I believe someone requested this before and MT replied as being a good idea.
I there already any new on this?
In environments where different bandwidths are in use finding a free channel and troubleshooting radio issues is a bit complicated now. Each bandwidth needs its own scan and that info needs than to be compared etc.
But now with the more and more heavier usage of the spectrum it becomes really needed to do a scan on all bands so troubleshooter can see at once what the ´real´ (802.11) spectrum usage is…
And running a scan in a or b/g mode, it will pick up centre frequency of ´n´mode radio, but not tell the extension channel. Is there anyway to arrange this too?
If other ´n´working radio shows as being using 5600Mhz it is nice to see if its extension channel is below or above this one!
Also important is to run a scan on a wireless remote unit that saves the results in a downloadable file for processing later.
While a scan of 802.11 spectrum will display 802.11 usage but it does not reveal non-compliant 802.11 or proprietary RF equipment using the same frequency band, the multiband band scan is a good idea but I think the need is more for a basic spectrum analyser that will show spectrum usage, it may not be important say to have a detailed information on a signal at 5300-5350, all that is important is that there a signal present, how strong it is and how much bandwidth it’s using.
Well, I am not going to dispute that a spectrum analyser is the tool to tell operator all he wants to know about the spectrum usage.
But I think this is a bit too much asked for a platform (802.11 / atheros chipset / serveral OS systems) that is focussed on the 802.11 spectrum use only.
The basic tool is already there, all we need it that the scan can run in each band without any interference of operator and that the operator will be presented with the results.
In relative ´open´ space areas outside heavy urbanised areas the main concern will be to find if other operators are not already using the channel you are using or have in mind. To find out you need to run a scan. Since the ´congestion´ of 802.11 spectrum is ever increasing, even outside the towns, we nowadays need to scan in both 20, 10 and the 5Ghz channels and also we would like to know which ´n´ extended channels are used.
This is the main concern and the tools are already embedded in the hardware. Now only the software to make it more comfortable to use for the operator.
And maybe a ´script wizzard’ is smart enough to do that for us? Or do we have to wait for MT?