Cape Networks Wireless Sensor
The perfect wireless monitoring solution for SMBs – highly informative and very affordable
SCORE ✪✪✪✪✪ PRICE Sensor and 1yr cloud subscription, £650 exc VAT from irisnetworks.com
It’s vital to stay abreast of what’s happening on and around your wireless network, but Wi-Fi monitoring and analysis products can often be complex and expensive. Enter Cape Networks’ new Wireless Sensor, which keeps an eye on your network and presents a wealth of information in a superbly designed cloud portal at a very tempting price.
Be clear, this is no simple bandwidth monitor. The sensor doesn’t just count packets: it tracks the availability of web services and even monitors internal network devices. It’s a doddle to deploy, too. We simply screwed the sensor onto the wall using the supplied bracket, connected it to the lab’s PoE switch and registered it with our account from the cloud portal. It’s recommended that you locate it in the area where your wireless network is most heavily used; if your office is spread out, or based across multiple sites, you can install multiple sensors and access them all from the same web portal.
Once the hardware is in place, there’s a huge amount of information to browse. Chunky icons let you view all registered sensors at a glance, along with SSIDs and any other resources you’re monitoring. The sensor doesn’t automatically discover active SSIDs, but adding them is quick and easy – you just have to enter the SSID name and provide the appropriate wireless security credentials.
The sensor then queries the SSID and, after around a minute, starts testing it at five-minute intervals. You can track up to three SSIDs; Cape Networks doesn’t recommend more than this, as the round-robin testing used by the sensor could cause delays.
There’s no configuration required for monitoring DHCP and DNS. The sensor automatically locates the nearest servers to you, and starts tracking their availability and response times. Watching other resources is just as easy, as the portal provides templates for popular services, including Dropbox, Salesforce and Google Docs. You can also add your own sites and services to monitor: generic templates can be customised with up to four ports to test. You can even monitor internal devices such as networked printers, and connect to the WiFi Explorer Mac app and iPerf3 bandwidth measurement tool.
Alerts and reporting options are extensive. The general status of your network can be checked at a glance using a simple traffic-light system: the portal uses yellow and red warnings to alert you when availability, RSSI dBm levels, bit rates, retry rates, channel utilisation and other metrics stray from the expected norms. You will also receive an email and SMS message when problems are detected, and if you’re using distributed sensors, the portal’s map view shows the location of any misbehaving devices. Hovering the mouse pointer over an SSID pops up a window showing its status over the past 24 hours, while clicking on it loads a window packed with valuable information. A bank of line graphs show signal strength, throughput, retry rates, channel utilisation and the wireless band in use. A status graph to the left shows general availability, on a scale that stretches from one hour to 30 days. At any time you can also have a summary report emailed to you, covering the past day, week or fortnight, as a CSV file. For real forensic analysis, the sensor even continuously captures Wi-Fi packets and stores them in a 50MB internal buffer. You can download this data as a PCAP file directly from the portal, to import into a specialist analysis app such as Wireshark. The Cape Networks Wireless Sensor impressed us with its huge range of wireless network and service monitoring features. Despite its depth, it’s a cinch to deploy and manage. It can also scale effortlessly as your network grows – and the price is within reach of even the smallest business.
SPECIFICATIONS
Ceiling/wall-mounted sensor 1.6GHz dual-core ARM Cortex A9 CPU Linux OS 802.11n Wi-Fi 2.4/5GHz radios Gigabit PoE port 50MB packet capture buffer mounting plate and power adapter included 152 x 152 x 40mm (WDH) 2yr RTB warranty. Options: Subsequent yearly cloud subscription, £360 exc VAT
“The portal provides templates for monitoring Dropbox, Salesforce and Google Docs – and you can add your own services”