Phill, At University of Tennessee we are exploring various tools that can do what you want, home-grown and off-the-shelve. We do have an advantage, all our APs are AP-2000 (=AP3) ...or call it a disadvantage considering the lack of MIBs for client polling on AP-2000.
For Home-Grown, we use PERL-SNMP and MRTG, the number of clients can be polled but it's tricky, you have to simulate that same thing that you do on the WEB interface with SNMP coding: eg: set OID for "link test explore", then Poll that same OID, when it changes, read the OID of client association...it's very annoying + not all brands of 802.11b adapter show up... The other alternative would be to poll the switch port on which the AP is connected and count the number of MAC addresses (of course if the CAM table age is high it doesn't make much sense...but it gives an idea) For off-the-shelve, we are exploring 2 packages: Airwave (www.airwave.com) , which supports Cisco and Orinoco. They are facing the same issue as any coder: Client support on AP-2000 is unreliable. The advantage: they bundle in a supported package all the neat things that your best coders can come up with. (Linux/Perl based). They have a HPOV (HP Open View)plug-in The other product is designed by the Orinoco team itself: WINMA (Wireless Network Manager...it sounds like it was designed by Microsoft but it's not...) Runs on Windows, supports all features of the AP-2000/1000 etc... (not Cisco!!!) including the Client Association. Has a HPOV plug-in. At the moment it doesn't support Group configuration, but we made a BIG request for it. Also, some folks that design Wireless Authentication Gateways (Vernier, Reef Edge, Blue Socket ...) are planning to have management software in the same package...that would be interesting to pursue. We don't know yet which direction we will lean. We decided to stick with PERL-SNMP at the moment an keep our eyes wide open, until one of these product becomes mature enough to fit our needs (we might convert our SNMP coding into a Startup ;-) Regards, Philippe Hanset University opf Tennessee On Tue, 1 Apr 2003, Phill Solomon wrote: > Hello, > > I am seeking feedback about how different universities are monitoring > wireless base stations. > > Here at the University of Melbourne we currently have around 65 Avaya AP-3 > and around a dozen Cisco Aironet 350, and a handful of AP-1000s. What I > would like to do is to produce MRTG style graphs for each base station > showing how many users are connected and when. This will show where the > most popular locations are and at what times. > > Are others doing this ? Are there commercial products / tools available > that can do this ? / Can it be done over different platforms ? > > Thanks in advance, > > Phill Solomon > > More information about our Wireless network "MUWIRELESS" > http://www.infodiv.unimelb.edu.au/wireless > > Phill Solomon > > Networks - Systems and IT Infrastructure - Information Division > University of Melbourne > Phone 834 48804 Fax 9347 4804 [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > ********** > Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group > discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/memdir/cg/. > ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/memdir/cg/.
