2026 Lifetime Achievement Award Winner
Jussi Kiviniemi
For roughly 25 years in wireless, Jussi Kiviniemi has materially improved how the world designs, validates, and troubleshoots Wi-Fi Networks. He’s helped shape the tools and practices many of us rely on, contributing to Wi-Fi planning and design innovation at Ekahau, sharing hard-earned expertise through community education, and later bringing that same engineer-first mindset into modern, cloud-era thinking as Founder of Hamina Wireless.
His work has consistently been about turning complexity into clarity, helping practitioners model reality, make better decisions faster, and ultimately deliver better Wi-Fi outcomes for the people who depend on our networks every day. Jussi’s lifetime impact is also measured in the people he elevates.
He has built a reputation for creating teams and cultures where respect is baked-in, quality is a point of pride, and work is something you can genuinely feel energized about. Leadership that people want to be part of is rare. For advancing our craft and strengthening our community, we are proud to honor Jussi Kiviniemi with this Lifetime Achievement Award.
2026 Content Contribution Award Winners
Rasika Nayanajith
Rasika Nayanajith's session breaks down WPA3-Personal Compatibility Mode and why it exists to ease the transition from WPA2 to WPA3. He explains how the mode works under the hood, balancing stronger security with support for legacy clients. The session clarified common misconceptions and helped attendees understand the real security tradeoffs and deployment considerations.
2026 Innovation of the Year Winner
Cisco: CW9179F
The Cisco CW9179F is the industries first Wi-Fi 7 AP specifically engineered for high-density, large public venues such as stadiums, convention centers, airports, and enterprise campuses. Designed for indoor and outdoor deployments, it features software-configurable antennas, advanced spectrum management, and seamless integration with both cloud-managed and on-premises platforms. The CW9179F delivers unprecedented wireless capacity, reliability, and operational simplicity, supporting new digital experiences and business models for venues of all sizes.
2026 Product of the Year Winner
Cisco: Campus Gateway
The Cisco Campus Gateway is the cloud-native solution from Cisco for centralized wireless deployments. Similar to a wireless LAN controller, data plane traffic is tunneled from the access points to the Campus Gateway, where it is terminated and switched to the rest of the network. By terminating traffic centrally, client VLANs only have toexist in the core. This allows for seamless roaming across layer 3 domains of the access points.
2026 Company Leadership of the Year Winner
Cisco Systems
Cisco has gone far beyond the standard to deliver a wireless solution truly capable of future-proofing every workplace. It’s more intelligent than any other solution, combining AI-native capabilities with a self-configuring out-of-box experience. It secures every connection with advanced device profiling and threat prevention built for scale. And with end-to-end network assurance powered by Cisco ThousandEyes, Cisco Wi-Fi 7 ensures every experience is flawless and secure.