Testing strategies for 802.11 networks

Hi,

I require a testing strategy for an 802.11 wireless network. The objective is to provide some sort of QoS. If you know of any existing testing strategy/framework or something suitable at least, please let me know. Suggestions appreciated.

Regards Patrick

Reply to
Patrick
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It is difficult to image any strategy for obtaining a meaningful QoS. Either you make optimistic assumptions and get very good data rates, or pessimistic assumptions and get very bad data rates.

Unlike a wired network, you can't assume that all the signals are under your control (i.e. generated by your equipment), and a wireless network has the capability for very severe degradation when there is excessive traffic and/or poor signal strength and/or interference.

Our customers do use WLANs in time-sensitive applications, but the error-handling strategies in the higher protocol layers do need some thought.

Jeremy Bentham Iosoft Ltd.

Reply to
Jeremy Bentham

Your high-level strategy depends on what you mean by quality of service. You can measure bandwidth, signal margin, or latency, to mention a few criteria. Are your devices mobile? Is it important that QoS (whatever you define that to be) remain constant with distance? Are the devices constrained to a given geographical area? Does that area have sigificant natural and artificial features that will affect signal paths?

For geographical analysis, for example, to determine good locations for cell phone towers, there are a few commercial software packages that you can license. These tools use various propagation models and can be handy for doing what-if analyses on a fixed geographical area, assuming you have decent maps.

But even with good software models, you'll end up going out to the field to do some measurements to do on-site validation.

An easy way to control the environment in the lab is to connect the devices together via a transmission line. This allows you to easily insert calibrated attenuations and/or interference.

Kelly

Reply to
Kelly Hall

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