Wireless groups, reports and CSV export

What it is

Groups let you organize access points by building, floor, department or client, and filter every view by that group. Reports turn the live data into a printable document you can hand to a customer or attach to a ticket.

How to manage groups

1. In the Wireless Monitor sidebar, click Manage Groups (bottom of the sidebar). The “Manage Wireless Groups” dialog opens.
2. To create a group: type a name in “New group name…”, pick a color, and click Create.
3. To put APs in a group: click Assign next to the group. In “Assign APs to Group”, tick the APs and click Save.
4. To remove a group: click Delete next to it (the APs themselves are not deleted).

Once created, the group filter at the top of the sidebar (“All Groups”) narrows the AP list, and clicking a group name opens a tab scoped to it.

The group tab toolbar

The group tab shows aggregated stats, SSID distribution, charts and the member list. Its header carries the same kind of buttons as a single AP:

• Report — generates the fleet report scoped to this group only (same layout as the Fleet Report, with the group name in the title and in the CSV file name); print or save as PDF from your browser.
• Deep Discover — runs a deep SNMP discovery on every AP in the group, two at a time. The button shows the progress (“Deep Discover 3/12”) and a message at the end tells you how many succeeded.
• Refresh — reloads the summary, the members and the charts right away instead of waiting for the automatic refresh.
• New Tab — opens the group in its own browser tab, handy for a second screen or a wall display.
• Manage Members — opens the “Manage Wireless Groups” dialog to add or remove APs.
• Export CSV — downloads the member table as a spreadsheet-friendly file.

Drops in the last 24 hours

Under the group summary, a line lists the APs of the group that went down in the last 24 hours, the ones with the most drops first: for example “Drops in the last 24 h: P1-Sala119 ×52 (last 15:21, 2 min) · AU-Puerta4 ×1 (13:24, 2 min)”. Each entry says how many times the AP stopped answering, when the last drop started and how long it lasted, or “still down” if it has not come back yet. Up to five APs are named, then “+N more”. With no drops it says “No drops in the last 24 h”.

CreaRack records a drop every time an AP stops answering and closes it when it answers again, with the start time and duration (to within about 30 seconds). An AP that keeps dropping and coming back, many times a day, usually has a problem of its own (a unit that restarts, a faulty cable or port), even if it looks online most of the time. APs that are out of service are not counted. This is a record, not a notification: nothing is sent by email.

The group charts, network by network

The chart grid of a group adds up its APs. Next to Add Chart, a network dropdown (“All networks” by default) lets you see a single network across the whole group — for example only the event network of a venue that also carries its staff and speakers’ networks. The dropdown works by VLAN: when several SSIDs share the same VLAN they appear together in one option, and each option says how many of the group’s APs report it — for example “FABCON26 · VLAN 1764 (68 of 124 APs)”. The SSID names come from the most recent Deep Discover round, so a network from a past event that used the same VLAN does not show up. With a network chosen, Station Count and AP Bandwidth add up only that network, and the per-radio charts keep showing the whole APs. The full explanation, including which vendors report per-network data, is in [[crearack—wireless—dashboard-and-charts]] under “Filtering the charts by network”.

The SSIDs table

Next to the group summary, the SSIDs table shows how many clients each wireless network has across the group, right now. For APs whose vendor reports clients per network (Xirrus and Cambium, with Local Agent 2.30.0 or later), the numbers come from live monitoring, the same data as the charts, so the table adds up to the Clients figure of the summary. A line under the table says how many APs it counts live.

Live data is reported per VLAN (the internal network behind each SSID), not per SSID name. When several SSIDs share a VLAN they appear together in one row, for example “FABCON26 / Sonata”. A VLAN whose SSID names are not known yet appears as “VLAN 2820”. The names come from the most recent Deep Discover round, so networks from a past event that used the same VLAN do not show up.

APs whose vendor does not report per-network data are counted from their last Deep Discover instead, and only if that reading is less than an hour old. A second line tells you how many APs that is and since what time. If some of those APs report clients without saying which SSID they are on, a note says how many, and that their counts are incomplete.

How to generate reports

• Fleet Report — in the “Overview” tab header, click Fleet Report. CreaRack builds a printable page with fleet statistics, per-AP status and charts; use your browser’s print dialog to print or save as PDF.
• Per-AP Report — open the AP’s detail view and click Report for a document scoped to that single device. It opens wide, with one chart per row so long ranges stay readable, and shows eight charts in the order of the story they tell: people (“Station Count”, “Clients / Radio”), traffic (“Bandwidth In”, “Bandwidth Out”), air quality (“Channel Utilization”, “Noise Floor”) and radio settings (“Channel”, “TX Power”). “Channel Utilization” plots the busiest radio of the AP: above 60% clients notice slowdowns, above 80% expect drops. Pick the range (“1h” to “30d”) with the pills, then Print to print or save a portrait PDF — each chart takes the full page width and is never split across two pages — or Export CSV for the raw series. Under every chart a line lists its Highest and Lowest three values with day and time, so the printed report tells when the peaks and dips happened without a cursor to hover.
• Export CSV — in the “Overview” header, click Export CSV to download the AP inventory and key metrics as a spreadsheet-friendly file.

Troubleshooting

• An AP appears in no group filter — it has not been assigned: open Manage Groups → Assign and tick it.
• The printed report cuts off charts — let the page finish loading before printing; charts render with live data first.
• The SSIDs table says “No recent SSID data” — none of the group’s APs reports per-network data live, and their last Deep Discover is more than an hour old. Click Deep Discover in the group header and let it finish; it reads the APs two at a time, so a large group takes a while.
• The SSIDs table adds up to a bit more or less than the Clients figure — both are live but read a few seconds apart; a difference of a few clients is normal. A large difference means some APs are counted from an older Deep Discover: the line under the table says how many.
• A row shows “VLAN” and a number instead of SSID names — the names come from the APs’ last Deep Discover; run it on the group to bring them in.
• The network dropdown is greyed out — none of the group’s APs reports per-network data yet: their vendor does not offer it, or their Local Agent is older than 2.30.0.

Related

• [[crearack—monitoring—que-es-wireless]] — module overview
• [[crearack—wireless—dashboard-and-charts]] — what each chart means

Véase también

• [[crearack—monitoring—que-es-wireless]]
• [[crearack—wireless—dashboard-and-charts]]