January 05, 2009

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AirMagnet AirMedic

AirMedic is a new type of network tool that brings AirMagnet troubleshooting to the rest of us. Built upon AirMagnet's unmatched experience in WiFi troubleshooting, AirMedic is a fast and simple, "just the facts" approach to dealing with the periodic performance and reliability problems that all wireless LANs experience. AirMedic does this by bringing together the two most essential perspectives of WLAN performance, combining lab-quality spectrum analysis and basic WiFi traffic analysis into one simple view.

In wireless, not all problems are the same — some are due to RF interference from non-WiFi devices such as Bluetooth, while other problems are solely rooted in the WiFi realm such as overloaded devices or configurations leading to low data speeds. Only AirMedic gives you the ability to see both sides of the equation so that you know precisely where things are going wrong. With AirMedic you can see RF interference, and know immediately the real impact it is having on end-users in the network. If the problem is not due to RF interference, you can see which channels and devices are having problems and why.

In addition to this game-changing approach to performance troubleshooting, AirMedic brings unprecedented flexibility to your wireless toolkit. Unlike other WiFi spectrum analyzers that require expensive, single use dedicated spectrum cards or adapters, AirMedic uses the Intel Centrino 2 wireless adapter (5100/5300 series) built-in to modern laptops. This first of its kind integration means that there are no expensive external cards that can get lost or broken and that your troubleshooting tools have the same RF perspective on the environment that an actual end-user would see, meaning better response times and better accuracy.

The core of the AirMedic solution is a lab-quality spectrum analyzer that lets you look into the physical layer of your wireless LANs to identify interference and problems in the RF environment. However, unlike traditional spectrum analyzers, AirMedic does not require you to be an RF expert in order to solve problems. Instead AirMedic offers multiple spectrum views to ensure that you see the information you need to identify and resolve any problem. Including:

• Spectrum FFT for real-time RF analysis
• Spectrum Density to see patterns that reveal signals that are hard to see in real-time
• Spectrogram provides a rolling RF history for seeing intermittent RF bursts

AirMedic boils the network down to its most core components and delivers them in a single integrated view. A single mouse click provides instant access to any of the 14 available RF and WiFi (optional) charts, ensuring that you can always find the information that you need. Built in "Easy Views" provide some of the most popular charts for troubleshooting particular problems, or users can save their own customized views tailored to their troubleshooting methodology. AirMedic also makes it easy to capture information for reporting with simple copy-and-paste support for all charts and graphs in the solution. Simply plug in any AirMagnet supported wireless adapter, and AirMedic instantly provides performance analysis for all WiFi devices and channels in the vicinity. Channel utilization charts let you know if one of your channels is being overloaded in terms of traffic and devices. Speed charts provide insight into efficiency problems in the network. Charts of packet retry and error rates easily reveal areas where WiFi communications are failing. AirMedic also provides a full inventory of the WiFi devices in the environment including APs, end-user stations and even WiFi phones. AirMedic provides an inventory of all WiFi devices in the environment and lets you visualize the impact of that device in the spectrum. Simply click an AP, SSID or channel and AirMedic provides color-coded outlines of the selected devices on the spectrum density graph. This makes it easy to determine if a particular RF signal is from a WiFi device or a non-WiFi source. AirMedic provides clear visibility into both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz WiFi bands and delivers the pinpoint resolution necessary to find and resolve interference and RF problems. Users can choose to view bands individually or leverage "mixed mode" for complete coverage of all WiFi bands.

AirMedic also provides unique visibility by providing views broken into lower, mid and upper sections of the 5 GHz spectrum. This ensures you always see the same level of resolution and detail regardless of the portion of the spectrum, and that you see all of your RF environment no matter if you use 802.11a,b, g or n.

AirMedic's simple interface keeps everything at your fingertips without searching between multiple pages. All information can be seen in a single view alongside spectrum information, meaning the relationship between spectrum and real performance is always clear and ensuring that you have full visibility into both WiFi and RF-based problems.

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The installation and operation of AirMagnet AirMedic (software-only) requires separate hardware with one of the following minimum system requirements below.