Sniff Wi-Fi

The vast majority of Cisco Wi-Fi networks can be fixed without having to spend precious time and money on surveying, adding new access points (APs) or moving existing APs.  Here's how. Cisco has some very fine enterprise Wi-Fi products.  Unfortunately, those very fine products often get deployed in a manner that leads to connectivity and performance issues. The following steps take about ten minutes to perform, and will stabilize connectivity and performance for the vast majority of enterprise-class Cisco Wi-Fi networks.  Anything in bold  is something to click or select or check or uncheck or type. 1. Access the Cisco wireless LAN controller (WLC) interface via a web browser. 2. Navigate to WLANs  (menu) -> -> Security  (tab) -> Uncheck WPA Policy  -> Apply NOTE: Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) is a Wi-Fi security method that uses temporal key integrity protocol (TKIP) encryption by default.  Using TKIP encryption disables 802.11n and 802.11ac data rates, effe

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 know, is Latin fo