​Ekahau has brought #WiFiDesignDay back to Australia for the second year running... It's great to have a local, low cost event to get Wi-Fi enthusiasts (users, managers, installers, sales people and manufacturers) in to the same room to celebrate and  hopefully learn a thing or two about Wi-Fi.

I'm writing (and updating)  in real-time, so come back and refresh regularly for new content.....

Mark Krischer (Cisco) - quickly handed the microphone to introduce Jonathan B from a local partner (Local Measure) based in Sydney to the stage to present quickly. Jonathan is the CEO and mentioned his company worked on the installation of Wi-Fi at the Sydney Opera House. He promoted his captive portal solution that helps "you extract more value" out of Wi-Fi, driving better user experiences with ability to opt-in to sharing information back to a venue. The portal allows for social login as well as other methods. The value to a venue is the ability to learn as much about a customer as possible while driving some operational efficiency with built in feedback forms.

Back with Mark K  for his topic of Understanding Wireless Security and WPA3.
"A well designed wireless network will be more secure than the wired network that it connects to." Most wired networks do not use 802.1X for authentication. Mark takes us on a history trip on wireless security beginning with Wireless Equivalent Privacy (WEP) and why wireless security is important in the first place (no traditional physical security boundaries - like on a wired network).

Mark explains that the Wi-Fi 6 certification is linked to the WPA3 certification - which means that inherently moving forwards we will have more secure networks. TKIP, SHA1 and WEP are now fully deprecated and Mark verbally recommends that instead of using these legacy measures to just leave the wireless network open.

Importantly, Mark explains how MSCHAP is kind of broken now (it uses 3DES) which is commonly used with WPA-Enterprise and introduced Secure Fast Roaming which takes advantage of the IEEE standards 802.11k/v/r and Wi-Fi Agile Multiband. Management Frame Protection that "is going to immunise wireless networks from the vast majority of attacks we see today" (amongst the other newly introduced security measures). Opportunistic Wireless Encryption (OWE) will allow us to privatise data on an Open network using a invisible-to-user Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Rogue AP containment is a denial-of-service attack on another AP. ​

Aaron Scott (Aruba) - Preparation!!!
Earlier in 2019 Aaron managed the Wi-Fi for a pretty unique event that has requirements that fly in the opposite direction to some best practices. The lessons he learnt are valuable for us all.
The Venue - every venue is different so setups between events will be different. You need to visit the venue in advance. Seeing the space is critical but you also need to check out cabling access/locations (IDFs and MDFs). An often overlooked part is the available Internet speed/bandwidth. Of course being able to get your eyes over the possible AP mounting/locations is super important - because you may be using "cable ties and duct tape" to get things in place. Taking measurements of wall attenuation and floor scale is smart. Meeting the venue team up front is also useful as you need them during the event and will most likely have to call in a lot of favours.

Requirements - Least capable most important devices (LCMI) is what your network needs to be designed to support. This might be barcode scanners at an entry point or mobile devices, possible. But in the case of the event that Aaron had to support earlier in 2019 the most important devices were robots that were to play competitive soccer against each other. The Wi-Fi capabilities of these robots was wildly variant - some with antennas encased in a metal box, others with consumer grade wireless routers. For a robot playing soccer, having a low network latency is critical.

RF requirements - stationary (keynote, breakout and meals). High roaming (walkways). Mixed (show floor). SSIDs for events typically are Open or Pre-shared Key (PSK) based. Most events don't use 802.1X authentication and these robots certainly didn't support 802.1X. At robo-cup there were approximately 46 SSIDs (not all broadcast out of all APs). Each field had it's own unique SSID and so there was no additional overhead introduced as each AP had a minimal number of broadcast networks. It is typically not a good idea to let devices talk to each other on the event wireless. Wireless to Wired communication was important so that robots could communicate with equipment on the side of the field. Pre-event negotiation on channel usage is a good idea. Often an event venue will want to broadcast there own public space SSIDs no matter what event is taking place. Coordinating channel plans with the venue is possible as long as it's well planned and the importance communicated up front.

There are always unforeseen changes - map and venue layout changes all the way up to the day of the event. Being agile is important. Having extra APs ready for these changes is useful but also being prepared for some rapid re-planning.

 Dom Fitzgibbon (Plexnet) - Design, Deploy, Test, Survey, Monitor, Troubleshoot Wireless Life-Cycle
Dom takes us through the Plan, Design, Verify, Test and Monitor cycle of Wi-Fi from his vast experience throughout his day to day.

