A scalable framework for wireless network monitoring

The advent of small form-factor devices, falling hardware prices, and the promise of untethered communication is driving the prolific deployment of wireless networks. The monitoring of such networks is crucial for their robust operation. To this end, this paper presents VISUM, a scalable framework for wireless network monitoring. VISUM relies on a distributed set of agents within the network to monitor network devices and store the collected information at data repositories. VISUM's key features are its extensibility for new functionality, and its seamless support for new devices and agents in the monitoring framework. These features enable network operators to deploy, maintain, and upgrade VISUM with little effort. VISUM can also visualize collected data in the form of interactive network topology maps as well as real-time statistical graphs and reports. These visualizations provide an intuitive, up-to-date, and useful overview of a wireless network. We have implemented VISUM and used it to monitor a wireless network deployment at UC-Santa Barbara. In this paper, we describe the architecture of VISUM and report on the performance of the monitored network using information collected by VISUM.