Measuring Wireless Network Usage with the Experience Sampling Method

Measuring wireless local area networks has proven useful for characterizing, modeling and provisioning these networks. These measurements are typically taken passively from a vantage point on the network itself. Client devices, or users, are never actively queried. These measurements can indicate \em what is happening on the network, but it can be difficult to infer \em why a particular behavior is occurring. In this paper we use the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) to study wireless network users. We monitored 29 users remotely for one week, and signaled them to fill out a questionnaire whenever interesting wireless behavior was observed. We find ESM to be a useful method for collecting data about wireless network usage that cannot be provided by network monitoring, and we present a list of recommendations for network researchers who wish to conduct an ESM study