Wireless Local Area Network requirements are increasing exponentially in businesses today. The use of WLANs as mission critical enterprise platforms, the growth and complexity of wireless applications and the increased implementation of wireless hardware devices are taxing existing WLAN infrastructure performance. Organizations that monitor and manage these networks have been significantly impacted by these developments.

This impact is most evident in the case of a managed service provider (MSP) who manages multiple clients ranging from mid-sized businesses to large enterprises all with varying network configurations, hardware and requirements. The MSP is organized into two groups: the NOC that monitors and serves as the first level of support for customers; and network engineering that serves as Tier 2 support for problem resolution. As customers WLANs have grown the MSP has experienced an increased volume in the number of calls relating to poor performance, lost data, bad connections, etc. When the current network management system was able to identify issues the corrective measures were time consuming. In many instances Tier 2 assistance was required for resolution with necessary costly trips to customer sites.