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Dell PowerConnect W-Airwave User Manual

W-airwave 7.1 visualrf and visualrf plan user guide
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Dell PowerConnect W
AirWave 7.1
Visual RF and Visual RF Plan
User Guide

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Summary of Contents for Dell PowerConnect W-Airwave

  • Page 1 Dell PowerConnect W AirWave 7.1 Visual RF and Visual RF Plan User Guide...

  • Page 2: Legal Notice

    Copyright © 2010 Aruba Networks, Inc. AirWave®, Aruba Networks®, Aruba Mobility Management System®, and other registered marks are trademarks of Aruba Networks, Inc. Dell™, the DELL™ logo, and PowerConnect™ are trademarks of Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Specifications in this manual are subject to change without notice.

  • Page 3: Table Of Contents

    Table of Contents Overview ........................................ 4   Basic QuickView Navigation ................................6   Process Detailed in Document ................................. 10   Setup and Tuning the VisualRF Engine ............................11   Creating Campuses and Buildings ..............................17   Importing a Floor Plan ..................................20  ...

  • Page 4: Overview

    Overview The VisualRF module is an add-on to the Dell PowerConnect W AirWave Wireless Management Suite (AWMS) that provides a real-time picture of the actual radio environment of your wireless network and the ability to plan the wireless coverage of new sites.
  • Page 5 • VisualRF Plan – Makes the planning portions of VisualRF available in an offline software package that does not require a server. • QuickView – Flash front-end for VisualRF which displays information generated by the backend service. • mW – 1/1000 of a Watt. It is a linear measurement (always positive) generally used to represent transmission.

  • Page 6: Basic Quickview Navigation

    Basic QuickView Navigation QuickView is designed to be very intuitive with easy to use pull down menus. The RF pull down menus are split into two major categories, display toggles and editing tools. Display Toggles Overlays – select which overlay to view •...
  • Page 7 AP Neighbors – Toggle lines between APs which heard each other. Tag Neighbors – Toggle lines between WiFi Tags and radios which hear the Tags. For Tags there is no radio of association. User Association – Toggle line between the wireless user and AP of association. Note: All 2.4 GHz lines are blue and 5 GHz lines are green.
  • Page 8 • Navigation Campus and Building Trigger preferences Campus, Building, and Floor icon size Vector • Locate Now – Queries the AP or controllers for user signal information and recalculates all client locations. This is different from the Refresh button which does not query the AP or controller. Icons Description Refresh...

  • Page 9: General Navigation Tips

    General Navigation Tips • Search – Use the search box in the bottom left of the window to quickly find a wireless client, AP, or rogue device displayed on the floor plan. Search will do substring matches on username, MAC address and model.

  • Page 10: Process Detailed In Document

    Note: support for all versions of CAD (dwg, dxf, and dwf) files versions 1999 – 2010. 5. Provisioning Existing Access Points onto Floor Plan – drag and drop 6. Increasing Accuracy -- Dell only recommends drawing interior walls for planning purposes. Drawing Walls – only need to incorporate exterior walls, because VisualRF will automatically calculate interior Path Loss.

  • Page 11: Setup And Tuning The Visualrf Engine

    Setup and Tuning the VisualRF Engine The VisualRF Setup page configures advanced setting for the VisualRF service. Please reconfigure these settings very carefully, because these settings can impact your server’s performance as well as your location accuracy. Note: Clicking on the ‘save’ button will cause the VisualRF service to restart disrupting or delaying the usability for up to 5 minutes.
  • Page 12 Dynamic attenuation will incorporate AP to AP readings as well as Dynamic site survey information and dynamically recalculate the path loss of Attenuation each radio to every grid cell on the floor plan, increasing coverage and location accuracy. This setting instructs the VisualRF engine to display all units of Use Metric Units measurements in Metric 512 MB...
  • Page 13 To tune location accuracy, navigate to the Location Setting section on this page. Setting Default Description 4 dB When VisualRF locates a client or rogue it utilizes signal metrics from all Allowed Deviation the APs that hear the client or rogue device. VisualRF builds a fingerprint location for all clients with similar transmit-power capability.
  • Page 14 To tune the wall settings within the VisualRF UI navigate to the Wall Attenuation Settings section. When tuning the VisualRF server be sure to utilize the default settings as recommend below. If you do change any of these setting above, change one at a time and see how the system performs. Each time you restart the VisualRF service it will take at least 30 minutes to return to normal processing.
  • Page 15 Figure 6. System Performance Graphs On the System Performance page you can quickly determine if the system is overloaded. The system ad should not average more than the number of cores. In this case the server is averaging a little less than two.

