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Observer®Software and Wireless LANs

An Addendum to the Network Instruments Observer User Manual

Touse Observer in an 802.11bwireles s environment, you must follow the instruc tions
forcustom driver installation (see below) and Observer setup (see page 6 of this
manual).

Hardware & Software Support

Supported NICs
• SymbolSpectrum24 - 41x1 models
•Nortel41x1models
• Cisco Aironet 340-350 series mo dels
• Intel2011b models
Supported Microsoft Wind ows Versions
•2000
•XP

Network Instruments Custom Driver Installatio n

ForObserver to properly analyze 802.11b wireless packets,the driver must pass
through all of the packets, notjust those packets addressed to that NIC (i.e.,it must
putthe c ardin ‘promiscuous’mode). O bserverm ust also have access to the ‘raw’
802.11bwireless packets.
Becausestandard wireless drivers do not support either raw or promiscuous mode,
NIhas w rittena custom driver so that you can use Observer as a wireless protocol
analyzer.
Beforeyou install the driver,you must:
• Verifythat the NIC is operating correctly with the manufacturer-supplied driver as
described in the manufacturer’s in stallation instructions.
• InstallObserver. Refer to the Observer User Manual for details. You must install
Observerso that you can update the NIC driver from the Observer directory.