What to test:
* AP authentication (WPA/WPA2/WPA3/802.1X
* Average and maximum client capcity loading
* AP stability
* AP interoperability with legacy 802.11 mode
* Benchmark L2-L7 throughput, Rate vs Range
* Features :  Roaming, Band Steering, Multi-AP mesh
* 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6) network readiness
* Wi-Fi Offload (AP/Hotspots to LTE/5G)

There is a lot to testing Wi-Fi (it's not as easy or simple as what we often model). Is iPerf a useful tool? Dom states it's great for quick testing but not always reliable past the 350-500 Mbps mark. iPerf should not be relied on as a definitive test result.

Don't forget that security testing is very important. Ensure that Guest users can't hope into the corporate side of the network through firewalls or hopping the DMZ.

Monitoring - it's a good idea to have monitoring in place even if it's as simple as SNMP. There are loads of third party tools so that you can employ and vendors have their tools too. Make sure the data you get is relevant to your business / dev ops needs. Packet data is critical (packets don't lie) and will tell you when you have application issues or if there are TCP problems. Wireless LAN Controller / AP telemetry must be understood but this takes some practice.
The "wireless medium is a black hole" and often you know there is a problem in the network but don't understand why. Narrowing the issue to a floor or a single AP is helpful in narrowing your realm of troubleshooting.

Benchmarking is critical so you know what it was like before a change or migration. When you're troubleshooting it's super helpful to know what things were performing before you were alerted to an issue.

Finally - understand the ecosystem. DNS, DHCP, Authentication and Backhaul. It's very common that issues attributed to bad Wi-Fi are not actually Wi-Fi issues at all. Knowing how the whole solution ties together and the processes of how a client gets on the network will help you identify what is the root cause of a problem.

Dom doesn't like buzz words and suggests we be aware of marketing hype!
AI, Root Cause, Single Pane of Glass*
AI = we aren't there yet... its machine learning and it's historical data analysis
Root Cause = The system will help point you in the direction but it won't show you the answer, there is no magic bullet otherwise "someone would have come out with it"
Single Pane of Glass = If you got everything in one view the screen would need to be massive and it would be painful to actually use.

Useful tools
* Wi-Fi Explorer Pro and Wi-Fi Signal by Adrian Granados https://www.adriangranados.com
* WinFi Lite (Windows) https://www.helge-keck.com/download.html
* WLAN Pi - does iPerf, Kismet & Speedtests. Great for ekahau throughput tests. https://www.wlanpi.com
​

Density of Wi-Fi has nothing to do with number of APs - more so, density is reliant on clients talking fast. Talking fast means clients will have high signal, with good SNR which means a good data rate = fast transmittion of data. Fast transmission of data means that there is more airtime available for other clients to transmit = higher density. 

If you get the captive portal page, or if you got an IP address, or if your client can resolve a DNS address then Wi-Fi is not broken... These all require that data must travel across the Wi-Fi network to operate correctly. Keith skipped over the Captive Portal segment of his slides but the slides will be available soon so you can check out his views on that.

Channels - use as wide a channels as you can until you cannot. Don't use wide channels when it is going to cause co-channel interference. 20 MHz wide channels is OK, but if you can get away with using wider channels then do. Don't be afraid of using DFS channels. DFS is only a problem when it is and the Wi-Fi network will alert you to this via logs.

Keith breaks down the single frame transmission process. There is a lot of overhead and it's described well by a great / complex visual. I highly recommend CWNA and CWAP study to get to understand this process well. The spreadsheet for the single frame transmission is available in the Aruba Airheads community (most likely part of the Very High Density Validated Reference Design Guide by Chuck).

Then Keith returns to Captive Portals, declaring them as evil. Disney World and the Apple Store don't have them so the excuse that it's a legal requirement is a bad excuse.

To improve the performance of Wi-Fi (like on a wired connection) you must lower interference. This is how CAT Ethernet cabling has improved throughout the years - by twisting pairs or shielding and other techniques. The most prevalent cause of wireless slowness is other wireless. Lowering interference is a critical part of the deployment and troubleshooting process.

