Sniff Wi-Fi

Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone 4 yesterday. You may have heard about this snazzy little device and you may have also heard about the problems Mr. Jobs had in demonstrating it. Mr. Jobs blamed the problem on WiFi, and as best I can tell he was right. I whipped up a quick video to explain what likely happened. It's my first video blog post, so be gentle. Thanks to Rough & Tumble Films in Los Angeles for providing the space and Nick Robinson (@nickrob on Twitter) for helping me out with the shoot.

Last week I ran into an age-old problem: my WiFi network being blamed for the poor performance of a neighbor's network. I was pretty sure that the problem wasn't my fault, but how would I prove that? Here are some ways that you can use a WiFi sniffer to diagnose whether your new WLAN is disrupting what's already in place. Let's start with a little background on my situation. I was teaching a class*  at a training location that provides Guest WiFi (unencrypted; no web-based authentication) and optional Dedicated Classroom WiFi (TKIP-encrypted; WPA-PSK authentication). The Guest WiFi was being used by students in my class, but the Dedicated Classroom WiFi was not. Both of those networks were working poorly from the time we arrived. The Guest WiFi being down was just annoying, but the Dedicated Classroom WiFi was a red-level problem. A problem significant enough that we might...