Eval Unit: AirMagnet

Sure, for the price of a wireless LAN PC card you can download NetStumbler and discover the wireless access point devices around you. But AirMagnet does so much more that it is well worth the price. Its biggest advantage is that it runs on a Pocket PC platform, making it easy to carry around and diagnose your building's radio dead zones, for example. But wait, there is more. It slices and dices your wireless network, scanning all the 14 channels that make up the 802.11b specification. It sees if you are getting any interference on any of them, perhaps from other radios or consumer electronics that broadcast near those frequencies. You can capture and decode packets that you receive over the air (a la Sniffer-type tools), so you can examine exactly what your wireless users are doing on your network--and perhaps find out inappropriate users or uses. Within a few minutes of trying out our product, we captured a session with one user going into a porn site. You may find equally surprising browsing habits of your users.

AirMagnet will help you track down insecure access points by quickly showing you who is running without any security turned on. It can show bandwidth hogs and network bottlenecks, so you can redeploy your access points for better coverage, or perhaps move a wireless user to a wired segment for better performance. Integrators will find dozens of other uses for this product. And the best thing, you can carry it easily around and figure out where to best place your access points for maximum throughput and radio coverage in your customer's' buildings.

Product
AirMagnet

Company
AirMagnet Inc.
Sunnyvale, Calif.
www.airmagnet.com\ 888-828-3772

id
unit-1659132512259
type
Sponsored post

Price
$2495 (includes wireless LAN adapter)

Pros