Optimizing wireless analysis
Omnipeek is designed for a wide range of analysis tasks, but very often only a limited set of analysis options are pertinent to the task at hand. Here are some guidelines for configuring various analysis options to optimize performance for wireless analysis:
• Analysis Options: The analysis capabilities of Omnipeek are broken down into functional options. It is often the case that not all functional analysis options will be needed for the work being done. Turning off unnecessary analysis options will improve Omnipeek performance. To view and turn off unneeded analysis options when starting a new capture, see Optimizing capture performance.
NOTE: If you later find that you need a certain analysis option that you disabled, and you saved the packet capture files, just enable the analysis option and open the packet file to see the newly enabled analysis results.
• Expert Event Analysis: In addition to functional analysis options, Omnipeek continually monitors the network for Expert events, network anomalies, and suboptimal performance at all layers of the network, from application to physical. It also shows network events associated with wireless-specific anomalies and VoIP calls. Each individual Expert event can be enabled or disabled separately. It is important to review the Expert events to ensure that events you want to analyze are enabled. Once a capture is started, choose any one of the Expert Views from the left-hand navigation of the main Capture Window, and then click . The Expert EventFinder Settings dialog box appears, allowing each individual Expert event to be configured and enabled or disabled. Pay special attention to the VoIP and Wireless Expert Events, as these can be extremely useful in identifying VoWLAN issues before they become serious problems.
• Multichannel Analysis: Multichannel analysis allows multiple, simultaneous captures on unique wireless channels with all captured packets analyzed as if it is a single capture. This is extremely useful for analyzing situations where users are roaming from channel to channel, or when it is known where a problem is but not what channel the wireless client is using. See Capturing Packets from an Aggregator/Roaming Adapter.
• Roaming: Roaming latency analysis provides detailed information every time a wireless client moves from one AP to another. Roaming latency analysis requires multichannel analysis since roaming typically involves a change in channel. See Roaming latency analysis.
NOTE: Roaming assumes wireless clients are moving from one channel to another channel. This can be on the same AP, or across different APs. If the capture is scanning, roaming will be detected and reported but the latency measurements may not be accurate. For best results, roaming should be used along with the Wireless Channel Aggregator, or aggregation using an AP remote adapter. See Capturing Packets from an Aggregator/Roaming Adapter.
• The VoIP Dashboard: The Voice & Video dashboard provides a visual summary of voice and video calls, including VoWLAN calls, as well as useful graphs and statistics to troubleshoot and analyze voice and video traffic. See Voice & Video dashboard.
• Voice & Video Views: The Voice & Video views in capture windows provide simultaneous analysis of voice and video traffic, including VoWLAN calls, with subjective and objective quality metrics. The Calls view displays one row for each call in a capture. and the Media view displays one row for each RTP media flow in a call. See Voice & Video view window.