Lots of Blue on the screen

[stein97]

Newbie here to Chanalyzer, right now i am demo-ing trying to make a case to buy.

I have Chanalyzer running in CleanAir on a AIR-CAP3502I. Note that the AIR-CAP3502I is not running in SE-Connect mode because we are in business hours.

While doing a capture I enable % Density and the area is various degree of blue, the area never seems to go back to black.



Trying to figure out if it is a configuration issue or if its because I am using the CleanAir feature.

thanks

Stein97


****UPDATE****

So i changed the AP over to SE-Connect and I am getting a better picture.


Since I am remote is there a way to get the SSID of the 802.11 interfering devices?

thanks

Stein

[Joel]

Hey Stein,

Thanks for test-driving Chanalyzer!

So i changed the AP over to SE-Connect and I am getting a better picture.

It looks like you've already discovered this, but just so that it's totally clear: When an AP is serving clients, you'll only get spectrum analysis data from the channel that it is serving clients on. For example, you will only get spectrum data on channel 1, and channel 36, because those are the two channels that the AP is serving.

In SE-Connect mode, it opens up the whole 2.4 and 5 GHz bands for spectrum analysis. Same view, just more of it.

While doing a capture I enable % Density and the area is various degree of blue, the area never seems to go back to black.

This is probably related to the timespan that you have selected in the Navigation Waterfall. The entire application works around the timespan. For example, if you have 30 seconds of time selected, then we show utilization in the Density view for that rolling 30 seconds. The same goes for the primary waterfall, if 30 seconds is selected, then the waterfall shows 30 seconds of data.

Here are a couple of KB articles that I think will help:
How to use the Navigation Waterfall
How to use the Density View

Since I am remote is there a way to get the SSID of the 802.11 interfering devices?

Chanalyzer can pull spectrum analysis data from two sources:

1. A Wi-Spy (which is our USB spectrum analyzer) and your onboard Wi-Fi adapter (this is called "Wi-Spy Mode")
2. A Cisco CleanAir AP (this is called "CleanAir Mode")

While Cisco CleanAir gets us some interesting information such as what type of radio is there and how often it is taking, sadly it does not bring back Wi-Fi scanning data. If you plug a Wi-Spy into your local machine, Chanalyzer will use that, and it will also pull Wi-Fi scanning data from the Wi-Fi adapter on your machine. Since you don't have a Wi-Spy, you can't test drive what that looks like live, but if you visit the "Learn" tab in Chanalyzer, there are some Wi-Spy recordings that you can play back that show what the Wi-Fi scanning looks like.

In Wi-Spy Mode, we basically combine the spectrum data from the USB Wi-Spy, and from your onboard Wi-Fi adapter. More info on that here.

I hope that helps, thanks!