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Analyze This! The AirMagnet Laptop Mobile WLAN Analyzer: Page 4 of 4

AirMagnet Laptop Analyzer: AirMagnet Laptop with Cisco's Aironet AIR-PCM352 802.11b Adapter Card is $3,495. AirMagnet Laptop with Cisco's Aironet AIR-LMC352 802.11b Adapter Card with removable omni-directional antenna is $3,795. AirMagnet Combo (provides dual support for both the Pocket PC 2002 and the Windows platform) with Cisco's Aironet AIR-PCM352 802.11b Adapter Card is $4,495. The AirMagnet Combo Pro (provides dual support for both the Pocket PC 2002 and the Windows platform) with Cisco's Aironet AIR-LMC352 802.11b Adapter Card is $4,795. AirMagnet Inc. 650-694-6754
www.AirMagnet.com

AirMagnet is careful not to position the laptop version of its product as a full-blown protocol analyzer, and with good reason. Unlike WildPacket's Airopeek NX, where the packet decodes can be viewed as data is captured, AirMagnet's packet capture must be stopped to decode it. In addition, it doesn't provide any information about higher layer protocols and the product lacks the peer mapping functionality found in most analyzers. In short, don't rely on AirMagnet if the environment requires true protocol analysis capabilities. Although the laptop system worked as expected, there's no question that the Pocket PC version is better suited to this task.

At the NWC lab, we consider the AirMagnet Pocket PC version a must-have product for most WLAN environments. However, it's not clear where the Laptop version fits in the market. It doesn't have enough functionality to go head-to-head with full-featured wireless analyzers, and it lacks the innate portability and elegant simplicity of the Handheld version. While AirMagnet Laptop effectively consolidates the multiple screen views found on its sister product and provides more flexible output capabilities, there's really not enough added value to offer an enthusiastic recommendation.

Dilip Advani is a research associate at the Center for Emerging Network Technologies at Syracuse University. Dilip's experience includes working as a network engineer and as a Telecom consultant. Send your comments on this article to him at [email protected].