WiFi system alarm reporting??

[BobY777]

I have installed WiFi in a couple hotels. Just as many others have.

How do I monitor and analyze a WiFi system remotely (maybe from 500 miles away) so that I will know what part of the system is malfunctioning, if something is to go wrong?

I guess I'm looking for a WiFi system with alarm reporting. But I don't think they make such an animal.

A hotel staff person may tell me their WiFi system isn't working properly. But I can't rely on what they are telling me...they don't know. And I can't travel 500 miles to "fix" something that may not be defective.

They might say the WiFi system has no signal, when it is really the GMs wireless USB device that is malfunctioning. I can go there and find out there really is plenty of signal. This has happened to me twice. They say that the WiFi system has no signal, but it is the WiFi users computer thats not set up right.

How do you WiFi gurus know if you really should take a 500 mile trip to the hotel to fix the WiFi system, that may not really be defective? You can't rely on the hotel staff to tell you if it is malfunctioning. They don't know how to analyze the system.

I guess I'm looking for a good cost effective method to test the system remotely to know that all components are working properly.

I have heard that the WiFi installer might just ping the Internet gateway and the access points remotely to test them. Is that good enough? Maybe thats as good as it gets for remote analysis for a WiFi system?

I believe there may be commercial systems that will do alarm reporting, but I think they are thousand of dollars.

There must be a good cost effective way to do it.

Thanks much for any input.

[danielmaui]

Airpath provides reporting for $1 per month per gateway device, but I find it unreliable. Basically, you set their system to check at whatever frequency you want, and it pings the device(s). If it doesn't succeed, then it sends an email to your specified email address.

Airpath's preferred gateways are Zyxel-brand WSG-100s, and these $500 gateways freeze up ALL THE TIME. While they are in "crash" mode, they often will still let you ping them, let you connect **through** them to LAN-connected devices on the other side, but at the same time provide no access to new or existing users. Frequently however, they also do not respond to pings or allow administrator access via the built-in web server, in which case you can't even warm-reboot the rascals. It is frustrating to no end.

Unlike you however, I don't have to drive 500 miles to hard-reboot them. For that distance, I'd hire a local teenager to do a drive-by, verify the service is up, and do simple troubleshooting if not.

[BobY777]

thank you for your response.

I wonder what other WiFi installers do in order to monitor possible alarm conditions at their WiFi installations. I guess just pinging the gateway and the access points might be as good as they can do, in a cost effective way.

But, I like like hiring the local teenager. That may be a feesible solution.

Or maybe I could get the hotel owner to buy an inexpensive laptop and I could put the site survey software in it. I could then teach them how to use it.

If I need to remotely analyze the system, I could have them on the phone and I could tell them what to do with the laptop and they could tell me the results. The teenager could do that too. Thats getting them, to help me, help them.

I didn't know about the Zyxel access points freezing up. I was even thinking about getting a B-4000 from Zyxel. Maybe the B-4000 doesn't freeze up. Maybe it's just the one you talked about. People I asked, said the B-4000 was stable. I sure hope that is right.

I use the Dlink DSA-3100 in a couple places. Seems it freezes up, about every couple weeks, when it has about 4 or more access points connected to it. We have one place where just one access point is connected to the DSA 3100 and it just works and works...no problem.

But to be fair, they are going to come out soon with new firmware to take care of this lock up problem. (at least I hope it fixes it). I do like the features of the DLink DSA 3100. When they get that lock up problem fixed, that DSA 3100 will be a really great cost effective Internet gateway. It will be hard to beat for the price.

Due to the DSA 3100's present lock up problem, I have been looking at the Nomadix HSG. That is a great gateway. It does cost a lot though. You'll find out though, that there are real cheap hotel owners you work for, that will make it impossible to get the Nomadix for them. Some of them want things almost below your cost. I think I'm going to not pursue hotel owners for WiFi jobs, who are cheapskates. There are some WiFi installers who will install very low quality WiFi systems for a low price for the cheap hotel owners. But that system doesn't even have an Internet gateway. And it has no Limitation of Liability or able to take passwords to keep out hackers and broadband stealers. And they therefore can't even target advertise to their WiFi users.

But for a couple of our clients who want the best, I say get Nomadix HSG. I found out, you can even do 2 or more subnets on the HSG, with just one static IP address. So you can have two subnets that can't see each other for security (like a local and private port). The Nomadix makes it easy. So for my clients that want the best, where price is no obstical, I'm getting them Nomadix. The big hotel chains use Nomadix. It's just the small hotel owners that don't want to pay for the good quality.

Well thanks much for your info.

I would also appreciate other peoples ideas though on WiFi alarm reporting.

Thanks

[FlaWireless]

Dialup modem

[BobY777]

Hi FlaWireless:

I see you are saying to use a dial up modem. I'm not quite sure if I understand your idea of utilizing a dial up modem to do alarm monitoring of a remote WiFi installation.

Could you elaborate a little more?

Are you saying I could have a dial up modem installed at the WiFi location, set up for auto answer, when I dial into it from my remote location? I have done that in the past when I use to work in cellular engineering. Only there, we had alarm monitoring terminals that were built into our cellular equipment. I don't know of any WiFi equipment that has alarm reporting built into it.

Looking forward for more info. Thanks much for your help.

[WFI-Maestro]

There are a couple of options for you to monitor the RF environment, but they do cost some cash. If you monitor the gateway for Internet connectivity (there are lots of cheap products to do that...I use IPSentry and it can page or email you when the connection goes down for a period of time), and use a product to monitor the RF environment you should pretty much have your bases covered. Your options to monitor the RF portion will cost you a few bucks, but you can cost justify it pretty fast if your making 500 mile trips (especially if you fly). It also gets a lot easier to swallow if you get some critical mass on the number of sites you have up. The 2 products that my company sells that can do the job for you are AirMagnet and Aruba. AirMagnet will be pricier, starting at about $9000 for the management server and 4 hardware sensors (rule of thumb...1 sensor per 5-6 APs), and $750 a sensor after that. Aruba is a bit easier to swallow...$5000 for the switch and RF Lock software (which monitors for security and performance), and $400 per AP/air monitor. I'm not trying to sell it to you, just letting you know what kind of costs you might be looking at. You could also consider throwing a Linux box in with Kismet on it that you can access remotely (throwing a modem in and connecting to a phone line might be a good idea too). Only problem is that it you'll only be able to see the APs that are withing range of the card you put in the PC, but you could put a high gain external antenna on the card to increase the range. Good luck.

Mark