic. A vessel offshore. A retail trailer that opened this morning and moves next week. The organization is distributed by default, and the thing holding it together is not a floor plan. It is connectivity.

    Which raises the stakes enormously. When your network is your business, “the internet went down” is not an IT footnote — it is lost revenue, missed SLAs, patients not seen, cameras not rolling, a crew standing around on the clock. The New Enterprise does not get to treat connectivity as plumbing. It has to treat it as infrastructure worth engineering.

    The power of getting this right

    Here is the part people underestimate: when connectivity stops being a liability, it becomes leverage. Bond cellular, Starlink, and wired together and a single-link outage never becomes an outage at all. Put a real API in front of your fleet and provisioning a new location goes from a truck roll to a template. Design resilience in from day one and you can operate confidently in places your competitors will not touch — the ship, the remote site, the temporary venue — because being connected there is your default, not your gamble.

    That is the whole thesis: the organizations that win the New Enterprise are the ones that own their connectivity instead of renting a single fragile link and hoping.

    Why I built Connectivity101

    The problem is that most people inherit their network instead of understanding it. They are handed one provider, one line, and a support number. When it fails they have no options and no idea why — because nobody ever explained how any of it actually works.

    Connectivity101.com exists to fix that. It is a plain-English resource for understanding modern connectivity — how bonding and failover really work, why “own your network” beats “rent a single link,” and how to design resilience into operations that genuinely cannot afford downtime. No vendor fog. No acronym soup. Just the fundamentals, explained the way I would explain them to a customer across the table.

    And it is organized around the places the New Enterprise actually lives — construction, events, healthcare, maritime, broadcast — because a job site and a hospital have very different connectivity problems, and generic advice helps neither. Each vertical gets the specifics it deserves.

    Where this is going

    I have spent two decades keeping organizations connected — designing SD-WAN and SpeedFusion deployments, bonding 5G and Starlink, building the Retail Connectivity Kit, running the Peplink Tech Summit. Connectivity101 is where I turn that into something other people can use, and this journal is where I will think out loud about all of it: the New Enterprise, the projects I am building, field notes from real deployments, and the travels that come with doing this work where it is needed.

    If keeping an organization connected is your problem too, you are in the right place. More soon.