RE: [WIRELESS-LAN] 3rd party wireless troubleshooting tools

[Jason Cook]

Hi Brandon,

That's great info, thanks. We have Eye PA now and yeah just need a bit more 
time to spend on it to get a better understanding of using it. Getting that 
time is challenging so can certainly see it turning out like you say with not 
becoming part of your regular troubleshooting.

Good to hear 7signal looks good, can't even get them here in Aus yet so can't 
even get pricing never mind for larger deployments. Targetting a few critical 
areas would be great though. Hopefully some good news on that front next year.

We have the same set of other tools as well, haven't looked further than 
wireshark at this stage but that is on our list for consideration.

Regards

Jason

--
Jason Cook
The University of Adelaide, AUSTRALIA 5005
Ph    : +61 8 8313 4800

-Original Message-
From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv 
[mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU] On Behalf Of Brandon Stratton
Sent: Saturday, 7 November 2015 1:10 AM
To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] 3rd party wireless troubleshooting tools

Jason,

So we have used Eye PA some but we never integrated it into any regular 
troubleshooting. This may be in large part because of our lack of knowledge on 
the tool itself but it never caught on. 

We completed a trial with 7Signal and have rolled out about 12 eyes in critical 
areas. We are going through the optimization process now so we will see if 
their recommendations are helpful. I will say that the amount of data and 
visibility that they provide is enormous! It is a tool that, depending on the 
size of your network, could easily occupy a large part of your schedule looking 
at all of the different results. We have found that the power of this tool is 
more in long term monitoring of areas to determine the results of any changes 
both organic, use of space changes, or planned, new code or configurations.

Our biggest complaint with the solution so far has been that it is not priced 
for large scale deployments. So far we have decided to focus on a few critical 
areas and it has been helpful. 

Other tools we use;
Ekahau Site Survey
Wireshark (although we are doing a demo of CommView (TamoSoft) and OmniPeek 
(Savvius)).
MetaGeeks RF Chanalyzer

Hope this is helpful.

Brandon Stratton
ES Network Administrator 2
bmstrat...@uh.edu
832-842-4714

**
Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group 
discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.

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Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group 
discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.

Re: 3rd party wireless troubleshooting tools

[Brandon Stratton]

Jason,

So we have used Eye PA some but we never integrated it into any regular 
troubleshooting. This may be in large part because of our lack of knowledge on 
the tool itself but it never caught on. 

We completed a trial with 7Signal and have rolled out about 12 eyes in critical 
areas. We are going through the optimization process now so we will see if 
their recommendations are helpful. I will say that the amount of data and 
visibility that they provide is enormous! It is a tool that, depending on the 
size of your network, could easily occupy a large part of your schedule looking 
at all of the different results. We have found that the power of this tool is 
more in long term monitoring of areas to determine the results of any changes 
both organic, use of space changes, or planned, new code or configurations.

Our biggest complaint with the solution so far has been that it is not priced 
for large scale deployments. So far we have decided to focus on a few critical 
areas and it has been helpful. 

Other tools we use;
Ekahau Site Survey
Wireshark (although we are doing a demo of CommView (TamoSoft) and OmniPeek 
(Savvius)).
MetaGeeks RF Chanalyzer

Hope this is helpful.

Brandon Stratton
ES Network Administrator 2
bmstrat...@uh.edu
832-842-4714

**
Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group 
discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.

3rd party wireless troubleshooting tools

[Jason Cook]

As per usual there's been a few discussion on this path in the past.

Interested to know what people have used to either troubleshoot issues on the 
network and/or review performance And how much success have they had.

7Signal promote themselves quite well (though currently unavailable in Aus,). 
Those that have implemented their Eye's, have they worked at identifying issues 
that weren't picked up in other ways? Also their optimization service if anyone 
has used it. did you find noticeable improvements?

Then I guess other tools, has anyone used Metageek's Eye PA to any success?

Or any other similar tools/services that have been used

We do use Ekahau ESS and Chanalyzer  for coverage and interference, so I guess 
interested to know about tools that can help with improvements in other aspects 
of the network. There's no specific issues/problems we have identified that 
need looking but interested to know if it's worth looking into other tools that 
could help improve our service or enable us to be ready for "situation X". 
There's always a few situations where you get reported on-off issues and it 
would be good to have something we could leave in locations for monitoring.

Cisco shop as an FYI

--
Jason Cook
Technology Services
The University of Adelaide, AUSTRALIA 5005
Ph: +61 8 8313 4800
JabberCall 
Me

browser-based video chat

e-mail: 
jason.c...@adelaide.edu.au>

CRICOS Provider Number 00123M
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