Sniff Wi-Fi

Far be it from me to hate on a Wi-Fi vendor... ...but seeing Cisco's Wi-Fi recommendations for iPhones (and other Apple iOS devices) has led me to wonder whether The Cisco (Kid) is a Friend of Mine. Cisco released a Best Practices doc for supporting iPhones, iPads, et al. back in November.  For whatever reason I missed it back then.  I'm bringing it up now because Keith Parsons had something about it on his Twitter feed and Ekahau has a webinar coming up on designing a Wi-Fi network for iOS devices.   I am happy that Cisco is bringing up the topic of device-centric Wi-Fi design.  Wi-Fi is (or, at least, should be) all about the end user, and device-centric design implicitly acknowledges this. I am less happy at several of Cisco's actual recommendations.  They seem to have fallen into the trap of believing (or, more perhaps more accurately, leading) the Latest Trendy Wi-Fi Disease, throughputitis .   Throughputitis , as you all ...

Yo, man.  There's a lot of Wi-Fi installers out there flakin' and perpetratin', but scared to kick reality... So what you want Wi-Fi engineers and admins to do? Assess Yourself!     To which you might respond, "Duh!" Any networking or Wi-Fi person worth a lick knows that a network should be assessed before (and, in many cases, after) deployment.  What is far, far, far less well known is HOW to assess a Wi-Fi installation.   Properly assessing a Wi-Fi installation involves two parts: assessing configuration settings and assessing the physical location of access points (APs) and antennas.  And if you don't assess both, you'll be  making a sucker and you equal .  While rolling through the streets of Searcy, AR in my main man  GT Hill 's 1984 Ferrari convertible, I was given some wise insight.  Not, "I only buy things that make money back," a former favorite quote of GT's prior to the purchase of said Ferrari.  Instead, ...