Posts

802.3af Is Dead (For Surveys)

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I’ve recently been involved with a project that has brought me into contact with a number of wireless engineers who are performing WLAN survey work using the traditional “AP on a stick” (APOAS) survey method. Yes, there are plenty of people out there who still prefer this method, or have customers who demand it. One thing that has become apparent is that a number of people are still using power sources (generally a battery pack) for their survey AP that still only supports the 802.3af POE (power over Ethernet) standard. The time has come for those using these legacy power supplies to make an investment and  upgrade their AP power packs to support the higher power provided by the 802.3at standard. The next generation of wireless access points simply won’t allow the continued use of 802.3af power packs, due to the enhanced power requirements of modern APs. Background Until relatively recently, many Enterprise grade wireless access points have been able to work with the

How Fast Is My Wi-Fi Client?

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In the Wi-Fi For Beginners podcast, I've spent a lot of time talking about WLAN clients . Understanding their characteristics, capabilities and behavior is crucial when designing and deploying a wireless LAN. Without understanding the clients on your network, you will not be able to anticipate their demands on your WLAN infrastructure and the level of performance that you will be able to realistically be able to provide to end users . The discussion about WLAN clients is fairly extensive and spans a number of episodes as this is such an important topic. In the podcast I highlight the importance of understanding the capabilities of the clients that connect to a WLAN. Just because you buy yourself a nice new shiny smartphone that (you hope) supports 802.11ac, doesn't mean you are going to get 1.3Gbps of throughput when you hook it up to your Wi-Fi network. Unless you understand its capabilities in terms of 802.11 amendment support, number of streams available etc., then you

Measuring Obstruction Losses For WLAN Predictive Modelling

I recently attended the Ekahau Certified Survey Engineer (ECSE) training course, presented by Keith Parsons. In addition to learning about using Ekahau Site Survey  (ESS), Keith also shared some valuable insights in to best practice wireless LAN design and surveying techniques. One of these insights was a best practice approach to measuring loss through obstructions and attenuation areas, such as doors, walls and warehouse racking, when gathering data for a WLAN predictive model.  In this article, I’ll share the details of that approach and some mistakes you might be making in your own measuring approach. Please visit the Ekahau blog site to see my guest posting for the full details on this topic.