  • Page 16: Configuring Quickview Personal Preferences

    Configuring QuickView Personal Preferences Figure 7. “Personal Preferences” To configure your personal preferences, click the Display pull down and click on the preferences icon. • General – select from preferences pull down Enable auto-Refresh toggle Refresh Interval in minutes Show Grid Lines toggle Grid Lines width (in feet) slider Show Scale Hide neighbor lines ignored in location calculation...

  • Page 17: Creating Campuses And Buildings

    Add appropriate network geographical background or upload a personalized image by right-clicking on the background. Set Map – allows you to browser with Dell included maps. Custom – launches the image upload wizard documented below in the Importing Floor Plans section.
  • Page 18 Add appropriate geographical background or upload a personalized image by right-clicking on the background. Set Map – allows you to browser with Dell included maps. Custom – launches the image upload wizard documented below in the Importing Floor Plans section.
  • Page 19 Figure 12. “New Building on map” To change building types right click on building icon. Select proper building type. Click on the newly created Building icon from the previous step. You will be redirected to a blank canvas without a background. You are now ready for Step #4. Figure 13.

  • Page 20: Importing A Floor Plan

    Importing a Floor Plan Import Floor Plan background image file. 1. Right click on the background image and select the “New Floorplan” option. Figure 14. “Import floor plan image” 2. Browse your local file system by clicking on the “Browse” button to locate a floor plan image file. Use the file system file browser window to select the proper file and click the “open”...
  • Page 21 Crop Floor Plan background image. Grab one of the cropping handles (red circles) and size accordingly to remove extra white space. VisualRF will calculate an attenuation grid for the entire map including white space. Reducing the white space on a floor plan will increase location accuracy and decrease the load an on the server.
  • Page 22 Items to note: • If this is a CAD file, then the Floor Plan creation wizard will automatically inherit height and width from the drawing. • If this is a non-CAD file, then the height and width will be zero. •...
  • Page 23 Assign Campus, Building and Floor Number Find the Floor Info Section and assign the following information Setting Default Description Building Use this pull down to associate the floor with a building which associate it pull down to a Campus as well Floor The floor number.
  • Page 24 Figure 19. “Image after Upload” Error Checking – Review CAD Navigate to the CAD Info section Review CAD version Units of Measurement Raw width and height numbers Figure 20 “CAD Info” Visual RF an d Visual RF Plan | User Guide...

  • Page 25: Provisioning Existing Access Points Onto The Floor Plan

    Provisioning Existing Access Points onto the Floor Plan Select the floor plan by clicking on the floor number or name links in the list. Select the provision AP icon (stacked APs) in the Floor Edit Tools section. A popup (APs by Group selection) list of devices will appear on the screen.
  • Page 26 Once all APs are provisioned on the floor plan click the Save icon (floppy disk) in the top right of the QuickView window. Note: The floor is submitted to one of the core threads to recalculate path loss and then to one of the location caching threads to recalculate client locations.

  • Page 27: Increasing Location Accuracy

    Increasing Location Accuracy The Location Service will utilize all RF information available to increase location accuracy of clients, tags, and rogue devices. Understanding your infrastructure’s inherit capabilities is key to understand how much extra effort is required to ensuring location accuracy. There are three key elements read from controllers or access points that increase location accuracy: signal strength of a client as heard by the AP of association, signal strength of a client as heard by APs other than the AP of association, and signal strength that an AP hears other APs.

  • Page 28: Location Training For Stationary Devices

    A Changes Saved dialogue box will appear Click the OK button to continue Note: Dell recommends only drawing outside walls. If you are seeing inaccurate client locations or heat maps after entering exterior walls, proceed to Client Surveys. If you still experience problems, then you can proceed to adding interior walls.
  • Page 29 Client surveys provide a method for increasing the accuracy of the attenuation grid by taking real signal samplings from client devices associated with the WLAN. Key differentiators of Dell’s client surveys are: (1) they utilize readings from the access points and not the client and (2) they utilize numerous samples.
  • Page 30 Select the appropriate transmit power for the wireless client. Default to 30mW if you are unsure. Select Duration or the time that you want to sample the client’s signal measurements. Longer durations will increase Path Loss accuracy and location accuracy. Click OK button to begin the survey.

  • Page 31: Configuring Infrastructure

    • Dell dynamically assigns a transmit power to every client based on OUI. This step increases the accuracy for surveys by allowing an override. Client Type Transmit Power 11g Pre-2006 Laptops 30 mW Post -2006 Laptops 100 mW SOHO WLAN Cards...
  • Page 32 Figure 30. Group Rogue Scanning Configuration Thick AP and Thin – ensure on the Group Radio page that Rogue Scanning is enabled and the interval is accurate. Thin AP – ensure that the controllers are configured to gather RF information from the thin APs frequently.

