The Challenges that Arise in Monitoring 802.11ac Equipment

From WildPackets Blog : "This week, we want to focus on the process of monitoring your new 802.11ac equipment once it’s installed. Before you can monitor 802.11ac traffic, you need to be able to capture the traffic. This is true regardless of the monitoring solution used, and capturing 11ac traffic remains one of the biggest challenges with this new technology.

Let’s take just a moment and step back to see how this has been done with 802.11a/b/g/n. Wireless LAN monitoring did not come without its struggles in these bands either, but over time the industry settled into a comfortable solution using laptops with 802.11 USB WLAN adapters. This solution is highly portable, making on-site WLAN analysis easy, regardless of the location. Most solutions work with only a subset of available USB WLAN adapters, and some require a custom adapter. In either case, the key requirement is that the WLAN adapter be able to be put into “promiscuous mode,” sometimes called sniffing mode. If this capability is not exposed in the device, then it has no chance of being used as part of a WLAN network monitoring and analysis solution. This combination remains as the “go-to” solution for most WLAN analysts, both in the field and in corporate WLAN environments.

So, what’s changed in 802.11ac? Let’s take a look at a few key differences between 11ac and previous technologies that are making WLAN monitoring and analysis more difficult.

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