WiFiMon Hardware Probes (WHP) are used for performance measurements in a WiFi network from dedicated small form factor devices which are installed in fixed points. WiFiMon tested its operation and recommends the use of Raspberry Pi’s v3 Model B+ or v4.
WHP configuration
WiFiMon Hardware Probe will work in the following configuration:
- A Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ or a newer model
- A micro SD card with at least 16GB
- WiFiMon Raspberry Pi operating system image. Size ~ 3.6 GB
WiFiMon Raspberry Pi image given above is a custom version of Raspbian Stretch with desktop, with the default Raspberry Pi credentials (user: pi, password: raspberry).
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Secure your Raspberry Pi by changing the default password. Optionally, you may enable SSH to access the command line of a Raspberry Pi remotely or setup remote desktop. Next, you have to connect to the wireless network you want to measure.
The WiFiMon Hardware Probe (WHP) regularly performs performance tests against the WiFiMon Test Server (WTS) in an automated manner, thus simulating end users from a fixed location in the monitored WiFi network. To that end, WHPs leverage on a crontab script. Within the crontab script, the tests that will be executed executed (NetTest/speedtest/boomerang/speedtest) should be defined. To do that, open the terminal (as user "pi") and enter the command: crontab -e. You will see the following code block. You are required to modify the parts of the crontab that are denote
19,39,59 * * * * export DISPLAY=:0 && firefox --new-window https://www.google.com >/dev/null 2>&1 00,05,10,15,20,25,30,35,40,45,50,55 * * * * export DISPLAY=:0 && firefox --new-tab URL_TO_nettest.html >/dev/null 2>&1 01,06,11,16,21,26,31,36,41,46,51,56 * * * * export DISPLAY=:0 && firefox --new-tab URL_TO_speedworker.html >/dev/null 2>&1 02,07,12,17,22,27,32,37,42,47,52,57 * * * * export DISPLAY=:0 && firefox --new-tab URL_TO_boomerang.html >/dev/null 2>&1 03,08,13,18,23,28,33,38,43,48,53,58 /home/pi/wireless.py >> ~/cron.log 2>&1 18,38,58 * * * * scripts/kill-firefox.sh >/dev/null 2>&1 10 0 * * 0 scripts/pi-reboot.sh >/dev/null 2>&1 |
Note:
You are required to modify the parts of the crontab that are denoted with red color. Lines 2-4 require the URLs of the websites in which the NetTest, speedtest and boomerang JS scripts are injected. Details related to the configuration of the WiFiMon testtools are included in the WiFiMon Test Server (WTS)installation documentation. Following the assumptions/notations of the WTS guide, example URLs for NetTest, speedtest and boomerang respectively are (i) https://WTS_FQDN/wifimon/measurements/nettest.html, (ii) https://WTS_FQDN/wifimon/measurements/speedworker.html and (iii) https://WTS_FQDN/wifimon/measurements/boomerang.html.
Line 5 of the crontab is related to the streaming of wireless network interface metrics to the WiFiMon Analysis Server (WAS). Optionally, the intervals of the WHP measurements could be altered by appropriately configuring the crontab so that measurement are more or less frequent. The configuration of the following code block considers 5-minute intervals for each testtoolDepending on the available tests (or WiFiMon-enabled pages), you can specify which tests will be executed and when. You may also see an example. It is advised to visit the test pages with Mozilla Firefox in case Adding Security Exceptions are necessary, e.g. when certificates are not trusted. This will ensure that SSL-related errors will not prevent the WiFiMon HW Probe from visiting these pages.
Step 4: Streaming Wireless Network Interface Metrics to the WiFiMon Analysis Server (WAS)
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