Introduction to Wireless LAN Analysis
Control plane resources would be relevant to access points, wireless
LAN switches, wireless gateways, client devices, etc. Data plane
resources are impacted only by the type and quantity of traffic and
include, at a minimum, link utilization. By baselining resource
utilization for critical areas, you can avoid serious performance issues,
or worse, a network failure. With the introduction of latency-sensitive
applications such as voice and video, baselining is now more important
than ever. Traditional TCP/IP applications are forgiving and allow for
a certain amount of delay. Voice and video are typically UDP based
and do not allow for retransmissions or network congestion.
Due to the new mix of applications, baselining helps you to understand
both control plane and data plane resource utilization issues and to
proactively plan for changes and upgrades to ensure that the network
continues to function without interruption.
Baseline Objective
The objective of a baseline is to:
Determine the current status of network devices
Compare that status to standard performance guidelines
Set thresholds to alert you when the status exceeds those
guidelines
Due to the large amount of data and the amount of time it takes to
analyze the data, you must first limit the scope of a baseline to make it
easier to learn the process.
Continual Monitoring
After the wireless LAN is operational, it is important for support staff
to be proactive with analysis by continually monitoring the system for
indications that identify potential problems. This regular analysis
includes measuring traffic flows and throughput over time to spot
trends that could warrant redesigning the network. Regular
performance monitoring is especially important with wireless LANs
because usage generally increases over time as the company learns
about and deploys new wireless applications. Security assessments
