Wireless Testing With Good Old Ping

So what do you do when you want to get an idea of your wireless performance and have no wireless tools around? In this example, I use ping to get an idea of wireless performance.

In the ideal sceanrio, I would check the RF spectrum for interferers and proper channel planning, check the channel for utilization with some wireless tools.

Unfortunately some times I do not have all my tools available or with me. Or even more realistically, I might want to walk a customer through some testing over email or the phone.

What can cause the ping times to go all wonky and even result in dropped packets?

Well here's a few:

station and AP have issues hearing one another

station can hear the AP fine, but the AP doesn't hear the station well

wireless interferer

channel utilization is high

Hope this little tutorial helps.