WLAN Auditing &Tuning Done Right with WiTuners part 2
WLAN Performance Auditing and Tuning With WiTuners
This isn’t an easy task. You can’t just look on the box the APs came in, read: It’s the newest 130 Mbps AP on the Market, multiply 130 Mbps by the number of APs that you have, and use that as the expected capacity of the network. Many factors will affect the throughput capacity of your network: interference, overlapping coverage, propagation anomalies, poor configuration selections, quality of service (QoS) policies, ad infinitum.
To make it even harder, the capacity must be determined in real time and accurately. The traffic changes (people move around, the mix of voice/video/data changes continuously), so the auditing service must run in near real time in order to accurately predict when the performance of the network is in jeopardy.
By using WiTuners Advanced Wi-Fi Tuning Technologies, real time estimation of performance can be achieved. First, the configuration of WiTuners captures the physical environment of the network. Second, the traffic mix of the real network is assimilated as a driver to the estimation process, and third, a real time profile of the network operation is captured.
The audit is started and time progresses. The WiTuners Audit accurately runs all of the environment and performance variables of the traffic, data, protocols, modem, propagation, and clients. WiTuners thereby “knows” how the network behaves and it generates the upper bound performance metric for auditing. Likewise, a level can be set slightly below this upper bound to serve as a warning that there is a high probability that things may start to go bad in the real world. In the sample audit shown, the maximum network capacity is shown as a green line at the top of the real-time graph. The alert boundary in blue is slightly below the maximum. The network performs fairly well for about two-thirds of the time shown on the chart and then alerts are generated as the demand bumps into the alert line.
WLAN Optimization with WiTuners
So, I’ve been warned with an alert message from the audit, I know I have to change things, and the task is impossible in a reasonable amount of time? Yes, it is, if it’s done manually.But the answer is already in front of you. While WiTuners generates the upper bound performance metric for auditing, it is also capable of optimizing the WLAN settings to raise the performance bound. It optimizes just as it did that first time when you set up the network and moved the walls around, but this time it will do it iteratively in real time on a dynamic real world networkby using automation.
Yes, automation is the way to go. However, it doesn’t imply it is easy by any means. You need to know how to yield an optimal group of settings given so many changing variables. You also need to determine the optimal settings fast … fast enough in near real time to keep pace with the dynamic nature of a wireless network. Using WiTuners, you can either click on the “Optimize” button in response to an alert box or, better yet, let WiTuners perform the optimizations iteratively and in near real-time.
The people move around, students buy wiz-bang feature phones, and the principal forces the staff to attend large boring meetings. But WiTuners keeps an eye out, optimizing the network as needed to keep everybody happy (or at least entertained). In the case of our example scenario, throughput was improved by almost fifty percent.
Thanks to its Advanced Wi-Fi Tuning Technology, WiTuners’ performance auditing and tuning services take on this tedious and error-prone task, providing the high rate, high fidelity automation that you need. Now you are free from worrying about the formidable task of manually tuning the WLAN (or about the damage you are likely to make while trying to).
With WiTuners, organizations owning WLANs will make fewer unnecessary equipment purchases, get improved worker productivity, and maintain a smaller IT team. Since WiTuners acts as the WLAN expert for the IT department, the WLAN administrator’s job becomes easier. WLAN operation disruption is greatly reduced and there will be many fewer customer complaints. With WiTuners, the end users experience better connectivity, have a better wireless experience with faster connects, and less WLAN outage.
What’s Next
So, how does this kind of Auditing and Tuning service maintain a WLAN in an optimal fashion? WiTuners as many unique features in its approach to Planning, Auditing, Optimization, and Reporting, fully backed by its WiTuners Advanced Wi-Fi Tuning Technology. Stay tuned and we will have Part Three of this series: “What’s Unique about WiTuners WLAN Services”.
You are also welcome to visit WiTuners website to learn more about wifi tuning WiTuners’ SaaS for yourself, for free.