Although most enterprise IT professionals appreciate the long-term business value of wireless LANs, use of this technology remains low enough to mask underlying design and management problems. The most popular applications--e-mail and Web access--don't place extraordinary demands on WLAN infrastructure. For this reason, buying expensive wireless troubleshooting tools to fix what isn't broken may seem like a low priority. But if you anticipate your organization will support more wireless data services, you'll need specialized tools that will satisfy field technicians and WLAN designers alike.
In our tests of handheld WLAN analyzers, we considered PDA-style devices that cost less than $5,000 and directly troubleshoot 802.11b WLAN traffic. We received equipment from four vendors: AirMagnet's Handheld Wireless LAN Analyzer 2.5, Berkeley Varitronics Systems' Yellowjacket WLAN Test Receiver 3.0, Fluke Networks' WaveRunner Wireless Network Analyzer and Network Associates' Sniffer Wireless PDA 1.0.
Although the four products are considerably different, we gave AirMagnet's device the Editor's Choice nod because it provides the best combination of analytic and diagnostic tools and its interface makes the most of the Pocket PC platform. Berkeley Varitronics' entry provides the strongest Layer 1 RF analysis, and the Sniffer PDA does top-notch high-layer protocol analysis, but no product we tested is as well-rounded as AirMagnet's.
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