Lee, (Off the record).
We purchased five "eyes" as a pilot. The product shows a lot of promise, but we have had the following issues: 1. Access to raw data is limited which results in the following: a. We found that their "Radio Attach Success Rate" measurement doesn't breakout into detail where a failure occurred (802.11 Auth, 802.11 Assoc, 802.1x Auth, DHCP success, etc.). We discovered that if the "eye" sent a probe request to an AP and didn't get a probe response, it considered that a failure. However, an AP may not send a probe response to every probe request if it is trying to band steer or load balance clients, but will still respond to an 802.11 Auth request. This led us to see skewed results. b. Reports of high a % of 802.11 frame retry rates, did not report the total number of frames, so one could not determine if a 50% retry rate meant on 1 out 2 frames or 5,000 out of 10,000 frames. The 7signals folks have taken this as feedback and looking to make changes to correct this. 2. They are a really small company. Up until a week ago they only really had one technical person evaluating data and making recommendations for changes for all their customers. They are adding staff to correct this. 3. They are using the linux "wpa_supplicant" to test 802.1X Authentication. We found that the supplicant doesn't always reliably work which leads to false "radio attach errors". 4. They don't have a way to verify the operation of their "eyes". We believe that we have a faulty antenna in one of ours "eyes" (if we rotate the "eye", we get different results), but convincing them there is a problem has been difficult. 5. They are really "hungry" for sales and They seem to be focused on trying to get you cover your campus with "eyes", but as an academic institution that is cost prohibitive. They seem less interested in you purchasing a few "eyes" to place in strategic areas or to rotate between problem areas. All in all, the ideas behind the product are a good ones, and if they can adjust their expectations and make some minor improvements to their data collection backend and GUI interface I think it can be a really useful product. -Neil -- Neil Johnson Network Engineer The University of Iowa Phone: 319 384-0938 Fax: 319 335-2951 Mobile: 319 540-2081 E-Mail: neil-john...@uiowa.edu From: Lee H Badman <lhbad...@syr.edu<mailto:lhbad...@syr.edu>> Reply-To: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv <WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU<mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>> Date: Friday, May 31, 2013 2:25 PM To: "WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU<mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>" <WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU<mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>> Subject: [WIRELESS-LAN] 7Signal- anyone? Hello to the group, I know that this has been discussed before, but I’m coming back around to it. I’m intrigued by 7signal.com and see attractive aspects to their approach, but find myself struggling with: * Pricing- Seems incredibly expensive * What’s really being delivered- we are a CleanAir environment, so much of 7Signal would be duplicitous in function, and so far I can’t tell all what one is delivering that the other leaves out * What 7Signal expects you to do to optimize- there are locations where APs cannot be moved, there are groups of clients that you are likely not going to easily pin down for driver updates, etc, and only so many system settings you can tweak without creating other issues * Deployment model- given that Eyes themselves need to be cabled, it’s not exactly easy in all cases to deploy them and there is no radio backhaul option All of my cynicism aside- is anyone on the list a 7signal user? Any testimonials or thoughts? Thanks very much- Lee Badman Syracuse University ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.
