AirMagnet Laptop Analyzer Using Multiple Proxim USB Adapters with Spectrum XT Integration

I've recently had the ability to use multiple Proxim/Orinoco 8494-US  wireless adapters with the AirMagnet WiFi Analyzer Pro application with the AirMagnet Spectrum XT integrated into the same application interface.


When you use three Proxim/Orinoco 8494-US wireless adapters with WiFi Analyzer pro, you're able to capture data on channels 1, 6 and 11 simultaneously, as well as do roaming testing with the three adapter cards. What you cannot do, is test the 5GHz wireless frequencies when you're using the three adapter cards. I imagine this is because the application locks the cards into using 1, 6 and 11 only during the testing. It would be nice if you were able to use a fourth card to detect signals on the 5GHz frequencies while you were checking 1, 6 and 11 at the same time.

I made a video of my findings while using the application. In it I explain the information shown in the application when it is used in conjunction with the AirMagnet Spectrum XT card. It does make it simpler to use both tools at the same time, since you can walk the area you're surveying just once, and then analyze the data collected. Sometimes I still prefer to use just the Spectrum XT application by itself so that I can concentrate on the spectrum data being shown by the application. Blending the two applications is certainly a time saver.

I hope you find the video helpful, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts on things I described, or let me know if I left things out that you think I should have covered.

How to use Cisco Spectrum Expert (or at least how I use it)

I was chatting with @the_wifi_guy the other day and he asked me if I had any videos on how to use the Cisco Spectrum Expert application. I found an ancient video I recorded back in 2008 when it was called AirMagnet Spectrum Analyzer. I edited out the customer specific information and posted it to YouTube. The video quality was bad and I barely covered the ins and outs of the application but I thought other people might get some use out of it.

Today I finally got around to making a video on how I use the Cisco Spectrum Expert application to find sources of interference, and how to tweak the settings in the application. I had to break the video into two parts since it ran 30 minutes long (!).

Yellowjacket b/a/n/g Wi-Fi Analyzer - a review

Recently I had the opportunity to get some hands on time with a Yellowjacket b/a/n/g Wi-Fi Analyzer. I'd heard of the device before, but I'd never come across one in real life. It is also incredibly hard to find out the retail cost of this device. The manufacturer's website only shows the basic information on operating the device. All information requests must be obtained by contacting their sales support team. I have a pending request, but no hard data yet.

This device is an HP iPAQ running Windows Mobile 5.0 encased in a large yellow plastic enclosure which also houses the wireless cards used by the Yellowjacket software. The iPAQ's internal wireless card is disabled and the Yellowjacket wireless card is used for the spectrum analysis. The Yellowjacket softaware is run as an application on the iPAQ, much the same as any other application would be installed/run on an HP iPAQ.

When I was using the Yellowjacket b/a/n/g device, I also had the Cisco Spectrum Expert application running on my Lenovo x201 laptop as a control since I know how the application works under normal circumstances, as well as what the display shows when I enable a wireless security camera as a source of constant interference.

The Yellowjacket b/a/n/g has a series of tabs you can select to show different wireless information. It seems that the tab that would be in use under most circumstances would be the MAC tab. This tab shows the MAC address, SSID, SNR and RSSI of all detected wireless devices and clients.

When I had this screen selected as the main display, and I powered on the wireless security camera - a strange thing happened. The MAC tab display that had previously shown all the detected wireless access points and clients began to show less and less listed devices, until the entire MAC listing was blank.

I navigated through the different filter options for the MAC tab, and found nothing that I could select to show the list of MAC addresses again. When I switched over to the Spectrum tab to see if the wireless security camera showed a disturbance in the spectrum readout. It did, but since the screen is only 640 x 480, the entire 2.4GHz spectrum is shown quite small on the screen. If I were not experienced in using spectrum analysis tools, there would have been no real way for me to visibly discern that there was a source of interference that was critically impacting the 2.4GHz channel 6. The detected spectrum is shown as a green wave form, and there was a visible spike in the waveform, but the color of the spike was still green. To anyone with little spectrum analysis experience, the spike would not have stood out, and green usually means 'good'.


I sent an email on 8/5/2011 to Berkley Varitronics Systems' info@bvssystems.com email address asking about why the MAC display tab began to clear when I powered on the wireless security camera. I have yet to receive a response to my request for additional information to explain the unexpected behavior of the Yellowjacket b/a/n/g Wi-Fi spectrum analyzer.

The device is described as being able to analyze the entire 2.0-4.0 & 4.9-5.9 GHz spectrum, but the 2.4GHz and 5GHz antenna connectors on the device aren't far enough apart to connect the 2.4GHz and 5GHz antennas at the same time. I also didn't see a way in the application to analyze both spectrums concurrently. The inability of the device to detect sources of interference on the 2.4 and 5GHz spectrums at the same time causes the wireless engineer to have to do twice the walking to test the same physical space for both wireless frequencies.

All in all, I was very disappointed in the  Yellowjacket b/a/n/g device. I had hoped that this device would be comparable to the Cisco Spectrum Expert, AirMagnet Spectrum XT and the Metageek Wi-Spy dBx spectrum analyis tools. The simple fact that you cannot quickly switch between scanning the 2.4 and 5GHz spectrums makes the Yellowjacket b/a/n/g a poor choice. The inability of the Yellowjacket b/a/n/g to display and alert the user to the presence of a major source of interference was also very surprising. I hope that I will hear from the Yellowjacket b/a/n/g tech support team and find out why the scan screen ceases to show the previously detected access points and wireless clients once the Yellowjacket b/a/n/g is exposed to a source of non 802.11 wireless interference. Based on my experience using the Yellowjacket b/a/n/g Wi-Fi Analyzer, I could not with good conscience recommend this tool to anyone needing a handheld spectrum analysis tool.


I also made a video recording of the whole process for easier demonstration of how the Yellowjacket b/a/n/g responded under the testing conditions.

Previously posted on YouTube: Cisco Spectrum Expert, AirMagnet Spectrum XT & WiSpy Chanalyzer 4

Previously posted: MetaGeek Chanalyzer Pro - Beta Testing

WCS CleanAir mini video tutorials

My pal @revolutionwifi (Andrew VonNagy) wrote up a great post about Cisco CleanAir and his real world experiences with it, so I thought I'd follow up with a couple of little videos of some demo gear I'd been working with for a couple of weeks.

In the first video, I go through the configuration steps outlined in the Cisco CleanAir Deployment Guide.  At first I didn't realize that when I set the Air Quality Alarm Threshold way down at 35 that i was effectively removing all the sources of interference that had been displayed on the WCS map. I figured out what was wrong, and when the interference sources were again displayed in WCS I picked back up where I left off.

Of course, there is more to CleanAir than what I put in this video given the 10 minute limitation - but I thought it covered most of the basics.

The second video shows putting a 3500 series AP into SE-Connect mode.  SE-Connect mode is where you use Cisco Spectrum Expert to connect to a remote AP and monitor the RF spectrum analysis information it is sensing from the Cisco Spectrum Expert application on your laptop/PC.  This ability to be where the interference is happening can save you a trip across town or possibly farther than that.  It allows you to get an immediate view into what is in the RF environment and not just hope that it is still happening when you get to the site so you can try to fix it then.

The third video is a side by side by side comparison of Cisco Spectrum Expert, AirMagnet Spectrum XT and Metageek's Wi-Spy dBx Chanalyzer 4 application.  I showed them one after another so you can get an idea of what the default settings for each application shows you. Here's a picture of the mess of adapters/tools.