I had the good fortune to be gifted a copy of inSSIDer along with a Wi-Spy mini adapter from the crew at the MetaGeek booth at Interop recently. I ran the application through its paces and made a quick demonstration video to show the information the application gathers about the nearby wireless networks.
The application runs on Windows Vista, 7 and 8 so I had to try it out on my trusty site survey laptop. That laptop has a b/g only wireless card built in, so I used my USB hub to connect the Linksys AE6000 a/b/g/n/ac adapter and the Wi-Spy mini. The Wi-Spy mini is a new form factor for the Wi-Spy tool. The mini adapter is one of those tiny little tools that if you don't put it right back where you got it from, you'll lose it. I can easily see the Wi-Spy mini ending up in the washing machine because you left it in the pocket of your work pants. So put it back where you found it! That being said, it is much nicer to have a teeny-tiny tool sticking out of the side of your laptop than a big honking thing with an attached antenna (now if only I had a survey laptop with more than one USB port). The inSSIDer for Office has all of the features that you would need in order to identify all the nearby wireless networks and sources of interference affecting the 2.4GHz frequency. There are series of menu tabs LEARN, NETWORKS, CHANNELS and ANALYZE at the top of the screen. The application is well laid out and easy to navigate without having read the manual. Sam Clements has also written a blog post about his hands-on experience with inSSIDer. I decided making a quick YouTube video was easier than me making a bunch of screen grabs. Sam already wrote a great post full of screen grabs!
The specs from the MetaGeek website list the features of inSSIDer for Office as:
Display table of surrounding networks
Trace Co-Channel and Overlapping Network strengths
Powerful Filtering Engine
Number of networks to “star” for optimization
Link score reflects actual RF congestion
Detailed breakdown of measurements per-channel
Expert tips tailored to your environment
Includes Wi-Spy Mini (coin-sized USB 2.4 GHz Spectrum Analyzer)
Thank you to the team at MetaGeek for being so kind to gift me the Wi-Spy mini adapter and a copy of inSSIDer for Office!
Metageek was back at Wireless Field Day 3 to tell us about the updates they've made to their product line since the last Wireless Field Day in January 2012. Ryan Woodings gave us the background on the Metageek story, how they got started as a company. He explained that the company used agile software and they keep track of all of the projects they're working on via their "Wall of Agility". Metageek employees have 20% of their working time allocated to working on pet projects they find personally motivating. Out of this 20% time slice, the Eye P.A. application was born. Metageek is headquartered in Boise, Idaho and they've won many awards for being an innovative company and for encouraging alternative transportation methods to work (biking/carpooling).
inSSIDer Updates: At the bottom of main inSSIDer page, they've put links to training and education for the people who have downloaded inSSIDer. The information shown on the main application launch screen is specifically targeted at the end user who is trying to fix their problematic wireless network. inSSIDer is available for Windows, Mac and Android. The Android phone version of inSSIDer can offer recommendations to change the channel of your access point if you use it to optimize your wireless network. inSSIDER on Android handhelds is designed to encourage the end user to use the app on the phone to calibrate/site survey the areas surrounding where the wireless issues are happening. Metageek uses a unique method for focusing their goal directed application designs. The have created eight Personas. This is their attempt at tailoring their solutions to each customer by creating individual use case Personas. Each fictional character is an end customer of their products, and each Persona has a unique need to use a Metageek tool to solve a wireless problem. This type of focused thinking about what you're trying to accomplish as a company, and putting yourself in the head of your customers is a powerful way of staying connected to the people that want/need the tools Metageek creates.
Chanalyzer updates
You can now name sessions by rooms or floors to help you remember where you were and what you saw when you were testing. You can filter by band to just show the 2.4GHz or 5GHz networks, or you can filter by vendor name/identifier. The vendor OUI lookup table is not editable by end user, but it can be updated by contacting Ryan or Trent and sending them the new vendor OUI information. You can double click at any point in the Chanalyzer Pro stream to zoom into that segment/capture. This is called Amplitude History Navigation. The report creation in Chanalyzer uses the filters you've set on your capture view when you're adding information blocks into the final report. Filters can be ANDed to show multiple SSIDs, but can't be ORed at this time. The Pro features of Chanalyzer Pro are sometimes difficult to find. For example, the save button has arrow to do non-save options to append other blocks. You can add 'devices that interfere' blocks for customer education to show the customer the RF patterns of typical sources of interference. You can also add images to blocks to add the details about a particular access point model and you can add custom text blocks to include recommendations on how to mitigate the adverse effects of sources of interference. Report blocks also respect the segment of the timespan you have selected. Meaning, you can zoom into the problem area in the timeline and add a specific point in the capture to the report. Reports can be exported to RTF or HTML. One caveat to Chanalyzer Pro is that concurrent scanning isn't possible just yet. Using two Wi-Spy dBx adapters is the way to gather both spectrums. The cost of purchasing two Wi-Spy dBx adapters is less expensive than a dual band Wi-Spy dBx USB adapter would ultimately cost to design and manufacture.
Eye P. A. Eye P.A. now has filters to edit out beacons or whatever you don't want to see to tweak the visuals to focus on the data in the packet capture that you want to analyze. Eye P.A. now has a few training slides that are shown when the app is first launched. You can't use Eye P.A. to open wired captures because there aren't any control frames or management information in a wired capture. That wireless specific information in the capture is required to use Eye P.A. as a wireless protocol visualization tool. You can export Eye P.A. information to a CSV to take that data and put it into a report block in Chanalyzer Pro or you can do a screen capture to put it into a final report. Currently it isn't possible to do a remote capture to any vendor's APs, the only direct capture is to AirPcap (2x2 spatial stream card).
