Session Monitoring

The U.S. Robotics Professional Access Point provides real-time session monitoring information including which clients are associated with a particular access point, data rates, transmit/receive statistics, signal strength, and idle time.

Understanding Session Monitoring Information

The Sessions page shows information on client stations associated with access points in the cluster. Each client is identified by user name and user MAC address, along with the AP (location) to which it is currently connected.

To view a particular statistic for client sessions, select an item from the Display drop-down list and click Go. You can view information on Idle Time, Data Rate, Signal, Utilization, and so on; all of which are described in detail in the table below.

A "session" in this context is the period of time in which a user on a client device (station) with a unique MAC address maintains a connection with the wireless network. The session begins when the client logs on to the network, and the session ends when the client either logs off intentionally or loses the connection for some other reason.


Note	A session is not the same as an association, which describes a client connection to a particular access point. A client network connection can shift from one clustered AP to another within the context of the same session. A client station can roam between APs and maintain the session. For information about monitoring associations and link integrity monitoring, see Associated Wireless Clients.


Field	Description
User Name	Indicates the client user name of IEEE 802.1x clients. Note: This field is relevant only for clients that are connected to APs using IEEE 802.1x security mode and local authentication server. (For more information about this mode, see IEEE 802.1x.) For clients of APs using IEEE 802.1x with RADIUS server or other security modes, no user name will be shown here.
AP Location	Indicates the location of the access point. This is derived from the location description specified on the Basic Settings tab.
User MAC Address	Indicates the MAC address of the user's client device (station). A MAC address is a hardware address that uniquely identifies each node of a network.
Idle Time	Indicates the amount of time this station has remained inactive. A station is considered to be "idle" when it is not receiving or transmitting data.
Data Rate	The speed at which this access point is transferring data to the specified client. The data transmission rate is measured in megabits per second (Mbps). This value should fall within the range of the advertised rate set for the IEEE 802.1x mode in use on the access point. For example, 6 to 54Mbps for 802.11a,
Signal	Indicates the strength of the radio frequency (RF) signal the client receives from the access point. The measure used for this is an IEEE 802.1x value known as Received Signal Strength Indication (RSSI), and will be a value between 0 and 100. RSSI is determined by a an IEEE 802.1x mechanism implemented on the network interface card (NIC) of the client station.
Utilization	Utilization rate for this station. For example, if the station is "active" (transmitting and receiving data) 90% of the time and inactive 10% of the time, its "utilization rate" is 90%.
Receive Total	Indicates number of total packets received by the client during the current session.
Transmit Total	Indicates number of total packets transmitted to the client during this session.
Error Rate	Indicates the percentage of time frames are dropped during transmission on this access point.

Viewing Session Information for Access Points

You can view session information for all access points on the network at the same time, or set the display to show session information for a specified access point chosen from the drop-down menu at the top of the screen.

To view information on all access points, select the Show all access points radio button at the top of the page.

To view session information on a particular access point, select the Show only this access point radio button and choose the access point name from the drop-down menu.

Sorting Session Information

To order (sort) the information shown in the tables by a particular indicator, click on the column label by which you want to order things. For example, if you want to see the table rows ordered by Utilization rate, click on the Utilization column label. The entries will be sorted by Utilization rate.

Refreshing Session Information

You can force an update of the information displayed on the Session Monitoring page by clicking the Refresh button.