  • Page 33: Viewing Floor Plans And Utilizing Quickview

    Viewing Floor Plans and Utilizing QuickView QuickView has 4 distinct views or entry points: client view, access point view, floor plan view, and network, campus, and building view. View A Wireless User’s RF Environment Navigate to the Client Detail page. Select user of interest Click on thumbnail –...
  • Page 34 This view is focused on the wireless user enabling you quick resolution of a user’s issues and therefore disables most RF objects by default. RF Objects • Users – only the user in focus is displayed • APs – only the access point in which the focus client is associated with is displayed •...
  • Page 35 AP View view an access point’s RF environment from Device Detail page Select device of interest Click on thumbnail – note location of AP in thumbnail should be accurate Figure 37. “Device Detail thumbnail” A QuickView window will open below the thumbnail Figure 38.
  • Page 36 • Rogues – all rogues are off • Client/Rogue Surveys – all surveys are off • Walls – all walls on displayed • Lines – client to AP of association are displayed • Labels – all labels are disabled Floor Plan View View a floor plan’s RF environment from VisualRF Floor Plans page Figure 39.
  • Page 37 Select floor plan of interest by clicking on the floor number or name link A QuickView window will open within the floor plan list. Figure 40. “Floor Plan View” This view is focused on providing insight into the RF environment of an entire floor. RF Objects •...

  • Page 38: Tree View

    Figure 41. “Floor Plan View” This view provides: • Network View – contains all campuses within your WLAN • Campus View – all buildings within a campus • Building View – all floors within a building • Floor Plan View – all devices access points, clients, and rogues within the floor Tree View To view floors from a logical tree: Navigate to the VisualRF...

  • Page 39: Pre-Deployment Planning And Provisioning

    Pre-deployment Planning and Provisioning VisualRF provides the capability to plan campuses, buildings, floors, and access points prior to the actual access point deployment. The following procedure describes the workflow: Create a campus – as detailed above Create a building associated with your campus – as detailed above Create a floor plan for your building –...
  • Page 40 Manually Provision Access Points To manually provision access points onto the floor plan: Figure 44. “Provision APs” Click on the planning icon within Edit Tools pull down. A new provisioning popup will appear. Select manufacturer. Drag access points from provision window onto floor plan. Configure antenna gain, beam width, and orientation (optional) Repeat process until coverage planning is complete.
  • Page 41 Figure 47. Drawing Provisioning Polygon” Enter the following information: Device MFG & Model PHY Type User Transmit Power – the average transmit power of the client devices on this floor plan Office Environment Desired Data Rate or Required Signal values Replicate floor plans Navigate back to the Building view by click on the navigation tags in the bottom right corner of the window.
  • Page 42 Click the “OK” button to save your changes. Manually refresh page and your will be redirected to the VisualRF Floor Plan page. The Building view will reflect the new floors. Figure 50. “Floor Plan List Page” Note: you should see all replicate floors with matching number of access points. Print BOM report Navigate back to the Network view Right click on the Campus icon...
  • Page 43 Figure 52. “Bill of Materials Selection” Visual RF and Visual RF Plan | User Guide P...
  • Page 44 Export Campus • Navigate back to the Network view • Right click on the Campus icon • Select Export • An object selection window will appear. • Select the objects to export and click on the “Export” button. • A File Download window will appear. •...

  • Page 45: Location Probability Regions

    Location Probability Regions Location Probability Regions Location probability regions are optional regions that can be used to increase the accuracy of device Location probability regions are optional regions that can be used to increase the accuracy of device location in VisualRF. VisualRF calculates device locations based on probability. VisualRF determines location in VisualRF.

  • Page 46: Adding An Idf

    Adding an IDF To add an IDF to VisualRF: 1. Click on the Edit Tools tab and click the ‘Draw Regions’ icon. 2. Outline the desired IDF region. Double click to end the outline process. 3. Name the region, select a Region Type of ‘IDF’ and click ‘Ok’. Figure 57.

  • Page 47: Appendix A - Visualrf And Performance

    Appendix A – VisualRF and Performance The first place to check for performance issues is the VisualRF Floors page. If any floor’s location calculation duration exceeds the location caching timer value configured on VisualRF Setup page, then VisualRF is not able to calculate locations for clients per your desired interval. Floor Specific Elements Impacting VisualRF Performance •...
  • Page 48 • Reduce polling interval polling router and switches Server load issues • Migrate to faster hardware • Decrease polling frequency of various polling buckets on Groups Basics page • Increase Min/Max timers and samples per devices on VisualRF Setup page •...
  • Page 49 Appendix B – CAD Importation The Floor Plan Upload Wizard (FUW) should inherit all pertinent information from your CAD file. FUW Importation Process • Determine UNITS – all modern CAD versions (2001 and newer) support UNITS • Determine MEASURE – Legacy CAD versions (2000 and older) used a simplistic Imperial or Metric system.

