Why use a Wi-Fi Packet Analyzer?
Picture this scenario: Your end user can’t connect to Wi-Fi onsite and opens a ticket. You and your team usually troubleshoot connection issues remotely using your network management tool, and that works great for many types of issues.
In this case, your dashboard is giving the all-clear, but the end user is still reporting connection issues. So, after exhausting all options that your network management tool gives you, you realize that there’s no way around it: it’s time to roll a truck and send a technician to the customer site.
You know that the last step to troubleshooting endpoints is by capturing network traffic because “the packets never lie.” But with traditional Wi-Fi packet capture solutions, your tech is faced with the difficult task of guessing which channel (or channels) to scan.
Tonic makes site visits simple
Enter Tonic, a Windows desktop client that scans all neighboring channel traffic (multiple channels simultaneously with multiple Wi-Fi adapters plugged in) to find the problem spot quickly - no guessing required.
No more crossing your fingers and hoping that your tech is not wasting hours at a client site, only to open up the recording at your desk and realize that the pcap they provided you contained nothing useful.
Tonic Intelligently Identifies Wi-Fi Connection Issues
Wi-Fi is an ongoing sequence of negotiations and communications between access points and client devices (endpoints). Besides data packets being sent over the air, there are Wi-Fi events that can signal successful connections, or worse, connection problems.
Tonic automatically identifies events like authentication, association, and roaming, and highlights them for you in real time.
Wi-Fi Troubleshooting your team can do
With Tonic, the process for your onsite tech is simple:
- Go to the room/area onsite where the endpoint is having an issue. Open up Tonic and plug in your Wi-Fi adapters. Tonic records all of the traffic for all Wi-Fi endpoints, even if they’re not connected to the network.
- Click to select the device that’s experiencing an issue. Now, Tonic is locked onto this endpoint, and it will follow it it throughout the environment as it roams across channels, associates, authenticates, etc.
- When an issue occurs, Tonic will let you know! Tonic has automatic event detection, and when something happens that indicates a configuration issue you’ll see it pop up.
- If you can see it, you can fix it. Armed with specific diagnostics about what went wrong with the endpoint, the tech can either resolve the issue right then and there, or quickly save a packet capture for later analysis by the expert back at the office. It’s as easy as File > Save PCAP.
Go from “I need proof” to “I have proof”
If you’re like us, you’ve spent hours creating filters, or scrolling through thousands of packets to find specific events like Association Requests or Deauthentications.
No more.
Tonic’s automatic event detection scrolls through the packets for you, identifying and categorizing events in real-time. Associations, Roams, Authentications, Neighbor Reports… everything appears automatically, live as you capture.
Keep the Software, not the Hardware
IT professionals know better than anyone that you have to plan for hardware obsolescence. With a $3,000 piece of traditional packet analysis hardware, you would have to add a budget item for expensive maintenance contracts and recurring capex upgrades.
Tonic was built specifically to avoid this headache, with the ability to turn an off-the-shelf supported Wi-Fi adapter into affordable packet capture hardware. Buying off-the-shelf adapters makes it cost-effective for all of your techs to have a Tonic setup, and when new Wi-Fi standards are deployed, all you have to replace are the adapters.
What our customers say about us
“Tonic has fast become a must have tool for me. Can’t wait to see how this develops as it already gives me so much great data! It’s especially good for demonstrating how Wi-Fi works to clients.“
Dan Jones
Maven Consultancy
“Tonic is packet analysis for the masses. The highlighted contextual information is so cool for highlighted events! For the deeper stuff, you can easily export to your favorite full-featured tool.“
Chris Reed
“Tonic is moving the industry forward.“
Keith Parsons
WirelessLAN Professionals
Want to dive deep into Tonic? Check out the recorded demo below
With Tonic, you get:
- Simultaneous channel capture (with multiple adapters)
- Endpoint Discovery and Auto-following
- Automatic Wi-Fi event detection
- Measurement of Wi-Fi Congestion
- Client Capability Profiling