World's First Wireless LAN Operation Management Software Enabling Actual Observation of Communication Area

NEC Corporation today announced that it has succeeded in the development of the world's first efficient software for wireless local area network ("LAN") operation management, which is capable of actually observing the communication area.
The newly developed software is operation management software that manages the status of communication quality and security through observation of wireless LAN systems constructed of many already widely-used wireless LAN products.

This software is realized by the development of the following technologies:

An accurate coverage management function that enables management via observation of the communication area. This is achieved through interworking with the design output of NEC's wireless area cell design tool "RS-1000"

An autonomous operation function, which autonomously eliminates communication quality degradation of the wireless LAN caused by radio interference.

A rogue station location function, which detects rogue access points or terminal stations that are not system-registered.

These technologies make obsolete conventional, manual on-site checking of coverage and performance, as well as rogue access detection, thanks to automatic remote management that corresponds to a variety of customer environments. This is expected to drastically reduce wireless LAN operation management costs.

In recent years, wireless LANs have spread quickly for offices and homes as they are high-speed, cheap, and license-free. In particular for offices, added to legacy data communication, wireless LAN has begun to be used for telephone and voice telephony services. It is clear that operation management for automatic prompt elimination of communication quality degradation and equipment interference is vital if wireless LAN is to be used in the office. However, with conventional wireless LAN operation management, as there is difficulty in determining the communication areas covered by each access point, there is an issue with quality surveillance meeting the service quality of each communication area required at the time of design.

This newly developed operation management software is for monitoring the quality and security of wireless LAN based on various information collected from wireless LAN equipment. Through the realization of interworking with the design output of RS-1000, this technology enables the coverage status of the radiowave to be displayed with high accuracy and provided to the operation manager. In addition, it is possible to ascertain the maintenance status of the design policy and the influence of design policy changes and technical failures on the communication area, due to the development of a function that displays the quality status etc. of each area's interference and load, and a function that connects this with gathered surveillance information to dynamically update the coverage area. In addition, due to enabling provision of an autonomous operation function and a rogue station location function, which were conventionally only available with specific wireless LAN equipment, to a variety of wireless LAN equipment, this technology will enable the provision of wireless LAN operation management solutions that meet with a variety of customer environments.

NEC is positioning this research result as infrastructure technology for wireless LAN operation outsourcing services. Along with simultaneous observation of actual performance in-house, NEC will aim at early commercialization of network services and operation management software products from now on.

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