Network Management Strategies for the CIO
With this in mind, I began a project last summer to quantify the problem, define a methodology for evaluating the effects of interference on wireless LANs, and to actually run detailed experiments on just how bad the problem might be. The results can be seen in a series of Farpoint Group White Papers and Technical Notes, which you can find below. The experiments I ran evaluated the impacts of a number of forms of interference on general Wi-Fi traffic, voice over IP over Wi-Fi (VoFi) traffic, and video over Wi-Fi (VidFi) traffic. And they weren't at all pretty in a number of cases.
A bigger challenge, though, is exactly how to monitor for and correct interference issues when they occur. As it turns out, we're now seeing the availability of a new class of Wi-Fi management products -- what I call Spectrum Assurance (SA) tools -- that can identify any form of interference, even that from non-Wi-Fi sources, and recommend how to correct the situation. I expect these tools will be integrated into system-level wireless LAN management products over the next few years. So, as you'll see in the reports noted above, though interference can have a positively devastating impact on WLAN traffic, help is on the way. For that reason, I've concluded that even as more products and systems occupy the unlicensed bands, we have the technology to ensure the performance of WLAN systems well into the future.
Wi-Fi interference reports in PDF
The effect of interference on general wireless LAN traffic
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This was first published in March 2007
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