I wanted to thank everyone who provided valuable input, both publicly and privately, regarding Network Computing's planned feature article on wireless analysis tools.
To be honest, I was a little surprised that AMP was the most oft-mentioned tool, but I think I understand why. While it's great to have a bunch of point tools to help you manage your WLAN, it's even nicer to have a flexible centralized management console that provides timely and actionable information. Too bad the wireless system vendors themselves don't do a better job of meeting that need. Having said that, I think a review of AMP is somewhat beyond the scope of this specific article but I am planning to do some kind of formal evaluation, perhaps in conjunction with Wavelink and other AP-agnostic management systems. For this feature, we are trying to get a grip on more portable tools that go beyond the configuration and performance management capabilities of AMP, including spectrum analyzers, 802.11 scanners, protocol analyzers, etc. dm > -----Original Message----- > From: Earl Barfield [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Thursday, July 28, 2005 1:06 PM > To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU > Subject: [WIRELESS-LAN] WLAN Analysis Tools > > We at Georgia Tech use Airwave Management Platform with our network of > roughly 850 access points. We have a mix of Cisco, Proxim, and even a > Vivato thrown in. AMP monitors them all. It has been such an > improvement to have a consistent user interface to manage all the APs > from the different vendors. > > We've got our captive portal configured to send radius accounting packets > to AMP. This provides the mapping between client MAC address and user > login name. When a user calls the helpdesk with a wireless complaint, > we can look him up by login name and pretty quickly see what his > client MAC address is, which AP he's associated with, etc. > > As one user commented, some functions are not well supported with the > Proxim APs. In the case that mattered to us, Airwave told us that > they can only present the data that Proxim provides and the Proxim APs > were providing inaccurate data. The particular case was a Proxim AP1000 > with dual 802.11b radios that was showing some crazy numbers (in the > hundreds) of users associated simultaneously. This was skewing all > the nightly reports of utilized APs, etc. I finally gave in and > replaced the AP1000 with an AP2000. > > I really like the Airwave product. They're responsive to feature > requests and their support folks are great. We've even written a few > simple scrips to extract data from the Airwave data store. Very > handy. > > > > -- > Earl Barfield -- Academic & Research Technologies / Information > Technology > Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332 > Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > ********** > Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent > Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.