Wired or Wireless Problem?
* Ping is not a good troubleshooting tool - it's a layer 3 tool when you might have a layer 2 problem.
* Does the client have an IP
* Check the MCS of a Wi-Fi Client - 
* Is the issue isolated to Wi-Fi devices only?
* Compare throughputs on Wi-Fi or wired connections
* Check RSSI and SNR - the basic variable metrics for successful Wi-Fi PHY

Keith shows an example of a great Wi-Fi client metric for a connection he had at a hotel in Dubai. The client had 867 Mbps data rate and -49 dBm with a -90 dBm noise floor (41 SNR) but the speedtest showed a 1Mbps download. This indicates either a rate shape somewhere other than the Wi-Fi or a terrible backhaul - in this case he spoke with the hotel and identified they were proud of their E1 connection to the Internet.

Health Analogy:
* Blood Pressures - Channel Utilisation
* Pulse - Retry Rates
* Temperature - MCS Rates
Because clients back off and lower the MCS rates due to poor retry rates Keith focuses most on the MCS Rates rather than retry rates. This is great piece of advice for packet analaysis.

Take the WLAN Pros Compensation Survey if you haven't already: 
​https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/WLAN_Comp_2020

Devaiah Nellamakada - Designing Wi-Fi in Multi-floor Buildings with Atriums

Down the middle of the large building Devaiah designed for is a large Atrium with many floors of void space. Because of this there is plenty of RF bleed between floors, high SNR and CCI that must be managed as best as possible. It can make or break your user experience in those areas.
Architecture is outside of the control of an RF Engineer.
Open and high ceilings creates RF Reflection, multipath and unreliable signal quality.
Multi-tenancy buildings have many challenges. AP channel planning is difficult and RF coordination may be impossible.
Differing materials means large variance in attenuation.

Factors than effect user experience
* Lower throughput and disconnections
* Unreliable Signal coverage and low SNR
* Client devices and its NIC
* Co-channel interference | ACI | low data rate
* Non Wi-Fi Interference
* Upstream Infrastructure Layer (L3-L7)
* Multi-path fading, re-transmissions and reflection

Discovery Approach

1. Engage and assess and probe as much as possible during discovery process
2. Understand Business and Operational requirements to best align to customer expectations
3. Application, client and Capacity Requirements
4. ​Review any existing LAN & WLAN designs
5. Survey & Analysis Tools
6. Protect existing investment if possible (re-use good infrastructure and cabling)
7. Wired Backhaul - ensure WAN bandwidth and internal links are sufficient
8. Monitoring & Analysis Tools are important for long term success of a solution

Monitoring is important for the team managing Wi-Fi long term. RF is invisible and the right tools will give you visibility in to what is happening.

Key Design Factors

• Access Point and Antenna Selection
• Identify aesthetic and mounting requirements early on
  • Give the customer or architect an idea of what the solution would look like once complete
  • Do this as early as possible rather than having to go back at a later point to re-design
• Client device capability and offset considerations
  • This can be performed in Ekahau Pro
  • Requires understanding of the client capability (LCMI) which may need to be tested
  • https://rssicompared.com/ is a good reference for some tested devices by WLAN Professionals around the world - you can be involved in this also​
• Hybrid Survey / Inter-floor Bleed
• Attenuators
  • Make good use of attenuation materials
  • Especially useful around attriums
  • Can help with antenna selection. Omni antennas are typically cheaper than using directional antennas.

Not all clients are connected in an office at the same time,
Consider over-subscription ratio 60-65% so that you don't end up with too many APs in the design.
Design with client offset in mind - weakest client.

, After Lunch Haydn Andrews (NTT) comes to the stage for Warehouse Wireless Design.
Haydn kicks of with a hilariously painful video you may have seen online where a forklift driver taps a rack and the entire warehouse falls down around him. 
There are different types of warehouses you may come across...

Safety:

• Safety rules are critical in warehouses
• Site inductions - may be company or site specific
  • certifications may be required such as White Card 
• Sometimes you will be escorted around the site

Personal Protection Equipment (PPE)

• Eye/Ear protection
• Hard hats and steel cap boots - especially under construction sites
• Reflective clothing or protective suits (cold storage or food processing)
• Identification (ID)

Elevated Work Platforms

• Working at heights or platform work may require certification or training
• APoS surveying is difficult in sites with tall ceilings - Elevated Work Platforms can be used to get the AP to the mount height

RF Challenges

• Varying coverage requirements and challenges
• Different types of antennas
• Interference
  • PA systems and Bluetooth
  • 4G repeaters
  • Need to spectrum survey to identify
• Environmental
  • metal reflective and multipath 
• Bad floor plans for planning (challenge to overcome)
• Changing stock levels that will effect Wi-Fi signal when the system is installed

Warehouses are like snowflakes, each one is unique in it's own way. Never design a Warehouse without going on site at least once.

