Handcrafted Wi-Fi

  This post stems from the knowledge of how to properly mount your access points.  I recently went to do a validation survey for a 5 GHz WLAN, and discovered two of the three access points were mounted on the wall, perpendicular to the floor.   I decided to survey it anyway, and then remount the access points another day when I had the appropriate hardware, and re-survey.  I wanted to see what the actual coverage pattern would be – a “before and after”, if you would like to think of it that way.   Here is the coverage of the floor before making any changes.  The green and purple coverage patterns are created by two access points mounted “incorrectly”.  They’re both hanging like wall clocks, instead of being mounted on the ceiling like UFOs.  The brick colored pattern is mounted horizontally, and no change was made to this access point.     Here is the overlapping coverage in red.     I remoun...

  I noticed that my AirTran flight out of Orlando this evening happened to have GoGo Wi-Fi onboard.  After hearing several people talk about how great the conference was this year, and that it was better than the last five they had attended, I decided to see how many people on the aircraft were using this service.   Using Fluke’s AirMagnet WiFi Analzyer, I learned a few things:   Three dual band Cisco APs are onboard, using channels 1, 6, 11, 36, 40 & 44.  Apparently they’re not using the DFS channels – I wonder why.  (okay, I don’t really wonder why)     There’s a Jayhawk (University of Kansas student) onboard, and that person has also been to Livestrong Park in Kansas City for a soccer game:     Looks like we have 30 client devices on the plane also…  This is a Boeing 717-200, and since I’m too cheap to pay for Internet access, I will only guess as to how occupants there are on the pla...

How to add AP licenses to a Cisco WLAN controller. I recently had to do this and I must say if I had the link (below) when I first started out, life would have been much easier. You should have a PAK from Cisco when you purchased your adder license.   Go to  https://tools.cisco.com/SWIFT/LicensingUI/Home  and register it with the controller.         In this case, the PAK is 3681J1B047A.   You are going to need the serial number of your controller in order to generate the license for it.  I SSH into the controller and issue either "show udi" or "show license udi".  Just make sure you are communicating with the controller you intend to upgrade licenses on!  I am sure there are other ways to get this information, but this is how I do it.     After you enter in the information, you can view and download your licenses, or wait for them to arrive via email.  I downloaded the two license files in this exa...

Here is an option on how to Cisco AIR-CAP3602I-A-K9 access point to a wall from materials you can easily purchase from Home Depot.  (ie, I have done all the homework already)  All for under six dollars.  Check out last screen capture for the receipt. The access point was designed to be ceiling mounted in carpeted office environments, ten feet above the finished floor.  That said, there are areas that we to provide Wi-Fi coverage to that do not fit the above mentioned description – such as manufacturing, warehouses and older buildings. In these cases, we have nowhere to mount the access point.  Ceilings may be 30 feet, which is not where we want to install the AP.  In these cases we need to install the AP on a wall, approximately ten feet above the floor.  The AP does not come with a wall mount bracket that will mount it parallel to the floor, so I have come up with an off-the-shelf solution from Home Depot. The two things from the hardware sectio...

Here is an option on how to Cisco AIR-CAP3602I-A-K9 access point to a wall from materials you can easily purchase from Home Depot.  (ie, I have done all the homework already)  All for under six dollars.  Check out last screen capture for the receipt. The access point was designed to be ceiling mounted in carpeted office environments, ten feet above the finished floor.  That said, there are areas that we to provide Wi-Fi coverage to that do not fit the above mentioned description – such as manufacturing, warehouses and older buildings. In these cases, we have nowhere to mount the access point.  Ceilings may be 30 feet, which is not where we want to install the AP.  In these cases we need to install the AP on a wall, approximately ten feet above the floor.  The AP does not come with a wall mount bracket that will mount it parallel to the floor, so I have come up with an off-the-shelf solution from Home Depot. The two things from the hardware sectio...

I was recently called out to investigate a Wi-Fi bridge link that was being accused of being the culprit of a myriad of network problems. Upon arrival on site, I noticed that the main site’s Wi-Fi bridge was sitting on channel 161, and that channel was overpopulated since there were two access points in the building, both on channel 161.  I moved the building’s access points to the UNII-1 band, and changed the bridge’s channel  to help alleviate some of the congestion since there was another access point on that channel across the street.  These three screenshots are  before I made any changes: Note that the bridge is capable of achieving a 54 mb/s data rate, however only 3% of all the packets are traveling at that rate – and 92% of them are data packets.  The busiest data rate is the lowest data rate – with 72% of the traffic at that rate.  Hmmm…. Also, a quick screenshot as a baseline..   After coming up with a cha...