Category Archives: Troubleshooting

Why speed tests aren’t always the answer when troubleshooting Wi-Fi networks

Table of Contents

Background

In my current role, we sometimes receive complaints about the Wi-Fi being slow or not working properly. When we ask what the issue is, we’re often sent responses referring to speed test results only that are supposed to serve as the definitive proof that something’s wrong with the Wi-Fi. What our user base often doesn’t understand is that there are many variables when it comes to speed tests in general, but when running these speed tests while connected to Wi-Fi, even more variables exist. Let me try to explain.

Whether it be wired or Wi-Fi, there are theoretical and real-world throughput maximums in networking that are affected by a number of things. For example, even when you have a 1 Gbps wired connection, chances are you’ll never get full 1 Gbps line-rate speeds in a raw throughput test due to at minimum, the overhead needed to put bits onto the wire, not to mention whether the latency and TCP Window Size (if using TCP) can support the line-rate speed. Latency and the TCP Window Size are two things I’ll come back to in more detail later.

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My adventures with 6 GHz and my Pixel 6a phone

I’ve always been someone who has advocated for buying your own tools to test and troubleshoot things. This applied when I was working primarily as a network engineer focused on route/switch, datacenter, and security technologies and it still applies today, now that I’m primarily focused on wireless. In my experience, some companies and/or management are better than others with regards to buying tools for their employees so you cannot always rely on them for help. Investing in yourself and your learning is critical in my opinion so don’t let that deter you. It’s also nice to be able to take those tools with you if you decide to move on to “greener pastures” one day. Unfortunately, not all tools are what I consider to be affordable for the average person, especially if they are somewhat frugal like myself. Just do the best you can, when you can.

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Correlation != Causation

This morning, I tweeted the message below without much context:

With the 280 character limit of Twitter (hard to believe it used to be 140), sometimes it’s difficult to fully express an idea or the context behind it and instead of trying to create a messy, multi-threaded tweet, I just left it there as food for thought. But here on my blog, I can elaborate further on why this situation stood out to me and how it applies to you, the reader, who’s most likely in an IT related role.

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Client fingerprinting is broken and no one seems to care

Client fingerprinting, in my opinion, is one of those features that many people don’t think about until they either need it, want it, or it’s broken. It’s not as sexy as other Wi-Fi security related topics such as 802.1X or micro segmentation and it’s certainly not going to prevent a client from operating correctly on the network if it’s not available (or can it?). However, it does help provide insight into your Wi-Fi client base which can be valuable in terms of knowing what device or devices are popular and making sure your Wi-Fi supports them well. Additionally, it is possible to tie access controls to clients by their device type which can affect what they are able to do on the network. With that said, it’s probably worth knowing how client devices are identified from their manufacturer down to the OS version and more importantly, the methods your Wi-Fi vendor uses to identify them. In this post, I’m going to discuss how client fingerprinting is done in general, how RUCKUS does it, and how one method of fingerprinting that we use today is changing due to security concerns.

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