How do different materials affect signal strength and/or noise? Can you notice a difference in attenuation for different APs?

For this task, you will perform a WLAN site survey. Your task is to produce a map of (part of) a building that gives an overview of the wireless networks that are available, as well as an analysis of the network. What you will need: a WiFi-enabled laptop (some smartphones also work, see below), and a place to scan. You can perform a survey of your home, of an office space, of parts of the Monash campus, or inside a shopping centre. If you don’t own a suitable device that you could use for this activity, please try to borrow one from a friend, or contact us to figure out an alternative. This activity has two sub-tasks: a) Survey Create a map of the place you want to survey. A simple floorplan will be sufficient, it doesn’t have to be perfectly to scale. See the appendix for an example. Your survey should cover an area of at least 60 square meters (e.g. 6×10 meters, or 4×15, or two storeys of 6×5 each). Be creative – the survey can include hallways or outside areas. Be sure to take the analysis in part b) into account, by designing your survey to include walls, door etc. it will be easier to write something interesting in part b). Furthermore, your survey must include at least three WiFi access points. 5 These can be your own, but can also include neighbours’ APs. If you are scanning in a commercial area or on campus, you should be able to see enough APs. If you want, you can create an additional AP with a phone (using “Personal hotspot” or “Tethering” features). For the survey, use a WLAN sniffing tool (see below) at at least eight different locations on your map. For each location, record the technical characteristics of all visible APs. Depending on the scanning tool you use, you can record features such as the network name, MAC address, signal strength, signal to noise ratio (SNR), 802.11 version(s) supported, band (2.4 or 5 GHz) and channel(s) used. Add the data gathered from the survey into the map of the covered area. On the map you should indicate the location of the access points and the locations where you took measurements. For the access points, use the actual location if you know it, or an approximation based on the observed signal strength (e.g. if it’s your neighbour’s access point and you don’t know exactly where it is). For each measurement point, you can either add the characteristics directly into the map, or create a separate table with the details. You can submit several maps if you choose to enter data directly into the maps, or a single map if you use additional tables. Create the map yourself, do not use the mapping features available in some commercial (i.e., paid) WLAN sniffing tools. (15 marks) b) Write a report (word limit 600) on your observations analysing the data collected in the previous step. Your analysis should investigate the following aspects: • Channel occupancy: Are different access points competing on the same channels? Are they configured to use overlapping channels? Could the configuration be improved? (5 marks) • Interference from walls, doors etc.: How do different materials affect signal strength and/or noise? Can you notice a difference in attenuation for different APs? (5 marks) • Coverage: Do the access points sufficiently cover the desired area? Could the placement or configuration be improved? (5 marks) • Any other aspect of your own choice. Here are a few suggestions: o measure the attenuation caused by your own body o measure the download and upload speeds in different locations o determine the overlap that has been implemented to enable roaming o describe how you interpolated the locations of access points from the signal strengths Describe your findings and explain them with some technical detail (i.e., not only say what you found, but also how you performed the analysis or why you think the network is behaving that way). (5 marks) 6 Tools: You can use e.g. Acrylic Wifi (https://www.acrylicwifi.com/en/) for Windows, NetSpot (http://www.netspotapp.com) for Mac OS and Windows, and LinSSID or wavemon for Linux. If you have an Android smartphone, apps like Wifi Analyzer can also be used. On iOS, WiFi scanning apps do not provide enough detail, so iPhones won’t be suitable for this task. For drawing the site maps, any drawing tool should work, for example LucidChart, or even presentation tools such as PowerPoint, Keynote or Google Slides. Scans of handdrawn maps are acceptable if they are neat and easily readable.