* Glut of RF management causes head scratching
It’s getting tough to sort out all the various emerging tools that help you control your wireless LAN air space.
Automated RF monitoring, performance-improvement, and range-extension capabilities, for example, are becoming available in semiconductors, as well as in associated code, to be bundled directly into access points (AP). If embedded in APs at the right price point, these capabilities could undermine some of the value offered by WLAN system companies, which generally collapse RF monitoring, management and security in some sort of centralized management device or software.
WLAN “overlay” appliances are available from third parties to monitor heterogeneous AP infrastructures, for example. And both traditional WLAN system makers and new WLAN “switch” start-ups are enabling spectrum management. Some control only their own APs, while others handle their own AP infrastructures as well as other vendors’ infrastructures.
The features-war is on for these and other players to stay a step ahead of one another with automated tools that dynamically adjust signal strength, change channels to avoid interference and discover (and possibly block) traffic from unauthorized APs.
AirMagnet, for example, this month is poised to ship a distributed version of its RF scanning system. With AirMagnet Distributed, the tools that previously required an individual to walk the floor to perform monitoring capabilities with a handheld or laptop and are split among distributed network sensors that communicate to a database management server, which can be accessed by any number of distributed management consoles.
At the end of the day, how do you select the appropriate set of equipment and tools for very large-scale installations, given that advances are still coming that could alter how many APs you need to cover a large organization and how you decide to manage your RF spectrum?
Russ Craig, research director at the Aberdeen Group, advises installing WLANs now where there is a calculable return, such as in academic environments where pulling cable to every student desktop is cost prohibitive or linking bar code scanners wirelessly to inventory systems.
“Spend money today where there’s a provable value proposition. If you shift to something different in intermediate term, you’ll still have gotten value out of today’s investment,” he says.
