Wireless Field Day 3 - MetaGeek

Wireless Field Day 3 - MetaGeek

By CWNP On 09/13/2012 - 26 Comments

MetaGeek is a company that specializes in wireless analysis software. From their free or low cost insider application to the Chanalyzer Pro application, they demonstrated the capabilities and potential of their solutions.

 
First, they demonstrated the inSSIDer application, which is now available on Windows, Mac and Android tablets. No iPad support? Talk to Apple about that. inSSIDer is one of the best Wi-Fi location applications out there. It is used by elite WLAN engineers and people like my mother-in-law at the same time. For those who know what they're looking at, it provides great details for WLAN troubleshooting and monitoring. For those who don't, it shows them the wireless networks available to them in a bit more detail than View Available Networks in Windows 7 and Windows 8 or some other client utility.
 
Next, we saw ChanalyzerPro. The reporting features have been enhanced with the important ability to add new custom blocks. This is great for small-scale site surveys in that it provides both spectrum graphs and standard report components like logos, explanatory text and so on. They also showed us a recording of 802.11ac spectrum activity, which was of great interest to the WFD3 attendees. I will be providing videos of live captures using Wi-Spy and Chanalyzer Pro next week as well, so look for those.
 
The third product shown was Eye P.A., which is used to analyze capture files for WLAN troubleshooting and monitoring. They talked about how much they learned from Keith Parsons when he came to their headquarters to teach them. One thing he emphasized was that beacons were consuming too much of the application view. They added filters to remove beacons and see, more practically, what's going on in their Wi-Fi. Thanks, Keith!
 
Eye P.A. now supports internal live capture of packets if you have an AirPcap adapter. However, you can still open any PCAP file captured with other software, such as WireShark, OmniPeek or AirMagnet tools.
 
The Air Time chart is a great tool for understanding how the actual medium is being used over time. The unique graphs in Eye P.A. make it a great tool even for those who may use more advanced protocol analyzers. As with anything in life, different perspectives open our minds to deeper understanding, and this is true of our network graphs as well. The Air Time graph also shows information per client, including the very valuable retransmission rate per client. Bigger "slices" in the chart indicate clients/devices consuming more air time.
 
Eye P.A. now supports packet view once zoomed into the individual client conversation. You can see the conversation ladder for the session and total bytes transmitting among other valuable insights. The view (which I must add is awesome) is simply called Packets. Thank you for keeping things simple while giving us complex information MetaGeek.
 
Frames Are Food, Tom Tagged with: spectrum analysis, Metageek, tom carpenter, WFD3, wireless field day

Blog Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within these blog posts are solely the author’s and do not reflect the opinions and beliefs of the Certitrek, CWNP or its affiliates.