UbuntuNet Connect 2024, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania October 31th, 2024 WiFiMon: Experiences from Users Elisantila Gaci, RASH, WiFiMon Service Manager Gn5-1 1 Gn5-1 2 3 Introduction Monitoring Wi-Fi performance as experienced by end users Combination of crowdsourced & hardware probe measurements Contribution: Detection of Wi-Fi throughput degradation Determination of underperforming areas within a Wi-Fi network  Admins may enhance performance, e.g. by installing more APs ‹#› | GN5-1 3 4 WiFiMon vs Related Monitoring Tools Monitoring from the end-user perspective (end-user experience) No requirements for app installation or end-user intervention Centralized view of Wi-Fi performance available to the administrator ‹#› | GN5-1 4 Example: WiFiMon vs Ookla Speedtest WiFiMon Ookla Speedtest Automatically by visiting a site By pressing “GO” Wi-Fi administrator End users Measurements are triggered: Results collected by: ‹#› | GN5-1 5 6 WiFiMon Operation WiFiMon Components: WiFiMon Software Probes (WSPs) WiFiMon Hardware Probes (WHPs) WiFiMon Analysis Server (WAS) WiFiMon Test Server (WTS) ‹#› | GN5-1 6 WiFiMon Users Gn5-1 7 Main WiFiMon Users ASNET-AM, Armenia CERN, Switzerland RENU, Uganda Currently being tested in Brazil ‹#› | GN5-1 8 ASNET-AM (Armenia) Experiences from a conference pilot Gn5-1 9 ASNET-AM Pilot Details (1/2) Monitoring eduroam at the Institute for Informatics and Automation Problems (IIAP) - National Academy of Sciences of Armenia Monitoring between September 21st - October 3rd 2023 Monitoring about 50-100 people (researchers, professors, engineers, students) Measurements from 1 WHP (Raspberry Pi 4 Model B) – placed on the floor WAS/WTS installed in a single VM with 4 vCPU’s, 8 GB RAM (WiFiMon v. 2.1.0) Pilot Goal: Experiment with newly introduced WiFiMon features Help ASNET-AM Wi-Fi administrators identify interesting points requiring further inspection ‹#› | GN5-1 10 ASNET-AM Pilot Details (2/2) Monitored area blueprints: WHP is placed at the green bullet ‹#› | GN5-1 11 Overview of WiFiMon Measurements (1/8) The Overview tab summarizes received measurements on a daily basis ‹#› | GN5-1 12 Overview of WiFiMon Measurements (2/8) The Overview tab summarizes received measurements on a daily basis Total number of received measurements (since midnight) ‹#› | GN5-1 13 Overview of WiFiMon Measurements (3/8) The Overview tab summarizes received measurements on a daily basis Average download throughput reported ‹#› | GN5-1 14 Overview of WiFiMon Measurements (4/8) The Overview tab summarizes received measurements on a daily basis Minimum download throughput reported ‹#› | GN5-1 15 Overview of WiFiMon Measurements (5/8) The Overview tab summarizes received measurements on a daily basis Maximum download throughput reported ‹#› | GN5-1 16 Overview of WiFiMon Measurements (6/8) The Overview tab summarizes received measurements on a daily basis Metrics for Upload Throughput ‹#› | GN5-1 17 Overview of WiFiMon Measurements (7/8) The Overview tab summarizes received measurements on a daily basis HTTP ping metrics ‹#› | GN5-1 18 Overview of WiFiMon Measurements (8/8) The WiFiMon Analysis Server (WAS) received 4717 total measurements on 11 days and 429 measurements per day on average Loss of measurements is evident in various days (e.g. maximum loss on Oct 3rd) Total number of WiFiMon performance measurements received daily between Sep 23rd and Oct 3rd ‹#› | GN5-1 19 WiFiMon Performance Measurements WiFiMon may report various types of performance measurements (against the WiFiMon Test Server – WTS) The most important are: Download Throughput Upload Throughput HTTP Ping Round-Trip Time (RTT) Jitter ‹#› | GN5-1 20 Average Download