""Zap" is a wireless performance tool, previously used for
internal development and testing by Ruckus Wireless. Ruckus has
released the Zap source code under a modified BSD license to
provide the tool to the world, and hopefully spur development of
this and other related analysis tools. Zap measures performance,
statistically, to provide insight into the true nature of how a
network can perform.
"Before Zap, a wireless network administrator might have done
some manual calculation to determine a best-guess baseline of how a
network would perform. Check to make sure there aren't too many
overlapping channels that may cause interference, carefully plan
thelayout, and hope. When testing time comes, we might run a large
file copy with rsync or even use TTCP, which will tell us, on
average, how fast the data transferred. This is fine for bulk
transfers, and it may highlight an obvious problem in the network,
but network-intensive applications today require more
certainty."
