WIFI Testing - Know your Tools

The biggest challenge I face when training or troubleshooting WIFI is getting over that hurdle that “not all WIFI is equal”. It may sound silly and obvious at first but when you start paying attention you will see this misconception daily.

Quick example, client is complaining their wifi on their phone is slow but fine with their laptop. We could dissect this statement for hours but at a high level, lets start with some of the straightforward points; these 2 devices have different WIFI radios, antennae, drivers/operating systems, etc… So obviously it is not a fair comparison. Then we have to figure out if they are on the same band, what about channel widths, is MIMO and beamforming in play. As you can see the rabbit hole gets larger with each variable.

When performing a site survey for a client, they asked that I use their WIFI survey tool. I told them that wasn’t a problem but we need to recalibrate the tool for the device with the weakest radios so the coverage maps aren’t skewed or misleading. They didn’t quite understand why a phone, tablet computer and scanner would be any different.

I illustrated by running a simple iperf3 test using my phone and laptop. The laptop got twice as much throughput – up and down. I then briefly explained the concepts of antenna design, power management and RSSI/noise.

When I got back to the office I thought this would be a good topic to cover in an article.

Enjoy

---

AGILITY boasts a range of features designed to optimize network troubleshooting. The process starts with the construction of the network topology from the data itself. Virtualized and cloud networks are dynamic and changing; reconstructing the topology to reflect the time of the incident is critical to the troubleshooting process. AGILITY’s main features are root error identification, which is intelligent and automatic, eliminating the need for time-consuming manual efforts and automated troubleshooting with precise root cause identification using AI, along with a number of troubleshooting aids, including protocol-specific analysis, call flow visualization, and LLM-powered diagnostics that utilize reference documentation as a knowledge base. AGILITY ensures top-tier data protection and compliance, adhering to the highest standards of the Cloud Security Alliance, allowing you to focus on your business with peace of mind. 

You can learn more and watch a demo on our website, here.