Patent Application
20050287951
Not Applicable
Not Applicable
Not Applicable
1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to the wireless local area network wireless service industry using the 802.11x standard.
The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineer (IEEE) 802.11x is a set of wireless local area network standards that uses the unlicensed Industrial, Scientific, and Medical (ISM) and Unlicensed National Information Infrastructure (UNII) bands which reside in the following frequency bands: 900 MHz, 2400 MHz, 5100 MHz, 5300 MHz, 5800 MHz.
The invention is applicable to the operators or providers of wireless data service using the 802.11x standard.
Such wireless service provides full-duplex data communication to an Internet Service Provider (ISP) and the internet using a network interface card (NIC), Personal Computer Memory Card International Association (PCMCIA) card, or equivalent connected to a computer.
Currently, wireless service providers providing 802.11x service have limited methods to monitor connectivity of the RF and network link of each serving Access Point. This results in customers not being able to gain access or having degraded throughputs to their network, ultimately causing a loss in revenue.
Current commercially available engineering design and measurement tools utilize multiple apparatus and various interfaces to measure wireless connectivity requiring unique skills, experience, and training. Engineering teams within service operator organizations require individual engineers to physically visit each site and conduct a data call to measure network connectivity. This is a man-power and time intensive task. These measurements are limited in time and scope, for example: once per quarter with one pass at each site location.
Service Operators use customer complaints of service performance which are then translated into network operation trouble tickets. This results in a field engineer to visit the site location and fix the network connectivity problem. This is a reactionary solution and incurs down-time in service before the service is corrected.
2. Advantages
This invention has the following advantages:
An apparatus is placed within range of an operational 802.11x standard access point and delivers and receives fixed packets (e.g. data files) to monitor network connectivity. This apparatus will interact with a remote server to deliver and receive the fixed packets. Intelligence is built into the remote server that allows for customized time-periods of polling to the remote unit apparatus at one or several access point locations. In addition, the apparatus is configurable to support dynamic user profiles in order for it to test authentication and authorization representative of the service provider's home users as well as roaming users who are customers of other service providers who are roaming partners.
The essential elements of the invention are shown in
A Processor, such as a Central Processing Unit (CPU), 2 is the main engine of the apparatus. The processor is responsible for controlling the 802.11x user device, the functionality contained in Layer 1, Layer 2 and Layer 3 802.11x data messaging, as well as processing data collection.
Memory 3, (such as removable solid state), is required to store collected data from the measurement device as well as network identification information.
The Operating System 4 manages complete operation of the device.
The Data Processing Method 5, such as those embodied in software or firmware, will reside on the processor and will perform memory management and the delivery/receipt of fixed packets as well as other similar functional processing.
The entire apparatus will be in a compact enclosure 6 and will be provided to the user in the form of a single unit.
The apparatus will have multiple power options 7 such as battery, a/c power, d/c power.