  • Page 50: Most Common Importation Problems

    Most Common Importation Problems • Improper or undefined UNITS or MEASURE • Text embedded into the Model view which causes an inconsistent bounding box • Large dimensions which cause grainy resolution upon zoom • Legacy CAD versions prior to Release 15 or AutoCAD 2000. Visual RF an d Visual RF Plan | User Guide...

  • Page 51: Appendix C - Ap Deployment Planning For Location Accuracy

    Appendix C – AP Deployment Planning for Location Accuracy Deploying access points for client location accuracy can be different than deploying access points for capacity. Rules of Thumb • Ensure at least 3 radios can hear each client devices at -85 dBm or below •...

  • Page 52: Appendix D - Batch Floor Plan Upload Wizard

    Appendix D – Batch Floor Plan Upload Wizard This process provides the ability to automatically upload many CAD files and auto provision existing walls and access points. Requirements • Operating System: Client machine must be Windows XP or Windows Vista •...

  • Page 53: Post Processing Steps

    Figure 61. “File Explorer Window” Select the xml file containing the upload instructions and click the Open button The File Explorer Window will disappear you will return to the Batch Floor Upload Wizard Figure 62. “Batch CAD Importation Wizard with upload Instruction File selected” Click Next button The application will validate the following information Well formed XML...
  • Page 54 <access-point id="29741" x="384.51" y="358.78"/> <access-point id="29682" x="417.12" y="431.99"/> <access-point id="29751" x="243.33" y="358.51"/> <access-point id="29620" x="385.79" y="223.88"/> <access-point id="29734" x="244.34" y="224.19"/> <access-point id="29644" x="192.79" y="414.77"/> <access-point id="29748" x="259.15" y="432.62"/> <access-point id="29692" x="309.50" y="415.45"/> </access-points> <walls> <wall type="4" x1="135.94" y1="159.43" x2="135.94" y2="453.16"/> <wall type="4"...

  • Page 55: Appendix E - Mms To Amp Floor Plan Conversion

    Appendix E – MMS to AMP Floor Plan Conversion The instructions below will enable you to seamlessly migrate all building, campus, and floor plan information previously entered into MMS. Pre conversion checklist The conversion tool is only supported in IE6 or IE7. Prior to importing floor plans ensure you VisualRF's memory allocation is sufficient for the anticipated number of floors plans.
  • Page 56 Figure 64. MMS export status Once the exportation process is complete the <Validate> tag will change to clickable link. able link. Click on the “Validate” link to validate the XML exported from MMS. This will automatically Click on the “Validate” link to validate the XML exported from MMS. This will automatically redirect you to the Bulk Importation Wizard.

  • Page 57: Appendix F - Import Floor Plans From An Aruba Controller

    2. Select the “Import floor plans from MMS” link 3. Click the “Begin Importing Floor Plans” link. 4. Select the “Import floor plans from Dell PowerConnect W Controller” link 5. When prompted for input file use the file saved from the controller process...

  • Page 58: Appendix G - Visualrf Location Api

    Appendix G – VisualRF Location API VisualRF provides the following location APIs: Site Inventory: https://[amp_host]/visualrf/site.xml?site_id=... • You can find the site_id from the Floor Plan List query defined on the XML API page • This interface provides floor details including access points, walls, regions, surveys, etc. •...
  • Page 59 <filename>/var/airwave/snapshot/b45e7a49-23b5-4db0-891a -2e60bff90d2c.677/thumb.jpg</filename> <relative-url>/snapshot/b45e7a49-23b5-4db0-891a -2e60bff90d2c.677/thumb.jpg</relative-url> <pixel-width>230</pixel-width> <pixel-height>311</pixel-height> </image> <ap id="12615" name="AP-4000M-1"> <x>118.97</x> <y>130.38</y> <total-bandwidth>0</total-bandwidth> <total-clients>0</total-clients> <status>down</status> <uptime>0.0</uptime> <radio index="1" phy="g" mac="00:20:A6:5A:63:66" beamwidth="0.0" gain="1.5" antenna="" orientation="0.0" mount="Ceiling" valid="false"> <discovering-radio id="11276" index="1" dBm="-85" /> <discovering-radio id="11828" index="1" dBm="-93" /> </radio> </ap> </site> </amp:amp_site_inventory> Visual RF and Visual RF Plan | User Guide P...

  • Page 60: Appendix H - Visualrf Diagnostics

    5. Send customer support the VisualRF Diagnostic Tar file • Navigate to VisualRF Floor Plans page • Click on Create VisualRF Diagnostic Tar File link • Save the tar file locally • Email tar file to support@dell.com Visual RF an d Visual RF Plan | User Guide...

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Powerconnect w airwave 7.1

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