Analyzing wireless (Wi-Fi) problems
Wireless LAN (Wi-Fi) became very popular in the last decade, starting from the old 802.11b through 802.11g and to the latest 802.11n standard for high-bandwidth wireless communications.
There are also the emerging standards such as IEEE 802.11ac with products coming in to the market, along with the 802.11ad, which is still under development.
In this recipe we will learn how to resolve Wi-Fi problems, and how to use Wireshark to capture Wi-Fi frames and for basic traffic analysis.
Getting ready
When users complain about bad performance when they connect through a Wi-Fi connection, go as close as you can with your laptop to the user location and verify that you have your Wi-Fi adapter enabled.
How to do it…
The basic tool is right in the laptop (as we can see in the following screenshot) where, you have the first indication for:
The signal strength, that is the Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI). In some cases, you will see only the quality of signal;...
