Thanks for all the suggestions. We do field testing of new APs and such in our boom trucks, but I'm thinking more along the lines of bench testing radios in an isolated environment. We have a company nearby with 2.4GHz cameras that eat up 2/3 of the spectrum. From my desk, I get about -85dBm from the 2.4GHz equipment on our tower, but the guy next door's cameras show up at -50dBm. Point being, I need to do a conductive test (no antennas) to get any reasonable test results from 2.4GHz radios.
It sounds like as long as I have enough attenuation between the radios, a conductive test won't have any adverse affects. Thanks again, -Kristian On Tue, 2009-12-22 at 09:38 -0500, jp wrote: > Your plan sounds good. > > We have a guy take the radios and a laptop up to the third floor of our > building where we have LOS to multiple APs of ours of multiple technologies. > He'll make them associate, evaluate signal levels, run some traffic over it, > and if it's good, set it back to defaults. Part of sending a guy away from > his > desk to test them is to eliminate the constant interruptions that have > prevented the person from getting to that big stack of questionable gear. > > Many radios are "broken" due to bad pigtails/jumpers, bad power supplies, > etc.. > If it's an Alvarion radio, we look into the log files as well for clues. > > On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 01:43:56PM -0800, Kristian Hoffmann wrote: > > Hi, > > > > We tend to get radios back from techs with notes that say something like > > "bad radio" or "low signal." Things that aren't obviously broken tend > > to sit around and collect dust. > > > > Does anyone have a efficient way to test 802.11a/b/g radios? Most of > > our equipment is MikroTik, so my plan was to do a conductive test > > between a known good radio and the radio in question with 80 dB or so of > > attenuator stacked between them, check the rx signal on both ends, and > > run a bw test for a set amount of time. Is there anything else that I > > should take into consideration, or perhaps a completely different > > approach? > > > > I was looking at these attenuators... > > > > http://www.minicircuits.com/pdfs/UNAT-30+.pdf > > > > I don't think precision is really an issue as long as they're consistent > > from one test to another. > > > > Thanks, > > > > -- > > Kristian Hoffmann > > System Administrator > > kh...@fire2wire.com > > http://www.fire2wire.com > > > > Office - 209-543-1800 | Fax - 209-545-1469 | Toll Free - 800-905-FIRE > > > > > > > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > WISPA Wants You! Join today! > > http://signup.wispa.org/ > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > > WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org > > > > Subscribe/Unsubscribe: > > http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless > > > > Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
