Does the world need another spectrum analyzer?

July 27, 2015 by 2 Comments

The worst tool in your toolbox is the one you don’t use. I found myself pondering that point when the fine folks over at Oscium sent me one of their WiPry-Pro Spectrum Analyzers – purpose built for iOS. While I don’t want to turn this into an Apple vs Android conversation, I personally use an iPhone and when I temper my tools needs with the devices I use (or am reluctant to use), the WiPry makes for a very handy first exposure tool. Now, many Wireless LAN Professionals will argue the merits of triage using a protocol analyzer vs a spectrum analyzer – my take on that piece of the problem is that you should be able to effectively use whatever is at your fingertips. The Oscium solution makes the spectrum analyzer very rapidly available for casual, at a glance, look at your network as well as a good indicator of where you should go next. Out of the box, the device is very intuitive with a lightning connector on one end and an SMB antenna port on the other end. When you attach the included antenna, and download the WiPry app from the app store, you get a good look at where most people head first – Layer 1 visibility into the 2.4GHz spectrum.

Oscium WiPry

With specifications similar to other similar solutions, it get’s the broad visualization done in fairly short order. You can see here an analog video camera with their channel 9 mask on to highlight the interesting slice.

Oscium ch9

One of the great additions that the WiPry brings to iOS is the ability to bring interesting bits into one view – like SSID names. I know of plenty of people that prefer the Android platform for this one ability. Now that we have it in a handy to use format wrapped around tons of Layer 1 data, I’d consider it a pretty compelling reason to stick with iOS.

Oscium SSIDs

In short, the form factor of the card, the usefulness of the data presented, and the Open API component of the app makes this at the top of my list for my next purchase. I’d recommend you go look at one too. While you’re at it, they have a sweet lineup of Oscilloscopes and Logic Analyzers. They’ve brought a whole lineup of analyzer products to iOS and I for one am keen to get much more hands on time with them.

Does the world need another spectrum analyzer? For my iPhone, yes – making it the best tool in my toolbox; the one I use.

Filed under Oscium, Spectrum, Wireless

The most useful Prime Infrastructure report

July 21, 2015 by 4 Comments

Cisco’s Prime Infrastructure has come a long way over the past couple of years. From it’s beginnings as WCS, then to NCS, then through the sordid Prime Infrastructure 1.x versions, we’ve finally arrived at a place where it’s reasonable to dig back into the product. To say that Prime Infrastructure (PI for short) is an overwhelming product is an understatement. I decided to write about an obscure but extremely useful report (yes, a boring report) that I think you should use.

As we all know, in the RF world, performance revolves around Channel Utilization – of which there are several definitions. For simplicities sake, I’m referring to Channel Utilization as reported by the venerable Cognio card (AKA: CleanAir) – the baseline reference that most Wireless LAN Professionals use to call ‘Channel Utilization’. This is the amount of energy detected on a channel during a specific dwell time. This metric is roughly the wired equivalent of ‘link utilization’. Wouldn’t it be nice to see a historic report of the ‘link utilization’ of all of the APs radios in our environment over a period of time? Wouldn’t it be nice to see if a change we made recently (disabling lower data rates for example) made a historic significance to our Channel Utilization? Yes, of course it would! Without further ado, I bring you, the Channel Utilization report that you always wished you had, but never knew was always at a your fingertips:

Reports Launch Pad -> Wireless Utilization -> RadioReport Launch Pad

(that last bit is important!)

Report Details

This gives you a historical report of every radio in your infrastructure (all 2.4 and 5GHz) and a trending of not only their Channel Utilization, but their TX and RX utilization for further correlation/troubleshooting:

Prime Infrastructure CU

What do you think? Do you find this report useful? If so, drop me a comment and let me know how you use it. What other reports do you find yourself favoring in Prime Infrastructure?

Filed under Cisco, Prime, Spectrum