Spectrum and airtime inventory
Every radio and every traffic class on a channel spends the same airtime, so write them all down, including transmitters that never join your network, before you count on QoS.
One page on Letter or A4. Print it, laminate it, and share it, unaltered with its footer. The card condenses 6 pages on this site, which carry the full reasoning.
OT Wireless field card
Spectrum and airtime inventory
QoS decides who waits in line; separation decides who is in the line at all, so count everything on the air first.
One row per radio or traffic class on the channel
| System | Owner | Band and channel | Width | Traffic, direction, rate | Criticality | Priority (marking) | Delay tolerance | Schedule |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Before you trust the inventory
- Add what never joins your network: car head units, phones, hotspots, Bluetooth, microwave ovens.
- List cameras and instrument networks with their owners, bands, and channels.
- Per flow: how fast data changes, how much, delay tolerance, and criticality.
- Count SSIDs per radio. Each beacons on its own at the lowest basic rate.
- Check marking with a capture on both sides of the access point, not a configuration screen.
- Flag every row where a bulk class shares a channel with a control class.
- Move updates, map pushes, and log uploads into windows outside production.
- Above 60% channel use, one AMR maker reports latency and packet loss.
About this page
Built from 6 sources: 2 standards bodies and labs and 4 vendor documents. Researched and drafted with AI assistance, then reviewed and approved by Ben Rutter on . How pages are made
- First published
- Last updated
Change history (1)
- First published
Cite this page
Plain
Ben Rutter. "Spectrum and airtime inventory." OT Wireless, published October 6, 2026, updated October 5, 2026. https://otwireless.com/cards/spectrum-airtime-inventory/
APA 7
Rutter, B. (2026, October 6). Spectrum and airtime inventory. OT Wireless. https://otwireless.com/cards/spectrum-airtime-inventory/
BibTeX
@misc{rutter2026spectrumairtimeinventory,
author = {Rutter, Ben},
title = {{Spectrum and airtime inventory}},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {\url{https://otwireless.com/cards/spectrum-airtime-inventory/}},
organization = {OT Wireless},
}