What's coming up Ruthless Rye (Chandroid) Metageek is working on a Chanalyzer Pro application to work on Android tablets. They demonstrated the application on a Toshiba Thrive. The Toshiba Thrive has regular USB ports, whereas most lighter tablets have micro USB reports. Many times micro USB ports do not transmit enough power to the connected devices and an inline power source would be required to power the Wi-Spy dBx Pro USB tool. inSSIDer 3 codename Strongbow You can now identify your own network in the networks list displayed within inSSIDer. This allows you to get focused recommendations on what you should do to improve your local wireless issues. Room Level Channel Organization - this piece of inSSIDer 3 is attempting to encourage the end user to walk around to check the channels in the vicinity of the main problem area. If there is a Wi-Spy connected, it will be used in the channel quality check measurements that are calculated. Soon, there will be a report tab to receive a written recommendation report on what steps to take next. For example "Your Xbox will not function properly in this room until you move your access point to location X or you configure your access point to operate on channel Y. It is now possible to use the Tamograph site survey tool with Wi-Spy integration. This new cross-platform interoperability allows you to perform a site survey in much the same way you would with AirMagnet Survey Pro with AirMagnet Spectrum XT integration. You can collect information on RSSI, SNR at the same time as you're collecting RF spectrum data with the Wi-Spy tool. The final survey data points will include pop-up images which display the spectrum data collected at that survey point location. Metageek was a sponsor of Wireless Field Day 3. As such, they were responsible for covering a portion of my travel and lodging expenses while attending Wireless Field Day 3. In addition, they provided me with a USB tool bag containing copies of Chanalyzer Pro and a WiSpy dBx usb spectrum analyzer and the directional antenna used with the WiSpy dBx tool. They did not ask for, nor where they promised any kind of consideration in the writing of this review/analysis. The opinions and analysis provided within are my own and any errors or omissions are mine and mine alone.
MetaGeek was a return presenter at Wireless Field Day 2, and presented us with their new application Eye P.A. Eye P.A. is a completely new way of visualizing data captured in a WinPcap file.
Trent Cutler of MetaGeek demonstrates Wi-Spy at WFD2 from Stephen Foskett on Vimeo.
Some of the intuitive visualizations in Eye P.A are: Flashlight on hover - highlights the data type you've pinpointed with your pointerTool tips - helper information on menu choices Colors used to represent different types of date: Blues - data Purples - management Orange - control and subframe types Light blue - QoS data Dark blue - data without QoS
The table data to the right of the circular visualizations shows data on the information that is selected. You can sort by bytes, retry rates, etc. The flashlight feature will also show total amounts of bytes and the pie is the total amount of time that it took to send the packets. This method of visualizing wireless capture data was accurately described as "The Eye P.A. is legacy hardware's worst nightmare."
Some changes to their Wi-Spy application: They've added a session manager to record the data in the background and handle session transitions better between hardware sessions. You can now view recorded data while you're capturing data and capturing simultaneously on 2.4 and 5ghz with two Wi-Spy devices.
Their device finder patch antenna has no sidelobes, it was designed to aid in finding sources of interference and high RF utilization devices.
If you haven't already checked out MetaGeek's YouTube channel, I highly recommend you do so. They've shared a huge amount of great information on their entire product line, and it is well worth you spending some time to get familiar with their offerings.
As a part of the Wireless Field Day 2 events, Metageek provided me with copies of all of their latest software offerings. I've used Eye P.A. to get a better view into what sort of data is traversing a given wireless infrastructure. I've found it quite helpful in understanding who the top talkers are, and what kind of data they're sending.
MetaGeek was a sponsor of Wireless Field Day 2. As such, they were responsible for covering a portion of my travel and lodging expenses while attending Wireless Field Day 2. They did not ask for, nor where they promised any kind of consideration in the writing of this review/analysis. The opinions and analysis provided within are my own and any errors or omissions are mine and mine alone.
The morning started off with a great Chanalyzer Pro demonstration by the great people at MetaGeek.Ryan Woodings & Trent Cutler were awesome at explaining the ins and outs of all aspects of the MetaGeek company origins and how to customize the Chanalyzer Pro application. I had previous experience using the ChanalyzerPro application since Ryan was kind enough to send me a Wi-Spy dBx and I tested it out and compared it against AirMagnet's Spectrum XT and Cisco's Spectrum Expert tool.
I was not aware that there were home sound systems that could be installed in light fixtures, and hadn't thought of using a Wi-Spy to identify an absconding shooter by find security cameras in the vicinity of a convenience store crime scene.
There have been a lot of advances to the Chanalyzer application since my demo license expired, but we were all gifted a cool lunchbox with all the MetaGeek tools inside, so I'll be back to using their ChanalyzerPro application asap!
Cisco started off with David Stiff presenting the Cisco CleanAir solution. I've heard this presentation many times, and I've presented it several times as well. Based on some of the questions that were asked by other delegates - they were not as familiar with the CleanAir/WCS/Client Troubleshooting tool as I was. I was glad that the information wasn't a repeat for everyone present.
Funny facts - the Cisco WNBU development team has code names for internal & external antennas: internal antennas are named after soaps, and external antennas trees. The AP I spotted with the code word written on it was called Larch. Naturally I thought of the Monty Python Sketch 'How to Recognize Different Types of Trees From Quite a Long Way Away'
I'll be adding to this post with information about the MobileAccessVE Multi-Tier architecture and whatever great information Jameson Blandford(Cisco YouTube Star) will divulge to the Tech Field Day delegates.
