Ensuring Wireless Network Performance

WLANs are inherently flaky, their performance highly dependent on the physical environment their radio signals transverse. WLAN standards and technology are relatively new and in an on-going state of flux. Though you might be a hardened, experienced network operator, the idiosyncrasies of WLANs can be challenging.

Getting a Handle on Airborne Packets
Virtually nothing is guaranteed with WLAN performance. Because WLANs use radio frequency (RF) signals to transmit data, they’re subject to interference, attenuation, and reflections. Interference can come from nearby objects, consumer devices, and other wireless networks. Attenuation and reflections come as the signals bounce off and go through various walls, office equipment, people, and other materials. As a result, pinpointing performance degradations can be tricky. Intermittent problems are the norm, particularly if users are mobile and your WLAN is distributed. Compounding this complexity is the fact that WLAN technology is rapidly changing and interoperability issues are common. Disparities between various vendor protocol and security implementations often can be the source of hard-to-toubleshoot performance difficulties.

Key Features
If you’re part of the network operations team, RFprotect provides you with vital tools to ensure WLAN performance:

Troubleshooting Tools

• Real-time monitoring mechanisms display and track all users, stations, access points, connections, activities, and errors, providing you with a complete picture of the WLAN and its pain-points
• Remotely-controlled protocol analysis enables troubleshooting regardless of location, enabling you to capture and decode traffic as it is being sent to and from access points and user stations
• Historical logs let you pinpoint when and how trouble began, arming you to isolate intermittent problems before they happen again

Performance Monitoring Tools

• Statistical logs capture information for each station discovered in the WLAN air space, enabling you to identify performance trends and issues
• A complete set of monitoring alerts notify you of any indication WLAN service has degraded in performance
• Reporting capabilities enable detailed analysis that can be printed or published in web format

Usage Planning Tools

• Comprehensive monitoring, analysis, and reporting capabilities let you track usage over time.
• Detailed reports help you identify trends and patterns, enabling you to optimally allocate bandwidth and resources, and improve AP deployment
• Real-time alerting, plus the ability to precisely examine any station or AP helps you quickly pinpoint performance problems and WLAN misuse so that you can take corrective steps immediately