Back in August I posted my thoughts on some different ways to measure the success of a WLAN deployment. My main argument was that we needed to start finding ways to measure the overall user experience (UX) in addition to all the speeds and feeds. To my delight, my thoughts were generally well received in the wireless industry and the overall consensus was that UX should be one of the primary concerns when designing a WLAN. With that in mind, I think it is time to take this to the next level and try to come up with a standard way of measuring and communicating the UX of a WLAN; I call it the Universal Wireless User Experience Index (UWUX).

To highlight the potential value of this type of index, begin by asking yourself the following two questions. If you answer yes to either of them, then having a UWUX could have helped you.

1. Consultants: Have you ever tried to talk a client out of certain WLAN UX design choices but failed because you couldn’t find a way to communicate just how user-unfriendly their WLAN was going to turn out?
2. Administrators: Have you ever been forced to go back and redesign the way your end users register, sign-in, authenticate, and gain authorization to your WLAN after it has already been deployed? Was it, by chance, because the users complained that the WLAN was just too hard or complicated to use?

As I stated above, having a standard way of scoring the UX of WLAN and showing how it compares to other networks could be a very valuable tool when it comes to design and deploying an end product that will live or die by the opinions and comments of the end users. Imagine being able to demonstrate how requiring proxy settings changes on an uncontrolled guest WLAN will lower the UWUX score below a certain threshold; resulting in a dramatic increase in helpdesk requests. The results could be shown in a numerical format and a graphical scale formatso that anyone could understand regardless of technical knowledge.

The benefits of the UWUX Index increase dramatically as more people adopt it. It’s a lot like IQ scoring since no single score has any real meaning. Only when we compare a score to the rest of the scores in the index are we able to start deriving meaning. It's because of this that I’ve decided to share my plans with the community in the hopes that there will be others who want to help design a universal index that can be used by all WLAN professionals and administrators regardless of company affiliation. 

Will it be a challenge to come up with repeatable measurements? Yes.

Will it be hard to create an index that serves everyone’s needs? Yes, but the goal is to have an index that serves most common needs instead of all needs.

Will the end result be incredibly useful? Time will tell but I think the answer is yes. In my opinion, if the end result is that we all focus more on designing for user and business needs, then it is well worth it.

More to come…

Dan C. (@SimplyWifi)

If you would like to contribute ideas on what the UWUX Index should include please feel free to leave a comment below, DM me, or contact me through our website. I already have some ideas but am in the very early brainstorming stages so all ideas will be considered. Also, if you think this could fly, please retweet or share the post with WLAN, UX designers, or end-users so that we can gather ideas from as many different viewpoints as possible.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the worst thing that can happen to the wireless industry is commoditization. Specifically, when I say commoditization, I am referring to the thinking that all WLANs are the same so we should just put out an RFQ and go with the lowest offer. Or, even worse, the quality of the WLAN can be determined by the price tag so we should just buy the most expensive solution we can afford. I’ve seen this happening more and more in the information security industry and I refuse to let it happen to the wireless industry without a fight. After all, look at all the good that commoditization has done for the state of security today.

Take a look at any industry and you will see examples of good products and bad products, feature-rich solutions and feature-poor solutions, feature-focused and unfocused solutions. There will always be a broad spectrum of craftsmanship to choose from but that doesn’t mean you can predict how well the solution will perform just by looking at the price tag. For example, give me a brand new Steinway & Sons Concert Grand Model D and I will play you a horrible rendition of Three Blind Mice. Take that same piano and give it to someone like Nora Jones and she’d play something that is much more worthy of such a fine instrument. When it comes to music, you can’t buy talent. Either you can play the piano well or you can’t and no amount of money is going to fix that.

The same holds true for WLANs. Either you, or your consultant, can design a WLAN properly or not. Give a skilled WLAN professional a low-cost WLAN solution and he/she will still be able to give you a functional and somewhat efficient WLAN. Conversely, give the top-line WLAN solution to an unskilled person and they will give you the type of WLAN disaster that will be used as a cautionary tale to others for years to come. How is this possible? The answer is quite simple, really. I’ve broken it down into three parts below:

1. A skilled WLAN professional has a deep understand of the underlying technology. Instead of just learning which checkboxes to select, a WLAN professional makes a point of knowing what happens under-the-hood when any given checkbox is selected.
2. A skilled WLAN professional probably has more experience deploying WLAN solutions. Remember the old saying: Practice makes perfect.
3. Lastly, and this is probably the most important reason, a skilled WLAN professional designs a WLAN with the intention of fulfilling specific business needs instead of just to implement the latest and greatest technology. Start a WLAN deployment by focusing on why it is being deployed instead of on what is being deployed and your chances of a successful deployment will increase dramatically.

