Remote Analysis of a Distributed WLAN Using Passive Wireless-side Measurement: Characterising Usage of the AirUC WLAN

The surge in the popularity of Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) motivates the study of how suchnetworks are used. Recent WLAN deployment at the University of Calgary has provided wirelesscoverage to the main floors of most campus buildings. We were interested in knowing how usersexploit this new wireless technology in their daily routines, and how effectively they utilisedthis service.This book characterises the usage of the campus-wide WLAN named AirUC. We used commercially-available monitoring devices to remotely and passively collect wireless traffic concurrently from 9 selected locations on the campus WLAN for 6 weeks. The aggregate trace contained almost 1 billion wireless frames, representing the WLAN activity generated by 6,775 users and 97 access points. Analysis of the dataset identifies similarities and differences in the user behaviours across the observed WLAN locations, as well as emerging trends in WLAN usage regarding application usage and session mobility. Our study complements and extends existing WLAN measurement studies by providing deeper insights into how today's WLANs are used.