Patent ID: 7697495

Claim:
A wireless system comprising: a plurality of wireless nodes structured to participate in a system test of said wireless nodes, said system test including a plurality of test packets; a packet sniffer node comprising: a wireless receiver; a memory storing a schedule defining transmission and reception of said test packets by said wireless nodes; a processor cooperating with said wireless receiver and said memory to receive at least some of said test packets responsive to said schedule, and to output data corresponding to said received at least some of said test packets of said system test; a monitoring mechanism structured to receive the output data from the processor of said packet sniffer node; wherein operation of said packet sniffer node does interfere with or alter execution of said system test; wherein each of said wireless nodes comprises a corresponding schedule defining transmission and reception of said test packets by said each of said wireless nodes; wherein one of said wireless nodes cooperates with the other ones of said wireless nodes to synchronize each of said other ones of said wireless nodes to the corresponding schedule; and wherein said packet sniffer node is structured to monitor whether said other ones of said wireless nodes are synchronized; and wherein each of said wireless nodes comprises a Sync Rank value indicating whether a corresponding one of said other ones of said wireless nodes was directly synchronized by said one of said wireless nodes or by another one of said other ones of said wireless nodes; and wherein said monitoring mechanism comprises a status display screen including at least one of; the Sync Rank value of each of said wireless nodes, and a history indicating whether each of said wireless nodes has received one of the test packets from each of the other ones of said wireless nodes in a predetermined interval.