7signal’s Mobile Eye Demystifies the Client End of Wi-Fi

Given the widespread Work-From-Home reality that many of us are wrapped up in given COVID, network life has absolutely changed for both WLAN users and those who support them. Rather than everyone connecting to the workplace wireless network, we’re in a new age of VPN and a thousand different workers connecting through a thousand different home Wi-Fi connections. No big news here, right? But it needs to be pointed out in the context of support.

As a WLAN architect, engineer, and administrator, I have easy views into all network building blocks in the typical enterprise setting when it’s time to solve end-user problems. But think about how that paradigm changes when all the workers go home, still need to do their work, but now connect to “living room networks” built on who-knows-what network equipment and ISP connections of every range of speed and capacity.

Mobile Eye Bridges the Gap

Among those home-bound employees using Wi-Fi, problems are inevitable. And just like when we’re all at the office, connectivity issues mean lost productivity. While we in the support role aren’t going to drive from house to house doing mobile support (you might, but I’m not), we might want to consider the likes of Mobile Eye , a software-based monitoring tool from 7signal.

From a single cloud-hosted Mobile EyeQ dashboard, those of us doing support have pretty deep views into those far-flung home environments (it’s just as effective in central environments where we don’t have rigid control over client devices) and can “roll the tape” on WLAN factors that may be mucking with the experience of remote users.

How Might You Leverage Mobile Eye?

After running Mobile Eye in test for a few weeks on half a dozen devices on multiple Wi-Fi networks in a couple of different locations, I can say that I would love to have it on all mobile workers’ devices. But it doesn’t have to be all or nothing by any stretch… maybe only key people who simply cannot be down for very long get a Mobile Eye agent so when trouble hits, we can have the contributing factors already recorded. Or perhaps you deploy it to users short-term for diagnostics and troubleshooting as users need help- all data is good and you’ll get deep live and reportable trended insight regardless of how you employ it.

Learn More

After a long gap of not following 7signal’s evolution very closely (we all get busy), I caught one of their almost-zero-salesfluff Friday product intros , and it was time well spent. I had gotten to know the company fairly well back in 2013 when they presented at Wireless Field Day , but so much has changed since then that the Friday tour was an excellent catch up.

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Other: There are a lot of resources and WLAN knowledge aggregated at the 7signal web site . They have been in the WLAN performance game for quite a while. I have been fortunate to present for a few of their...