WifiNigel

Sometimes it would be great to have your own, independent speed-test service to test performance inside your network. In this article, I look at a free speed-test utility that can be installed onto an Odroid platform so you can have your very own network speed-test service. Background Back in February 2017, I attended the Wireless LAN Pros conference in Phoenix. Among the many interesting sessions provided was a “maker” session where we all got to build a whiz-bang gizmo based on an Odroid computer board. This is quite similar to a Raspberry Pi, that you may be more familiar with, but it has a bit more processing horsepower and, most importantly, a gigabit Ethernet connection, rather than being limited to the 100mbps of a Pi. Among the many features that the Odroid provided for us was speed-test software from OpenSpeedtest.com. I’m sure you’ll be familiar with this type of service is you’ve used Speedtest.net or some other similar web-based speed testing utility. You simply br...

In previous articles , I’ve covered a few aspects of wireless frame capture using Wireshark, looking at subjects such as frame colourization and radio tap headers . In this article, I look at another way of improving the visualization of wireless frame captures by adding columns to our Wireshark frame summary, including customised columns that use 802.11 frame field values. Background By default, a typical 802.11 capture in Wireshark looks something like the screen-shot presented below (assuming you added the colourization rules I previously blogged about): Although we get a nice summary of the frame types that are whizzing by, it would be useful if we could get a little more summarized information, before we dive into the detail of each frame. In a wireless environment, there are many more considerations compared to the wired world when we’re looking at frame captures. In addition to the information around frame timings, addressing, types etc. I’m always interested ...

If you carry out wireless survey activities, you’ll be painfully aware how much your precious survey kit cost you. And, I’m pretty sure you want to keep it in pristine, working condition. Here is a great little add-on for your kit that can help preserve your survey laptop and your survey wireless NICs. The Problem Yes, I know it’s not fashionable to use the word “problem” anymore, but if you’ve ever been surveying on site and had a passing pedestrian or unexpected filing cabinet damage one of your wireless survey NICs, then you know that it’s a “problem”. Fig.1 - This is never going to end well... When performing on-site surveys to measure Wi-Fi network coverage or performance, there is generally a requirement to have one or more wireless NICS or dongles attached to a survey laptop. These cards gather data to feed into survey software as a survey engineer moves around a coverage area. However, plugging the cards into the standard USB ports on your laptop can mean th...

If you’re looking for a wireless survey engineer for a forthcoming Wi-Fi network project, or you’re a wireless survey engineer who’d like to snag a few new customers, here is a great site you’ll want to check out! I was lucky enough to attend the Wireless LAN Professionals Conference in February of this year (2017). Among the feast of Wi-Fi presentations and products was a very nice survey kit offering from a company I’d not heard of before called HiveRadar. They offer a complete survey kit in a flight case for survey engineers. The beauty of this kit is that it has everything you need to perform an on-site, “AP on a Stick” survey packed into one, robust flight case (yes... even the survey pole !). If you’re a Wi-Fi engineer, this is certainly an offering you will appreciate, particularly if you have to do plenty of plane journeys. Fig1. Engineer Locator However, in addition to their great products, one thing that really caught my eye was an “ engineer locator ” to...