A look at HORST on a Raspberry Pi.

I've been working on diagnosing wireless issues from a Raspberry Pi for almost a year now.  And after writing a bunch of python around packet capture and upload I was searching for some airtime calculations when I stumbled across a piece of software called HORST.  Standing for Highly Optimized Radio Scanning Tool, HORST allows you to analyze wireless statistics and packets in real time.  In just a few minutes, I had it running and was amazed at how well it can analyze a network remotely.  

#WFD8 and the ACMA

For those of you who don't know, Aruba has been pretty generous with the TechFieldDay delegates over the last few years. They are a great contributor to the community, even giving away hardware and software at wireless industry events like #WifiTrek and #WLPC. And with #WFD8, we're heading back to Aruba to hear what's new.

Post #WFD7 RX-SOP Musings

Shortly after #WFD7, I decided to sit down and do some testing with RX-SOP.  During a lazy Saturday afternoon in the lab, I was testing this "dangerous" feature to determine why there was so much hesitation about using this feature. 

And shortly after starting on my testing, things started to go horribly wrong.  I had gotten too aggressive with the setting and my test clients had "hit the wall."  Meaning that my clients dropped below the RX-SOP threshold and the AP was no longer responding to it.

Hallway Design Nightmares Part3: Channel Selection

I'd like to start with the fact that I am an RRM guy.  I think Radio Resource Management does a pretty good job of managing TX Power and Channel selection when configured properly.  I know that some people out there don't have confidence in RRM, just know that this reflects my opinion regarding the matter.

We covered TX power in part 2 of this series, now let's talk about Dynamic Channel Assignment (DCA).  I can't tell you how many times I've been talking with a customer or fellow engineer and they tell me "DCA is broken," "DCA makes poor choices," or "DCA is making poor channel selection choice."

When I ask them to show me why they think this, they generally show me a map that has multiple APs in the hall and several of them are on the same channel and adjacent to each other.  Much like the following:

------------------------------

|      1     1     1     11     |

------------------------------