Wi-Pi

Abstract

This paper proposes "Wi-Pi" that enables low-cost and distributed assessment of Wi-Fi performance in an enterprise network. The cost of assessment of Wi-Fi signal quality is still expensive and its continuity of the monitoring is not guaranteed. The number of monitoring devices such as spectrum analyzer is limited, and they will not stay at one place to monitor the entire Wi-Fi coverage under geographically distributed deployment. Monitoring feature of Wi-Fi signal at production-level access points does not reflect the actual situation of clients. Wi-Pi is a low-cost and stationary solution that distributes multiple Raspberry Pis in an enterprise network for monitoring Wi-Fi signal quality and network performance such as packet loss and latency. Taking the advantage of reasonable cost of Raspberry Pi, Wi-Pi collects client-side Wi-Fi performance information and visualizes it as a geographical heat map. Prototype implementation of Wi-Pi has been deployed to cover a small part of the campus network in Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad. The aim of this paper is to make Wi-Fi monitoring to be low-cost, open source and deployable.