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R E V I E W

Scanning the Airwaves

April 17, 2003
By Dave Molta and Dilip Advani

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Companion Offerings

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	In this article
	Introduction
	AirMagnet Handheld Wireless LAN Analyzer 2.5
	Other Products Reviewed
	Executive Summary
	How We Tested
	Companion Offerings
	Report Card

The four vendors whose products we tested have other offerings that complement their handheld WLAN analyzer, and each told us it's common for customers to buy the products as a package. Here are some of the available options:

Fluke's OptiView is a unique, tablet-styled network analyzer that provides seven-layer protocol analysis, active discovery, SNMP device analysis, RMON 2 traffic analysis and physical-layer testing.

In addition to Ethernet analysis, OptiView can be equipped with a WLAN option that provides full wireless performance and protocol analysis capabilities.

Berkeley Varitronics offers a wide range of wireless analysis tools, but we found the vendor's Bird's Eye mapping software tool works well in conjunction with Yellowjacket to provide sophisticated site-survey analysis. By taking RF measurements in multiple locations using the Site Surveyor utility, importing this into a graphical floor plan using Site Creator, and processing it using Site Analyzer, Bird's Eye can help you optimize the location of access points based on coverage and bandwidth requirements.

Sniffer Wireless, the notebook equivalent of Sniffer Wireless PDA, provides advanced protocol-analysis capabilities, including the network monitoring, capturing, decoding and filtering capabilities that have made Sniffer one of the leading network-analysis tools.

The AirMagnet Laptop Duo a/b is a grown-up notebook-sized sibling of AirMagnet, providing analysis of 802.11a and 802.11b simultaneously and in real time. Functionally, the product is quite similar to the Pocket PC offering, which makes the learning curve easy, and the extra screen real-estate of the notebook allows a wider range of information to be displayed at the same time.