Are Non-WLAN Sources of Interference Crashing Your Network Performance Party?
Author/Blog Contributor - Karthik Krishnaswamy
Date: February 01, 2012
Wireless networks rely heavily on performance to ensure a functional environment that adds value for an organization. While Wi-Fi use continues to grow by more than 35 percent a year, unfortunately so do interference issues that can upset the performance balance and lead to loss of productivity and functionality of business critical applications and services. This not only decreases employee productivity, but also eats up troubleshooting time for IT staff. New devices and products using radio signals (RF) at offices and campuses – such as microwaves, Bluetooth, x-rays, wireless game controllers, baby monitors, motion detectors, cordless phones and more – wreak havoc on a network’s performance and can send WLAN engineers scrambling for solutions.
Because finding these issues and fixing them fast is vital to network performance, Fluke Networks conducted a survey to see how big the impact really is to today’s network staff. The WLAN Interference Survey covered 17 different vertical markets including automotive, health care, service providers, telecommunications and more.
The results show that interference is wreaking havoc on today’s networks:
- A remarkable 82 percent of respondents experienced WLAN performance problems caused by interference from non-WLAN devices.
- The most common known sources of interference are those pestering microwaves at 69 percent, and Bluetooth devices at 50 percent.
- 62.5 percent of non-WLAN interference sources are unknown to the organization or engineer/technician.
- 63 percent of participants reported having difficulty identifying the source of non-WLAN interference in their network, causing additional time and resources spent in solving these interference problems.
The survey also revealed that 98 percent of respondents reported that a tool capable of identifying RF interference sources unique to their environment is, or would be, extremely valuable. And, 35 percent reported that they already use AirMagnet Spectrum XT – a tool designed to provide interference identification and classification – to track down sources of interference on a regular basis.
Fortunately, the newly updated Fluke Networks AirMagnet Spectrum XT is the first to detect interference from ANY RF source. Spectrum XT automatically highlights unclassified repeating spectrum patterns from non-WLAN Radio Frequency (RF) interference sources. Engineers can then easily create custom signatures for future alerts to identify those sources of interference, reducing the time and cost associated with troubleshooting. AirMagnet Spectrum XT is then able to automatically scan, alert and report on those previously identified interference sources. This tool helps organizations more easily troubleshoot interference issues detected in their networks and ensure the network meets organizational expectations. Problem solved!
If you, like the respondents of our survey, struggle with interference crashing your WLAN performance party, be sure to visit the Fluke Networks website and read about the overviews and features of AirMagnet Spectrum XT.