Client Devices

• Hand scanneras
  • often low bandwidth but can sometimes be telnet sessions or RDP sessions
• Vehicle mounted units (VMUs)
• VoIP Phones
• Vocollect
• Often don't support 802.11k/v/r enhancements for roaming
• Low data rate devices can have an impact on the wireless network

Overhead omnidirectional antennas are easy to install and have large coverage areas so may mean less APs are required overall... but they are very susceptible to problems when stock levels change. They have issues with poor signal penetration and generally have a very large coverage area. Channel planning and co-channel interference can be a major problem when designing and configuring omnidirectional antenna APs.

Directional antennas can potentially become obstructions to moving plant around the warehouse such as forklifts or trucks. They will generally have a good line of sight down a rack row and will ultimately provide higher signal to the clients. Typically directional antenna designs have more APs. SNR will improve and there is less chance of obstruction with well placed directional antennas.

Other considerations for APs:

AP Enclosures are required particularly in places where AP is exposed to high dust, water or the outdoor elements. Low operating temperatures can be an issue in cold storage facilities - ensure that the AP model is capable of operating in the conditions of where you are mounting. Sometimes you can mount an AP outside the cold storage room and install antennas inside the harsh environment.

Predictive Survey

• What are the heights of racks
• What is rack attenuation
• Use atentuation areas (ekahau) for the racks
• Sensitivity analaysis for the devices you are designing for

​AP on  a Stick

• Increased time and cost to do this... or it may be impossible to do so because of the machinery in the environment
• Measure the signal propagation in very specific environments
  • High ceilings, narrow aisles, mezsanines, heavy machinery, special chambers and unknown environments

Different Areas of a Warehouse to consider

• Racking
• Mezzanines
• Office inside or outside the warehouse
• Loading docks
• Open Areas
• Workshop spaces
• Packing
• Low stack areas
• High stack areas

Some devices do not support DFS channels so be sure to design to the capabilities of the devices specific to the areas they are used. Knowing how the clients roam also helps the RF design.

New types of client devices seen in this industry: IoT, Robots, Drones, Automatic Guided Vehicles

Troubleshooting examples in a warehouse environment
Common issues are coverage holes from old legacy designs. Often the layout of a warehouse has changed or where stock is stored has adapted which means the attentuation of stock has achanged the RF propagation. Roaming issues arise where large cells exist. Physical AP or antenna issues can arise and be difficult to diagnose. Rodents chew cables and of course upstream non Wi-Fi infrastructure related issues that get correlated to Wi-Fi problems by un-knowing users.

The final presentation of the day is commencing with a tag team effort from Stephen Cooper (Mist) and François Vergès (Semfio Networks) who will talk about Design Considerations in Wi-Fi 6. 

802.11ax or Wi-Fi 6 can be used interchangeably. Wi-Fi 6 is the Wi-Fi Alliances certfiication name based on IEEE 802.11ax technology. Wi-Fi 6 is going to be much more efficient than Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) or the standards before it. It will use both the 2.4 and 5 GHz frequency bands which brings new benefits to the 2.4 GHz space. MU-MIMO is no longer optional as it was in 802.11ac. To boil it down the advancements in Wi-Fi before Wi-Fi 6 were about making things faster but now we are improving the efficiency of clients on the area. There should be a lot less contention on the air thanks to Wi-Fi 6.

 Medium contention is improved with OFDMA. Most traffic over the air is about 300 bytes or less. So a lot of airtime was reserved for wasteful traffic. OFDMA provides much more efficient airtime/medium use by cramming what would have been multiple transmissions in to a single airtime use opportunity.

​Stephen is getting pretty deep in to the OFDMA Operations... his slides will be shared post-event so they will be better than a ton of bullet-points here. He is showing Trigger frame and RU allocation information within a wireless frame capture from Wireshark. We have finally reached full Wi-Fi Nerd level at #WiFiDesignDay. Stephen is using very clever analogies for the explanation of OFDMA and MU-MIMO - I can see a video camera in the back of the room so hopefully you can watch a video of his presentation at some point. 

With OFDMA there is a lot of negotatiation between clients and APs and it is fully dynamic. Devices can out-out of MU with resource units that are allocated for single device up-link transmissions.

1024QAM (modulation scheme) was introduced in Wi-Fi 6 which brings new data-rates. Not just fast data rates but slower data rates are now possible than before. Longer guard intervals are provided for more resiliency to provide a better chance of actually achieving 1024QAM.

