The OptiView XC Network Analysis Tablet and the OneTouch AT Generation 2 Network Assistant are now able to help network technicians troubleshoot wireless networks using 802.11ac. Wireless networks are now beginning to outstrip wired networks inside organisations leading to a whole set of new problems.
According to Daryle DeBalski, vice president and general manager of Fluke Networks Enterprise Solutions: “People increasingly judge the quality of a network by wireless access performance. If users experience a slow Wi-Fi network, or they can’t connect to it, or they keep losing the connection, their frustration mounts and the entire network becomes suspect.
“A faster wireless technology standard like 802.11ac offers significant upside, but only if IT teams can keep the network running at optimal levels. Our expanded support for 802.11ac gives IT leaders peace of mind, knowing their teams can quickly find and fix any wired or wireless performance issue to maximise end-user experience.”
Wireless network testing still an untapped area
DeBalski is right when he talks about people judging wireless networks by their ability to access them and the performance of the network. What he fails to say is that while Fluke Networks are now planning to support 802.11ac testing, it will be for a relatively small number of corporate networks. Even where there is testing it is unlikely to encompass the whole wireless network of a company, just those areas where they believe testing will make the most difference.
This is nothing new. Wireless testing tools have been around for over two decades as have wireless scanners that will show what networks are running inside a company. The problem is that they are expensive and few companies are willing to train their staff to use them. Even third-party network engineers who are contracted to support corporate networks rarely get access to the tools to troubleshoot wireless networks.
Typical problems that would easily be detected are misplacement of AP’s, signal cancellation and blocking due to the contents of a room or the design of the building. By carrying out a small degree of testing companies would be able to identify and rectify these problems saving themselves thousands of pounds on buying additional access points.
With greater reliance on wireless companies can no longer expect merely to carry out initial planning for the placement of wireless AP’s and expect them to be in the right place even six months later. The cost of wireless roll outs need to include reviewing the population density of office areas and making adjustments to avoid saturation and complaints. This also means that there should be consideration to the flexibility of those AP locations in the first place, rather than rely on fixed locations that end up being the wrong locations.
It is not just the proliferation of Wi-Fi enabled devices that are driving the move from wired to wireless. It is extremely expensive to recable a building and the older the building the more problems that recabling can encounter. For example, in listed building there are problems with where the cable can be laid and where holes can be drilled to pass cables between rooms. In buildings where smoking used to be commonplace, removing old cables means dealing with dust heavily laden with nicotine creating a serious health hazard.
Why is 802.11ac important?
In additional to saving companies the trouble or recabling their buildings, 802.11ac is capable of running up to three times the speed of existing wireless networks. This means that companies are not only able to deliver data and applications faster but also support more users on the same amount of infrastructure.
The problem that many companies will face is that they will need to plan where to place their access points in order to get the most out of them. Simply replacing their existing access points is not guaranteed to deliver the performance 802.11ac is capable of because while it will overcome some of the problems experienced by the existing wireless networks, it will not overcome all of them and the investment and the network will be compromised before it comes into use.
As well as undertaking a wireless network planning review, it is important that companies also carry out tests around the existing infrastructure and then continue to test as they deploy 802.11ac. This will enable problems to be identified early in the deployment and dealt with quickly without requiring costly remedial testing.
Conclusion
Companies have become accustomed to just buying and deploying wireless access points whenever they need additional network bandwidth inside the organisation. In many cases, where they are adding in additional capability to their existing network rather than using the wireless to extend their network they are deploying access points to cover up problems rather than resolve them.
802.11ac has been around for a few years now but few companies have managed to get the maximum out of their investment into hardware due to poor planning and no ability to troubleshoot. By upgrading its two key testing devices from Fluke, NetScout will be hoping that it can tap into a market that is looking to resolve problems rather than keep spending money on buying new access points.
