User's Guide

2 Sapphire Eye 3
7signal Ltd, Panuntie 6, FI-00620 HELSINKI, FINLAND, [phone], [e-mail], www.7signal.com
7signal Sapphire Carat Carat User Guide Release 3.0
2 SAPPHIRE EYE
Sapphire Eye is a monitoring station for WLAN environments, serving as the measurement
station or monitoring station in the WQA solution. Unlike a common access point or client, the
Eye monitoring station uses advanced broadband antenna technology, which creates an
exceptionally large coverage area. Consequently, one Eye can monitor several access points, or
WLAN cells. The recommended number of monitored cells is 6–10. Eye is protected against
dust and water (conformant to IP55 or IP65 specifications, depending on the model), so it can
be installed outdoors also in challenging environments.
In the picture above:
• The monitoring station (Eye) is the grey cone-like object in the center;
• the management interface is on the service provider’s premises (top left corner);
• the customer’s premises have a wireless network with six access points (center part
of the picture, access points in red);
• there is one monitoring station on the customer’s premises (the colored lobes
depict the station’s directional antennas and their range);
• a problem has occurred in an access point in the red lobe;
• the problem can be seen in the monitoring interface or in a report as a falling
performance indicator value (lower right corner).
In Sapphire, the management tool Carat and monitoring station Eye work as a client and
server, with Eye being the server for Carat. The traffic between the client and server is strongly
encrypted and uses 7signal’s proprietary management protocol. This makes it possible to
manage the monitoring stations from geographically distant locations and over insecure
networks.