BSS Colouring provides greater spatial re-use which benefits times when there is channel overlap. Clients will maintain a 2nd NAV timer and there will be thresholds for the different BSS's. This is about improving channel re-use in highly contested environments.

BSS = Basic Service Set
OBSS = Overlapping BSS

​Target Wake Time (TWT) was first introduced in 802.11ah. Radio wake-up is no longer tied to the beacon/DTIM interval. It will make clients much more power efficient. It is feasible that a client may power it's radio down for very long periods (days maybe).

Wi-Fi 6 can be detected by Wi-Fi Explorer Pro, Ekahau Sidekick, Packet captures, your device if it supports Wi-Fi 6.

Handing over to François... who made a cheeky comment on the number of new acronyms introduced by Wi-Fi 6.

François is on his first trip to Australia and has been taking the ESCE Advanced course in Melbourne this week prior to #WiFiDesignDay.

The design requirements for a Wi-Fi 6 design may have some changes around the models of clients and APs.  AP models that support Wi-Fi 6 may have higher power requirements. François showed some examples of power requirements from Cisco, Ruckus, Mist and Aruba. We need more power because we might support up to 8 spatial streams - 8x8:x APs are coming in the near future. They will most likely require 802.3bt (51-71W) or dual 8023at (2x 25.5W). The new higher power PoE standards will require new switches.

Wi-Fi 6 Clients on the market are Samsung Galaxy S10, iPhone 11 and the Intel AX200/201 chips for laptop devices. The spatial stream capabilities on these devices are similar to what we are seeing in todays  802.11ac devices (such as 2x2). We may see a new subset of client device types with the introduction of Wi-Fi 6 - IoT will change the network requirements because of the need for Target Wake Time, MU-OFDMA and specifically to support the 2.4 GHz 802.11ax implementation.

The same amount of spectrum is available to date. So channel planning will be much the same as with 802.11ac. Not much should change here. We will use the spectrum we have in a more efficient way - which may effect capacity planning. Most likely we will still use 20 and 40 MHz wide channels.
 
Wi-Fi Agile Multiband is a pre-requisite for Wi-Fi 6. Neighbour reports, BSS Transition features and Over-the-air Fast Transition are new capabilities enforced. The clients will be smarter and we should see better roaming.

We currently try to calculate the amount available airtime on a serial transmission basis based on the number and types of clients on the network. This will change because of new dimensions of Wi-Fi 6. The capacity is effected by MU-OFDMA, MU-MIMO, TWT, BSS colouring and 1024 QAM. It's unknown at this time how the vendors will allocate things like Resource Units so it will be difficult to do maths on capacity until more is known about the implementations. If the information is not available we may have to make some educated guesses.

Some Wi-Fi 6 features might not be supported or enabled all of the time. There are likely to be a lot of moving pieces which adds to the complexity of how a wireless network is operating. 

Design Tools!!!
We need new capabilities

• Prediction of signal propagation (should still work based on old ways)
• Prediction of co-channel interference level
• Prediction of achievable data rates
• Updated capacity planner

Need to support new 802.11ax parameters

• 1024 QAM
• New Symbol Duration and Guard Interval
• BSS colouring
• MU-OFDMA

Ekahau will still be a major part in the design and management life-cycle of wireless networks.

Stephen and François are game enough to try a live packet capture with Wi-Fi 6 capable devices connecting to a Mist AP. They attempted to show how OFDMA will slice up the channel for multiple simultaneous client transmission. We could see some hints of it on the screen which was pretty cool.
Next was a packet capture to identify the presence of OFDMA. It was easy to follow along with the stream in Wireshark because of the clear frame colouring that François had installed in his Wireshark.

That's a Wrap!

Apple releases a new version of it’s mobile operating system annually. It is as anticipated by the developer community as much as the release of the new model iPhone is anticipated by the consumers. In June 2019, during the Worldwide Developer Conference, Apple announced iOS 13.

Apple are considered an important device manufacturer in the Wi-Fi Professionals community as a marker for the uptake of new 802.11 standards. This is largely because the mobile device market from Apple's perspective is the least fragmented. Apple design and manufacture the hardware as well as the operating system of their mobile phones and tablet devices. This means that when they release a new feature as long as it can be supported within the hardware it is installed on it is generally available.

