Your CTO called in yesterday reporting a connectivity problem. She was walking to the coffee machine while on a Team call when the issue occurred.
How effectively can your Wi-Fi system assist you in troubleshooting this Wi-Fi problem without requiring an on-site visit?
One of the primary challenges with going on-site is that it is often difficult, if not impossible, to reproduce the problem. Setting up a sniffer, a monitoring Access Point (AP), or even a dedicated one can sound like a good idea, but when it comes to roaming, you need to set up more than one to capture all the necessary data.
However, if you have a Wi-Fi system that saves valuable historical data for a few weeks, you can analyze past events to troubleshoot the issue. By looking at the timeline, you can discover, in this case, that the 5GHz coverage was insufficient and that the user experienced a hard roam (full authentication) between the 5GHz and 2.4GHz bands.
While this might not be a significant issue under normal circumstances, it becomes critical during real-time traffic such as voice calls, where timing is crucial. A robust Wi-Fi system that shows how long it takes during Association and Authentication, whether it was a Layer 3 (L3) roam requiring a new IP address, and the time taken to obtain the new IP is essential information.
Lets compare Wi-Fi systems
Now, I have two Wi-Fi systems here, and I want to compare them. I need to see the client’s event logs and the timers for each system to evaluate their performance.
With the First system from vendor X, I can see the events, and I can see the AP the client STA is on. But I cannot see the timers between the events and we all know voice delay should be under 150ms before a human ear can hear something is going wrong. On Vendor Y I can see the events and the timers in between all events. and on another pane of vendor Y, I can see the roaming between different APs but also immediately see in color if a connection failed or the coverage degraded (in orange).
Vendor X also provides a separate pane above the event logs dedicated to client connectivity, and it looks like this:
In the green underlined a roam happened. Unfortunately, I needed to hover over the line to see if it was a roam and to which band this client was on. I also see the events in hours/min/sec, but need to calculate the time it took in between. Also I need to take screenshots to see which AP at what time or which radio very unpraticable.
At vendor Y we also can see everything in one overview so we don’t need to make screenshots or remember things.
Conclusion
If meaningful insights in Wi-Fi performance are a priority, I would choose Vendor Y in this situation. When selecting a vendor system, it’s crucial not just to evaluate how well it performs under ideal conditions but also to consider the depth of information it provides when things go wrong. Both Vendors excel in offering detailed analytics and comprehensive event logs that help diagnose and resolve connectivity issues effectively. But if it comes to a clear meaningful overview. Vendor Y systems shine in their ability to reveal the underlying problems by just looking at your screen. Ensuring robust and reliable Wi-Fi performance even in challenging scenarios.