Wireless local area networks have become increasingly popular in recent years, and are now commonplace in many venues, including academic and corporate campuses, residences, and “hotspots” in public areas. It is important to understand how these wireless LANs are used, both for deploying networks, and for the development of future wireless networking protocols and applications.

In this chapter we discuss the measurement and analysis of the popular 802.11 family of wireless LANs. We describe the tools, metrics and techniques that are used to measure wireless LANs. The results of existing measurement studies are surveyed. We illustrate some of the problems that are specific to measuring wireless LANs, and outline some challenges for collecting future wireless traces.