After watching a webinar on the 7 Signal wireless sensors, I was offered the opportunity to for a loan sensor to conduct a POC to see if the solution would be beneficial for the company I am working for. Aside from evaluating the solution for the company, I took the opportunity to learn about a new wireless sensor and how it has the potential to proactively monitor the customer experience of the wireless and notify me before I receive customer logged tickets.
Further Details on the 7 Signal Solution can be found at their website: http://7signal.com/
The Solution:
The 7 Signal Solution consists of 3 parts:
- Sapphire Eyes (the sensor)
- They also offer an IOS and Android app that allows you to conduct spot checks
- Sonar Server
- Carat Server
Sapphire Eyes
The Eyes are the sensors that measure connectivity and the quality of the end-user experience on business WLANs.
The Eyes can perform Layer 1 and 2 Wireless Analysis, including running spectrum analysis for both 2.4 and 5 Ghz. It can run KPI measured tests around:
- Throughput
- Packet loss
- Latency
- Jitter
- Voice quality
- Success rates
- Retry rates
- Airtime utilization
Sonar Server
VM Server or an appliance that you place within your network, it allows the Eyes to run tests back to this server, enabling you to test to different segments of your network. This can be used to see if you have throughput issues across your firewalls etc.
Carat Server
Configure all the tests to run, manages the Eyes and sonar servers, this is where you configure everything. Can be Cloud based or on premise.
Coming Soon
Future posts to give run down on the installation, configuration and review