Helping their customers keep their Wi-Fi networks up and running smoothly is one of the largest support challenges facing Service Providers. Many householders struggle with poor Wi-Fi throughput, coverage or sometimes basic configuration issues with having little or no technical understanding, this usually leads to numerous support calls. Service Providers then use different types of tools to get better visibility into their customers’ Wi-Fi networks, to suggest or even implement fixes to these issues.

At Inango we have seen two different types of Wi-Fi Diagnostics and Analysis tools.

The first type is a complete, but closed system. Companies like Minim, AirTies, Assia and Plume install a client module in the home router and through it, communicates with a server-based system that performs analysis, recommends and even implements fixes. For many providers this is fine – and we offer them the option of installing this client on our Virtual Services Launcher platform so that it can be run without having to be integrated on the home router. The Virtual Services integration is a great solution unless you really love protracted and messy software integration tasks. We have already done demos with Minim software deployed in this way.

But there is a different approach too which is also popular among Providers. Many companies provide server-based analytic solutions only. CEMpresso from Bulb, Axiros WiFi Management, AvSystems and others offer powerful packages that perform device management (and often much more as well). Some of the larger Service Providers have their own in-house systems for similar purposes. These products communicate with the home routers via standard management protocols (usually TR-069).

This presents two challenges: a TR-069 client needs to be integrated in the router software and the data model implemented. Each time more parameters or actions are needed, the data model needs to be updated and the router-based software modified accordingly. This approach is expensive to maintain.

But even more, protocols like TR-069 are complex and heavy: they consume a lot of bandwidth and processing power from the routers. The result is frequently a sluggish system with poor response times and unreliable performance.

To address these issues, Inango has developed a wifi-Z™️ service. It runs on our Launcher (at the Provider’s data center) but has full access to the Wi-Fi driver in the router. It gathers as much information from the chip/driver as you like (we have done systems with over 300 Wi-Fi parameters), stores them at the data-center and makes it all available via virtually any management scheme (TR-069, Netconf, SNMP, web pages or a command-line interface). We can even provide access to an ELK or Mongo data base system for external AI systems.

The result is a nimble, responsive and super-comprehensive Wi-Fi data miner. If you already have our VS-Client on the home router there is no integration to be done (nor any changes to the router if your data model changes either).

Like to see a demo? Give us a call and we’ll set something up!