New AirMagnet Spectrum XT Allows Custom Signatures For WLAN RF Interference Issues
Author/Blog Contributor - Chris Roeckl, vice president of marketing at AirMagnet
Date: December 07, 2010
Calling all wireless professionals! AirMagnet is releasing the latest version of the industry's first USB-based professional spectrum analyzer solution, AirMagnet Spectrum XT 2.0.1. What's new?
With this release, AirMagnet allows customers to create custom signatures for any RF (radio frequency) interference issue or source in the wireless LAN (WLAN) spectrum, regardless of device or environment. In addition, AirMagnet Spectrum XT also delivers the industry's most comprehensive RF interferer classification library and new custom technology to detect and classify any RF interference source, allowing customers to quickly identify and fix problems. Wireless professionals no longer have to depend on spectrum analyzer vendors to deliver database updates for detection of new devices.
Dilip Advani, the Spectrum XT product manager at AirMagnet said, "A common pain point for wireless managers and administrators has been the ability to classify and create a custom signature for a recurring problem unique to a specific network environment or architecture. AirMagnet Spectrum XT meets this demand and provides a more-efficient method for troubleshooting RF interference issues, saving time and costly IT resources."
AirMagnet Spectrum XT now boasts the largest RF interferer signature database and library for mobile spectrum analyzers. This includes new detections for radars, zigbee devices, motion detectors, RF signal generators, non-Bluetooth wireless mouse and more. It also offers the ability to create custom signatures, dramatically enhancing RF troubleshooting capabilities. Customers now have the option to create signatures and share them across multiple locations. These signatures also get logged into the AirMagnet database. Users can prioritize custom signature creation by visualizing the impact on WLAN performance beforehand. They can also take advantage of FFT spectrum freeze and capture techniques for more accurate and better spectrum analysis.
Why is this important? Let's look at a quick example. If a healthcare institution has a medical device that causes problems in their network environment, the organization can create a new signature on the fly and very quickly classify those types of devices. They can share that signature with other branches of the institution, if they have a similar device in their environment that is causing problems. These new capabilities in AirMagnet Spectrum XT eliminate the need for the healthcare company to depend on a spectrum analyzer vendor to create a signature and add it to the default classification database (which can take months and in some cases years). That has a huge impact on the time and cost it takes to troubleshoot RF issues.
Finally, the new release has a few other additions, including:
- Remote Spectrum Analysis - Users can connect remotely to AirMagnet Spectrum XT from another PC running AirMagnet Spectrum XT or AirMagnet Spectrum XT Viewer. With this new capability to share live sessions, multiple users can analyze and discuss the same RF spectrum data.
- Centralized Collection of Detected RF Interferers (SNMP) – Ability to send SNMP taps for detected interference sources to a centralized management system.
AirMagnet Spectrum XT is available now. For more information, check out the AirMagnet product page or post a question in the AirWISE Community forums.
Chris Roeckl is the VP of Marketing at AirMagnet. Prior to AirMagnet, Roeckl served in executive roles at Fortinet, Infoblox, NetScreen Technologies and Inverse Network Technologies. He has also served as a technology analyst for the Robert Frances Group and as the editor for CommunicationsWeek.