User's Manual

SAPPHIRE EYE

Sapphire Eye is a monitoring station for WLAN environments, serving as the measurement

station or monitoring station in the WQA solution. Unlike a common access point or client,

the Eye monitoring station uses advanced broadband antenna technology, which creates an

exceptionally large coverage area. Consequently, one Eye can monitor several access points,

or WLAN cells. The recommended number of monitored cells is 6–10. Eye is protected

against dust and water (conformant to IP55 or IP65 specifications, depending on the model),

so it can be installed outdoors also in challenging environments.

In Sapphire, the management tool Carat and monitoring station Eye work as a client and

server, with Eye being the server for Carat. The traffic between the client and server is

strongly encrypted and uses 7signal’s proprietary management protocol. This makes it

possible to manage the monitoring stations from geographically distant locations and over

insecure networks.

A monitoring station conducts both passive and active measurements in a WLAN

environment. The passive measurements consist of listening to data traffic that uses the

IEEE 802.11 protocol and of general analysis of the radio frequency spectrum in the

coverage area. Passive measurements have no effect on the functionality or utilization rate

of the target network, or the effect is very small (probe request transmissions). During active

measurements, Sapphire Eye contacts each monitored access point in turn and uses the

network services via the WLAN; i.e., it acts like a user or other client in the network. Using

both active and passive measurements, the 7signal WQA solution can monitor the

experienced network performance along the entire length of the service chain and locate

problems in both WLAN and LAN environments.