Network Management

Hello All,

I recently installed AMP at a large University Campus and while showing the cool features of how wireless clients can be discovered and tracked over time the question came up about the privacy of the end user. No doubt this is do the current events a recent sensitivity to people being monitored without their permission. Has anyone ne else had to deal with this question?

Is there a way to turn off the ability to collect end user location without invalidating important data? Maybe by disable RSSI? I know that you can turn off the clients being displayed in visualRF but that didn't seem to be enough to ease their concerns since it could easily be turned back on.

This is a sensitive and controversial topic, so I'm going to save my opinion.  Instead, I'll forward this along to Product Management since this is probably a topic that they've discussed.

A possible workaround may be to have a Terms of Service agreement that shows up when anyone associates to the wireless network that's hosted and provided for by the end customer.  It could have a clause stating that accessing the wireless is agreeing to allow Network Administrators to track sensitive data for troubleshooting use.

Note: The RSSI is also used to calculate signal strength/quality to an AP.  Without the RSSI, VisualRF is not the only component that's going to be disabled.  It would also effectively disable the ability to track client health over the wireless, meaning network admins would not be able to troubleshoot poor client connectivity from AirWave.