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I have an idea for a utility to display WiFi usage and I want to know if it is already available and if not, would it be of use.

Basically the idea is to monitor the transmissions on a channel and use the duration field in the frame header to determine how much of the airtime is used and by which device. The display would be a series of bars scrolling down (or across) the screen. The height (width) of each bar would indicate the number of microseconds being reserved by each sender. There would also be an indicator of the mac address of the device and the direction of transmission (device to AP or AP to device). If the bars were a different colour per device then there would be a visual indicator of which device is taking the airtime. There could also be a way to indicate if there are different APs communicating on the channel. Taking it a step further data rate being used could be incorporated in the display.

A top N airtime users could be maintained as a table on the screen or an alternate view.

Hi Michael,

All these tools exist already in the market for several years  (at least since 2008 and probably longer).

Note - not all solutions are "Telco" grade, or if you want to do "overlay" Telco solutions (2nd-Tier telco's running

over an existing Telco network) then some other factors need to be taken into account to do the measuring.

(In Asia we have done this for large telcos in several countries. With large I mean easily 250.000 Access Points to manage for 1 city)

Most of the enterprise solutions are not Telco grade or can handle the capacity needed.

Typically in the Telco environment they want to have these solutions, but also in enterprises like to do WiFi Forensics (Security).

In our instructor led training we show these solutions:

1.  Fluke Networks / AirMagnet WiFi analyser  or AirMagnet Enterprise + Sensors gets all the statistics

2. Zebra Technologies AirDefense Services Platform (aka Motorola Solutions/AirDefense) have a very good WiFi Forensic analysis function built-in

3. Cloud based solution providers:

     Cisco Meraki      ( or Cisco Prime NCS)

     (now HP) Aruba Cloud

     AirTight Networks Cloud solution    (or the standalone solution AirTight SpectraGuard)

     Aerohive Manager

     Ruckus ZoneDirector

4. Another interesting solution to look at is 7 Signals (the Eye), but they do not sell in Asia the last time I checked,

     but they do sell in Europe. One of the customers in the Netherlands are using them, but you can see a good

    presentation at WLPC Austin, Texas  (wlanpros.com)

For the client devices monitoring the air-usage, there are also different solutions available.

(Peter Thorncroft did a demo last time with AiroTime of Aruba, but on the Android Playstore you can find others)