One tool that I have recently found that I have quite enjoyed is the Windows Terminal by Microsoft Corporation. Description:The Windows Terminal is a modern, fast, efficient, powerful, and productive terminal application for users of command-line tools and shells like Command Prompt, PowerShell, and WSL. Its main features include multiple tabs, panes, Unicode and UTF-8 character support, a GPU accelerated text rendering engine, and custom themes, styles, and configurations.This is an open-source project and we welcome community participation. To participate please visit https://github.com/microsoft/terminal Normally I am a bit leery of these, but after reading the description I figured I would […]

Taking advice from the Techimike blog that detailed how he passed the CWNA, I figured I should apply the same things and write a blog post about the things I found helpful for passing the CWNP (and other vendors) exams. In the beginning, these are fairly simple tidbits of advice but towards the end, I get into more detail about the tips I had for the test itself. Determine your best method on how to study This can be easy or tough depending on your environment and personality, but figure out how you learn and retain information the best. This […]

Over the last little bit, I feel that I am losing a bit of my networking knowledge due to doing the same thing. I decided I needed a new challenge to help me stay fresh, and that I would start separating my home network into multiple Vlans and subnets. Currently, most of the devices in my house are on DHCP, which I’m fine with, except for a handful of more critical devices that need dedicated IPs. Usually, I either rely on my memory, which is not the greatest, or my browser history to find a device. My goal is to […]

After using Ruckus’ SmartZone platform for a bit now, I have found a few tricks along the way that has made my life easier, one of these tricks is Batch Provisioning APs. This allows you to mass import AP’s into your controller with some pre-configured settings. (Name, location, description, IP settings, etc) while this doesn’t allow you to configure all of the settings of the AP it is a good start. To get started you will want to download a copy of the file used as a template for this. After getting the file there are a couple of things […]

One thing that I have found helpful, is using excel to record the dates of when I have performed a wireless validation survey. This helps me know when that survey is getting old and needs to be re-evaluated. To do this I use the conditional formatting section in excel to show me a color code of these dates. This is as easy as selecting the column clicking the conditional formatting button, choosing color scales and use the one that I like the most. The nice part about this is as I populate this column with data excel will automatically change […]

As another follow up to one of my previous posts of Capturing packets from a Ruckus AP you will probably get an error stating that Wireshark “Can’t get list of interfaces: is the server properly installed on x.x.x.x?” I am not sure if this happens on all operating systems, but I have had this happen while using Windows 10. Normally this isn’t a big deal, but these will show up for each device you have connected to in the past and over time you can accumulate quite a few. The solution I have found is to edit the “Recent_common” file […]

Following up on my previous post about Measuring Wall Attenuation, I figured I would show how I take these measurements and make them applicable. There are 2 ways to do this, the first requires you to modify an XML file that gets overwritten every time Ekahau is updated or reinstalled. The second, and the better way I feel, is to create a new project file and build this project to be used as a template. Matt Starling from the WiFi Ninjas does a great video tutorial on this: https://wifininjas.net/index.php/2020/08/05/wn-video-009-matts-number-one-ekahau-tip/ lets get started, first open up Ekahau and view the existing […]

After publishing my last article, I was informed that these steps did not work for some AP models on the firmware I was running (5.2.1.0.698), thinking that I had tested this beforehand I set out to find out where I was wrong, and sure enough on the 802.11ax APs that I tested these settings did not work. Well, they worked but there weren’t any packets streaming to Wireshark.  Wondering what could be different, I set out to find my answer, I wasn’t sure if these steps didn’t work from just the Web GUI or also the CLI. I SSHed into […]

As a wireless professional packet captures have become a big piece in finding solutions to problems, I recall hearing many times pcaps or it didn’t happen, my preferred method would be to gather these from the client or as close to the client as possible, but not always can you be everywhere at once when the issues occur. As a good alternative at times, I will gather the pcaps from the AP that the clients are connecting to. Lucky for me I have found 2 ways to achieve this using Ruckus APs. By using a SmartZone Controller or SSHing into […]

I have wanted to do a blog post on this topic for some time, so here it is. For this post, I will be describing the process of measuring the DB loss or attenuation of a wall. This test is fairly easy to perform and needs minimal tools, such as an AP and a device to measure the signal. For my testing, I will be using a Ruckus R710 AP, a Fluke Aircheck, and a NetAlly EtherScope nXG. I will be measuring on 5 GHz channel since that is what I primarily design for, the process should be the same […]