Wi-Fi Network Analyzer
Monitor wireless networks
Using an automated Wi-Fi network analyzer is critical for ensuring business network uptime. With SolarWinds® Network Performance Monitor (NPM), admins gain oversight over internal wireless network performance and can even view external connectivity issues. SolarWinds NPM retrieves performance metrics for autonomous access points, wireless controllers, and clients. It also offers fault, performance, and availability monitoring, cross-stack network data correlation, hop-by-hop network path analysis, and other crucial wireless analysis features.
Accelerate Wi-Fi troubleshooting
SolarWinds NPM Wi-Fi analyzer features are designed to expedite network troubleshooting. Automatically discover network devices, map network paths, and see performance metrics, link utilization, and wireless coverage in one easy-to-use dashboard. Quickly detect, diagnose, and resolve network performance issues on a customizable web platform, and share views across your IT team. Gain greater control over your Wi-Fi analysis process—the NPM dashboard allows admins to drag and drop performance metrics in a visual interface for immediate cross-stack network data correlation.
Access crucial Wi-Fi analysis factors
Keep an eye on crucial wireless performance factors like device downtime. Improve visibility into critical devices, firewalls, and load balancers with SolarWinds Network Insight™ for Cisco ASA and F5 BIG-IP. With NPM Wi-Fi network tools, you can gain information about access points like name, type, SSID, and connected clients. View similar details about each client, as well as MAC address, signal strength, time connected, data rate, and bytes received/transmitted. Avoid service disruptions by understanding bandwidth trends and staying up-to-date on data packet traffic.
Perform straightforward Wi-Fi analysis
NPM is built to make it easy to perform a comprehensive Wi-Fi network analysis. NPM Wi-Fi network analyzer features can automatically recognize and begin polling your wireless APs and controllers as soon as they are added to the SolarWinds® Platform database. You can view updated metadata and performance details of APs and clients connected to each AP. Once your data is collected, SolarWinds PerfStack™ allows you to compare different metrics side by side using an intuitive drag-and-drop interface. Select the information you want to view and create a common timeline to correlate issues without switching between multiple tools. After identifying the cause of a network problem, PerfStack facilitates simple cross-team sharing of analysis projects.
Visualize network paths and enhance service quality
Gain visibility across your networks for a more comprehensive Wi-Fi analysis. For a broad Wi-Fi overview, use NetPath™, NPM’s visual traceroute tool designed to provide an end-to-end map of devices, applications, networks, and vendors on your network with their associated performance details. You can also track every hop and view latency historically or in real-time. Using the information provided by network path analysis, you can rapidly identify issues, locate users who may be down, and achieve a holistic overview of how your network delivers applications. All this allows you to troubleshoot and optimize more effectively to enhance the user experience.
Get More on Wi-Fi Network Analysis
What is Wi-Fi analysis?
Wi-Fi analysis is the ongoing process of monitoring Wi-Fi infrastructure and performance in order to resolve any errors that arise. Wi-Fi analysis requires insight into network devices, paths, and key metrics corresponding to performance and end-user experience. As the infrastructure of networks continues to become more complex, using Wi-Fi analyzer tools can help you monitor your network to keep it running smoothly.
When performing Wi-Fi analysis, admins can utilize various methods for drilling down into what may be causing slowdowns, outages, and more. Wireless data such as IP address, SSID, and bytes transmitted by a user can reveal who's interacting with the network and how. Monitoring availability and performance can help you discover which applications are exhausting bandwidth. Vigilant Wi-Fi analysis helps businesses maintain a finely-tuned, reliable network that can handle the everyday demands of business-critical tasks.
What are the benefits of automatic Wi-Fi network analysis tools?
Wi-Fi network analyzer software, also called Wi-Fi analytics tools, uses detailed dashboards to display network data in text or visual form. Admins use the information displayed on these dashboards to monitor the network and identify areas to optimize Wi-Fi configuration or troubleshoot issues. Automated analysis tools can give a broad overview of your network and provide immediate alerts, making it easier to detect the root cause of connectivity issues and resolve them before the user is even aware of the problem.