We owe it to ourselves not to let commoditization get the best of our wireless networks. Maybe you have the budget for the Concert Grand Model D of WLANs and maybe you don’t. Focus on your business needs and you may find that a regular run-of-the-mill up-right piano is all you really needed to make beautiful music.

Dan C. @simplywifi

Are you currently stuck in the piano store staring, wide-eyed at all of the choices? You’re not alone. Leave a comment or send us a message and we would be happy to discuss your business needs and get you started down the road to wireless success.

Dear Potential Friend,

I really want to be your friend. In fact, I want to be the kind of friend you can count on to tell you the truth no matter what the consequences. It's with this thought in mind that I am forced to tell you that, and this may sting a little, you have completely lost your mind by deciding to deploy fifty home wireless routers in an attempt to become a wireless enterprise. There, I said it. For a few moments I thought about allowing you to experience this life lesson for yourself, but then I remembered what my grampa always used to say: "There's two things friends should never do. First, friends don't let friends use home wireless gear to perform enterprise deployments. The other thing friends never do is talk while I'm trying to watch TV. Won't you be my friend?".

It's the first thing that grampa mentioned that forced me to write you this letter. I couldn't, in good conscience, let you go through with this terrible mistake. Here's why (I've enclosed a picture of grampa. If it helps soften the blow you can pretend he's the one talking):

1. Hardware Quality - Home wireless routers are made to be affordable for personal use under average personal circumstances. The hardware used is not as well tested as enterprise gear, is generally not as sensitive, and is not as rugged. Also, home gear is usually designed to sit on a desk and not to be mounted on walls or ceilings. As such, home gear is probably not plenum rated like a lot of enterprise gear.

2. Management Interface - Home gear usually has a nice web interface you can use to configure your network. This works great for a single access point, but you are going to waste an entire day logging in to all fifty access points just to make a single configuration change. Enterprise gear is designed to allow easy configuration from a single console for all access points. Log in once, make the change once, and log out. Simple.

3. Channel and Power Management - Wireless networks operate over a shared-medium. Your access point's signal is transmitting through the same physical space as your neighbours signal. This means there is bound to be some signal interference. Home routers have very poor capabilities for handling interference. Usually the only control you have is channel selection and maybe, if you're lucky, transmit power. Do you really want to log in to every access point and manually adjust these settings on an hourly basis as your environment experiences different levels of interference? Enterprise wireless gear does this stuff for you. It's designed to tune itself so that you only need to get involved in the really tricky situations.

4. Power - Enterprise access points can be powered via the ethernet cable (PoE). You can do this by using PoE-capable switches or mid-span PoE injectors. Either way, you don't need to worry about how you're going to run an extension cable from the access point's location in the middle of the ceiling to the wall outlet behind a desk.

5. Features - Home access points are great for getting home users on the Internet because home users usually have very basic requirements: get me on the Internet, and keep me on the Internet. My friend (can I call you that yet?), I could tell you wonderous stories of the features I have seen on enterprise-grade solutions. These solutions can give you different levels of access based on who you are, where you are, which device you are using, and what time it is. These solutions can drop your traffic directly onto the local network or even send it through an encrypted tunnel to a completely different location without you even noticing. Deploying a wireless network in an enterprise is not the same as deploying one for your home. Considerations must be made for each different user, device, and circumstance and I just don't think you'll be able to keep up with your home access points. There are so many more feature I could write about but I think you get the point.

6. Security - How long does it take you to change the WPA2 pre-shared key (PSK) on your home access point? Now take that time and multiply it by the number of access points you have. That is the level of pain you are going to experience each time a contractor, guest, or employee leaves your company. Not to mention routine PSK changes as a matter of policy. (If you're doing the math, that's a lot of passphrase changes). So, you can either hire a co-op student to constantly change the PSK and notify every employee, or you can use an enterprise-grade solution that allows you to do away with pre-shared keys. That's right, imagine having users connect to the network using the same usernames and passwords they use to log into their computers. Imagine being able to provision individual logon credentials for guests, contractors, and employees who bring in personal devices and want to get online. Again, I don't think you'll be able to keep up with those home access points.