Throughput – Per Test-Tool Average download throughput during the last 10 days: NetTest reports interesting performance drops LibreSpeed Speedtest reports rather stable performance Akamai Boomerang detects a very interesting performance drop during the 27th of September; performance suddenly drops and almost stabilizes on a lower value 3 different test-tools were used (NetTest, Akamai Boomerang & LibreSpeed Speedtest) ‹#› | GN5-1 21 Average Download Throughput – Aggregated Average download throughput during the last 10 days: Interesting points (blue circles) can be seen in the diagram Wi-Fi administrators may further inspect what happened at these points The results of all test-tools are aggregated ‹#› | GN5-1 22 Average Upload Throughput – Aggregated Average upload throughput during the last 10 days: Significant drops (blue circles) are also visible in the chart The results of all test-tools are aggregated ‹#› | GN5-1 23 A Closer look on October 3rd Measurements Download throughput presumably dropped because of data uploads Average download throughput Average upload throughput ‹#› | GN5-1 24 Average HTTP Ping RTT - Aggregated Average HTTP Ping RTT during the last 10 days: Higher RTT’s are visible (blue circles) in the chart The results of all test-tools are aggregated ‹#› | GN5-1 25 Average Jitter Average Jitter during the last 10 days: A very high jitter measurement (blue circle) is visible on October 2nd ‹#› | GN5-1 26 Average Link Quality Average link quality during the last 10 days reported from the WLAN NIC of the probe: Link quality (WLAN NIC) does not capture the drops reported by WiFiMon A major drop on October 2nd matches the jitter increase (previous slide) ‹#› | GN5-1 27 Average Number of Users Average number of Wi-Fi users during the last 10 days (reported by arp-scan): Almost no users during the weekend (blue rectangle) Higher number of users during the conference days (green rectangle) ‹#› | GN5-1 28 WiFiMon Performance Measurements Apart from average measurements, WiFiMon may also report: Median values Maximum values Minimum values 95th percentile values ‹#› | GN5-1 29 Average vs Max HTTP Ping RTT Comparison between the average and the maximum HTTP Ping RTT: Maximum values of RTT are much higher than the reported average ‹#› | GN5-1 30 CERN (Switzerland) Experiences reported in a published article (article) Gn5-1 31 CERN Setup Details Thousands of users (researchers, visitors, students, etc.) Roughly 5000 Access Points Both WiFiMon Hardware Probes (WHP’s) and WiFiMon Software Probes (WSP’s) are used ‹#› | GN5-1 32 CERN Crowdsourced Measurements WSP measurements collected from 4 clients within the CERN’s Wi-Fi network ‹#› | GN5-1 33 CERN Hardware Probe Measurements WHP measurements collected from 4 locations within the CERN’s Wi-Fi network ‹#› | GN5-1 34 WiFiMon Helped CERN Resolve Wi-Fi Issues The reported Round Trip Time (RTT) and packet loss helped CERN identify an issue in the Wi-Fi configuration ‹#› | GN5-1 35 RENU (Uganda) Experiences reported during an infoshare (article) Gn5-1 36 RENU Setup Details Thousands of users Both WHP and WSP measurements are considered ‹#› | GN5-1 37 WiFiMon Helped RENU Resolve Wi-Fi Issues Results reported by two WiFiMon Hardware Probes (WHP’s) using multiple WiFiMon test tools ‹#› | GN5-1 38 Thank You www.geant.org Homepage: https://wiki.geant.org/display/WIF WiFiMon mailing list: wifimon-ops@lists.geant.org 39 image1.png image2.png image6.png image7.png image8.PNG image9.png image10.PNG image11.PNG image12.PNG image13.PNG image14.PNG image15.PNG image16.PNG image17.PNG image18.PNG image19.PNG image20.PNG image21.PNG image22.PNG image23.PNG image24.png image25.png image26.png image27.png image5.png image3.png