Wi-Fi analysis is critical to maintaining overall performance, and end-user experience across a business network. With enhanced visibility into network factors like traffic, configuration, and performance, admins can help businesses avoid costly downtime, resource inefficiencies, and compliance gaps. Powerful Wi-Fi network analyzer tools allow businesses to ensure connectivity and avoid service disruptions that could affect productivity and impact a company's overall operations.
What types of issues can be identified by Wi-Fi analysis?
Slow response times, minimal availability—there are many issues that can cause your network to underperform. If left unresolved, these problems can compound into costly fixes and an unreliable network. Through a Wi-Fi analysis solution, you can monitor the status of your network and detect issues such as downed VPN tunnels, high CPU or memory usage, congested servers, failure of routers or other hardware, and application slowdowns. Powerful Wi-Fi analysis software can offer detailed alerts, providing crucial information, including user activity, and node name, allowing you to troubleshoot problems quickly.
What type of wireless data does NPM provide?
To help ensure that admins have the information they need to take steps in optimizing their network and addressing issues, NPM offers a list of all wireless access points (APs) and which clients are connected to each AP.
Additional access point information provided by NPM Wi-Fi analysis features includes device type, channels used, IP address, AP name, SSID, and how many clients are connected to the network. Admins can find further details on clients, such as their Received Signal Strength Indication (RSSI), MAC Address, bytes received and transmitted, time connected, and their data rate.
How to monitor Meraki wireless infrastructure in NPM?
A Meraki infrastructure allows users to manage all of their Meraki network devices under one centralized service. SolarWinds has made it simple for admins using a Wi-Fi analysis tool to monitor a Meraki wireless infrastructure. Once you’ve added a Meraki organization to your SolarWinds Platform database as an external node, you can use the dashboard and navigate to the Wireless Overview summary. From here, you can see all tracked Meraki organizations and view details such as clients, access points, and controllers. You can dig even deeper into each AP to find thin access point details and client connection history.
How to integrate NTA to analyze Wi-Fi traffic?
Analyzing Wi-Fi traffic can help you get to the bottom of serious bandwidth issues. With SolarWinds® Network Traffic Analyzer (NTA), an add-on for NPM, you can have the ability to monitor Wi-Fi router traffic, view historical data to help you identify recurring issues, and more. Whether you need to see peak usage or which applications are exhausting bandwidth, NTA allows you to analyze Wi-Fi traffic in an intuitive, customizable dashboard that makes it easy to correlate traffic patterns with network issues.
- What is Wi-Fi analysis?
- What are the benefits of automatic Wi-Fi network analysis tools?
- What types of issues can be identified by Wi-Fi analysis?
- What type of wireless data does NPM provide?
- How to monitor Meraki wireless infrastructure in NPM?
- How to integrate NTA to analyze Wi-Fi traffic?
What is Wi-Fi analysis?
Wi-Fi analysis is the ongoing process of monitoring Wi-Fi infrastructure and performance in order to resolve any errors that arise. Wi-Fi analysis requires insight into network devices, paths, and key metrics corresponding to performance and end-user experience. As the infrastructure of networks continues to become more complex, using Wi-Fi analyzer tools can help you monitor your network to keep it running smoothly.
When performing Wi-Fi analysis, admins can utilize various methods for drilling down into what may be causing slowdowns, outages, and more. Wireless data such as IP address, SSID, and bytes transmitted by a user can reveal who's interacting with the network and how. Monitoring availability and performance can help you discover which applications are exhausting bandwidth. Vigilant Wi-Fi analysis helps businesses maintain a finely-tuned, reliable network that can handle the everyday demands of business-critical tasks.
"SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) provides the alerts and data I need to keep my business running efficiently on our network. The bandwidth allocation data is especially useful to identify any shortfalls with devices or services that may need an upgrade."
Verified Reviewer
Network Performance Monitor
- Monitor faults and manage key performance metrics across your wireless network.
- Aggregate and organize data about your Wi-Fi infrastructure in one dashboard.
- Help ensure business wireless network uptime and improved end-user experience.