I know home wireless gear is the 'right price'. I get it, but good wireless networks are not commodity items that can just be picked up off the shelf and plugged in. Every wireless network is different and you are going to need to invest in a proper solution that meets and adapts to your specific needs. Sure you can save a few upfront dollars by sourcing home access points, but I think you'll find the additional cost, in dollars and time, of tearing down that deployment because it doesn't work and is too hard to manage, is not going to make you too happy. My potential friend, I urge you to heed my advice by not trying to design by dollars. Leave home (commodity) gear in the home and use the enterpise gear for your business. 

Yours Truly,

Dan C. (My friends call me @SimplyWifi)

P.S. If, after reading this letter you feel that we can still be friends, I'd love to hear back from you. Please send me a letter, or leave a note in the comments section below with any thoughts or questions. Also, please subscribe / follow us and share this with others so you can save them from making the same terrible mistake. 

I've recently come to the sad realization that most technical experts are using the wrong measurements to determine the success of a WLAN deployment. Don't get me wrong; measuring things like throughput, SNR, retry rate, and authentication/re-authentication times is very important. What I'm saying is: these are all measurements used to determine if the hardware and software components are playing nicely together. Am I the only one who finds it disturbing that we claim to design networks for people to use but we don't have a good set of measurements to determine if the 'people component' plays well with the hardware and software components?

It would seem to me that the success, or potential for success, of a WLAN deployment is largely determined by the end-users. If the people components don't jive with the infrastructure components, then your WLAN deployment will fail. After all, what is the use of having a fancy WLAN if nobody uses it? Let's look at a few of the current measurements available to us:

1. Throughput - Using an application like iPerf, we can get some very accurate figures on just how much data we can cram through our wireless pipe. Higher Mbps values mean faster uploads and download speeds.

2. Retry Percentages - This measurement is important because a high percentage of retry frames means something is not right. There could be a major source of interference, hidden nodes, LAN-side cabling issues or any number of problems forcing your wireless clients to have to constantly have to repeat themselves. The goal is to have a very low retry percentage.

3. Latency - Just how long does it take your data frames to get from point A to point B? If latency is too high you'll notice some applications start to act a bit flakey. A good example of this is VoIP: high latency leads to jitter and dropped calls. When it comes to latency you don't want to shoot for the stars because they are far too high. Instead, shoot for the floor since it is nice and low.

I could go on, but giving a summary of all performance measurements is not really the purpose of this post. All I am trying to show is that the current measurements are only designed to give us very technical details about the infrastructure and not about the end-users. If we truly want to determine how successful our WLAN deployment is going to be, I propose a few more measurements:

1. User Awareness Level - Are the users even aware that your WLAN exists? Are they aware of where it exists? Who to contact if they have issues or questions? Add 1 point each time you answer no and aim for a score of zero.

2. Barriers to Entry - How difficult is it to get started? Which credentials are required and how do users go about obtaining and configuring them? Does the WLAN work with native wireless supplicants or will users need to install additional software? If your sign-up process requires a lot of technical knowledge or technical staff intervention, then you've got a very high score. Hint: High scores are evil.

3. Number of User Interactions - From the moment the user decides to connect, to the moment they open their first website, how many user inputs were required? Lowering the number of items that users have to click or enter each time they connect will dramatically improve user satisfaction and adoption.

While infrastructure-focused measurments are very important, we should not allow ourselves to believe that they provide any real insights into the success of a WLAN initiative. The majority of WLANs being deployed are supposed to be making it easier for people to live a mobile lifestyle. Taking some time to think of the users, before and after the technical work begins, should be a mandatory step in any WLAN initiative. Applications and infrastructure care about Mbps, retries, EAP types, and other technical mumbo-jumbo. Users care about the experience. Get it right by measuring both and I predict a successful WLAN deployment in your future.

Dan C.

Do you have any thoughts on what should be measured regarding a WLANs performance, effectiveness, and success? I really like to hear what you have to say on this topic. Leave a note in the comments section or share this post with your colleagues if you feel this is worth further discussion.