There are two big announcements this year from Apple in terms of Wi-Fi capabilities. Arguably the most exciting one for Wi-Fi is the inclusion of 802.11ax (aka Wi-Fi 6) in all of the iPhone 11 models. This is less of a software thing and more a hardware reliant capability - the Wi-Fi chipset in the device must be sufficiently new enough and include the specifications to connect using Wi-Fi 6 features. The iPhone 11 is released with iOS13 pre-installed so it is probably a pre-requisite as well.

The other impressive inclusion is support for WPA3. This is a software capability as it is bringing features to older model mobile devices without the requirement of new chipsets or hardware.

WPA3, which is the successor to the Wi-Fi Alliance WPA2 certifications, brings major improvements in security and privacy of Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs). In 2017 researchers published a vulnerability report which highlighted issues with WPA2.

It is important to assess the viability of WPA3 for WLANs being deployed presently or in the future. It should be the go to where compatibility is established or reviewed frequently as an option where it cannot be primarily installed today.

If you follow a bunch of CWNP-associated Wi-Fi professionals on Twitter you would be familiar with the frequent, casual analysis of hotel Wi-Fi. Maybe you like to do a little bit of looking beyond the SSID when you're away from home? The shared findings help remind us all what to avoid when we setup Wi-Fi.

Screenshots from inSSIDer (by Metageek) were commonly featured in these tweets to help visualise the frequency - especially when channel use was less than good.

Historically the common culprit would be poor planning of the 2.4 GHz frequency space. I've seen examples of hotels using contiguous channels 1 through 11 (including the overlappers 2, 3... 8 etc.). It's common to have wide 40 MHz configuration - which is a terrible idea in 2.4 GHz anywhere there is more than a single radio (in a desert with a population of one).

We see bad setups in the 5 GHz channels as well. Channel re-use is over-represented - sometimes hotel radios have no channel planning whatsoever. Having every access point using the same channel in 2.4 or 5 GHz is a bad idea. Contention for air-time can lead to a performance downgrade if too many people are using the Wi-Fi at the same time on the same frequency. It may cope to a certain amount but if the contention domain extends across a highly populated hotel it's likely to be bad.

But outside of simple channel design issues there are other things that are worth investigating if you want to be thorough.

Keith Parsons found an example of a hotel where he was able to connect to a Wi-Fi network with good 802.11 metrics - high MCS rate, 2 spatial streams and an outstanding signal to noise ratio - yet speed tests were terrible. Something beyond the Wi-Fi shaped his connection to 350 Kbps (possibly the Internet back-haul). The Internet bandwidth must be sufficient on any network to cater to the users requirements. Having a shiny Wi-Fi 5 or 6 (802.11ac or 802.11ax) capable infrastructure won't help anyone if the pipe out is smaller than a soda straw.

If you're familiar with 802.11 protocol analysis you might try capturing Wi-Fi frames in a tool like Wireshark or Omnipeek. With the right filters you can visualise relative re-transmission rates on a channel in your location. When you study for Certified Wireless Analysis Professional you learn about many of the  Information Elements in the 802.11 standard. Information Elements (IEs) hold key information about the capabilities or configuration of a particular BSSID. Sometimes it's a bit too much to get right into the weeds of wireless frame capture and analysis. But there is another way to inspect the IEs if you have an Apple Mac.

Wi-Fi Explorer is a brilliant application brought to us by Adrian Granados. In the simple view it lists the nearby Wi-Fi networks that your Mac can detect. Within the Advanced Details tab the IEs are brought to you in a expandable tree of wonder. In my screenshot example above I have expanded the QBSS Load details of the BSSID to which I was associated. I am able to see there are currently 2 stations (including myself) connected. The Access Point even provides details about the channel utilisation which is useful if   high contention is suspected.

By looking at the IEs with Wi-Fi Explorer you could check what data-rates a BSSID was configured to support. I remember seeing a tweet where someone detected the hotel was rate-shaping clients by restricting association data-rates to 1 and 2 Mbps. This would most certainly result in counter-productive results as this is not the intended use of data-rate configuration. Low data-rates equal poor performance for modern Internet access.

I definitely recommend Wi-Fi Explorer (I have the Pro version) as a day to day Wi-Fi professional tool - there is a lot more to it than mentioned here.

Here is a blog post about the Rules for Successful Hotel Wi-Fi from Keith Parsons. He wrote it way back in 2014 but it still holds true today! 

As demonstrated it is not just about good channel design. There is more to inspect and always plenty to learn from each other.

If you have any stories to share about bad hotel Wi-Fi please comment, and keep sharing your findings on Twitter.