Ekahau Survey Software
Ekahau Site Survey Premium Pack is a comprehensive solution for designing Wi-Fi networks, site surveying, and troubleshooting. The powerful reporting features can.
Hi All, So I need to do a wireless site survey on our site as management want thorough wireless coverage, not just the meeting rooms like me have now. A bit of a nightmare considering its an old building with lots of segregations and is a weird shape. Plus real brick walls, not plasterboard. Just wondered if anyone could recommend some good, free wireless software to map this out with.
I was thinking of just walking around the building with the software installed and stopping at certain intervals to see what the current strength is like and recording the results. Is that the right approach to take? Inssider, as far as I know, measures signal strength. Site surveys are far more involved. Ekahau is great, it's what I use for active and passive site surveys. OP, if you need a real site survey that actually measure cell strength and plots this information on a map, shows you RF heat per cell on each band and at various dBm for each access point, I'd recommend finding an engineer that has some real software and experience to help with this. Ekahau will even generate a report showing cell overlap, channel interference, max and min throughput per cell, etc.
Your approach really isn't the 'right' one to take if you need a full survey with real information. You'll be able to see where your problem areas are on a map versus just some signal strength with a phone and inssider or similar. Scott1408 wrote: If you would like a free Android App to do it with I use Wi-Fi Analyzer You will have to make your own map of the area with it but as far a finding dead spots and channel overlaps it has worked great, especially in the warehouse. My first WiFi setup was in a 60,000 foot warehouse back in 2002. I had a Windows 2000 tablet and a guy on a forklift almost touching the ceiling. We found that we had to put an AP in almost every aisle because our product consisted of pallets of nails and staples, which made for poor transmission. It took about 3-4 hours but it saved us the $10,000 fee for an engineer to give us a formal survey.
The last Wifi Setup was using the app that Scott1408 mentioned above. That was much faster and probably a lot more accurate than checking with a Windows 2000 tablet.
Surveymonkey
I have used Inssider before Part of what makes a good heat map to me isn't just mapping signal strength, it is mapping throughput. I don't know of any free tools that can help you with that though. Maybe have a speedtest website up on your phone and run a speedtest in various parts of your building and map the results.
Reason for measuring throughput is identify areas where you many have good signal strength, but the Access Point is serving too many clients to be efficient. Last time I did a heat map, I was trying to design a new wireless network for my building. I picked a vendor, and they loaned me a free Access point, of the model I was considering, and a controller for it. I set up a test SSID, for it, then moved it around the building to points I thought I should install a new access point, or next to existing access points. Then I used some tools that are unique to that particular brand of equipment, to map my signal strength and throughput. It worked like a champ. I was using Ruckus hardware, but lots of Enterprise grade wireless vendors will provide similar loans for similar purposes.
Sometimes, the vendor will even come do the heat mapping for you, if you are big enough to justify it. Scott1408 wrote: If you would like a free Android App to do it with I use Wi-Fi Analyzer You will have to make your own map of the area with it but as far a finding dead spots and channel overlaps it has worked great, especially in the warehouse. Great little app to have especially if you notice things acting sluggish. Changed my channel on home wi-fi router when a new neighbor was using the same channel as mine and connections were very slow, used Wifi Analyzer to see this and problem solved after making the change. Ecit wrote: Another Android app is Wolf WiFi. The demo version offers one free site survey.
Never used that feature of the app but it looks like it will do more than just a heat map. It's so good, it had to be named twice:) +1 for InSSIDer As i've mentioned in a previous post, go with the UniFi AP solutions. They are cheap as chips and offer heat maps to scale when you upload your floor plans to the AP software controller. Works a charm and offers ZeroHandoff allowing you to roam from room to room to room without dropping any signal. I've been doing site surveys for about three years, and unfortunately there are no good free tools. InSSIDer is a nice free utility, but it doesn't allow you to build signal level and interference maps, measure throughput, etc. Now, speaking of commercial tools, there is a good comparison list here: I've personally tried three of the listed site survey tools: AirMagnet Survey, TamoGraph Site Survey, and Ekahau Site Survey.
In my opinion, is by far the best one. Easy to use, stable, and feature-rich. I've also tried for Android, but it just doesn't deliver.
Poor results, crashed a lot. Free Wi-Fi software is just going to be very limiting to what you want.
Land Survey Software
I've used Ekahau quite a lot the last few months across various types of buildings, I used Ekahau specifically for some kitchen/store rooms in one of our student social buildings, where wireless is used for everything from mobiles/hand scanners for stock management. A difficult place to even guess the idea position of access points with factors such as walk in fridges, metal mesh roofing, extractor equipment, a strange layout of corridors, etc etc. With Ekahau, I can import the auto cad file, set the scale, draw in the appropriate type of walls, set my coverage requirements and the software can suggest not only ideal locations but the number of AP's, Ekahau is aware of a large selection of different AP's on the market. One of the more recent updates allows the software to take into account areas where you don't care if there is no coverage or not, something normally only you would be aware of, ie lift shafts. You mark them as dead spots. That being said, I'm a fan of the old fashioned AP on a stick approach, because there might be cabling/installation limitations as to where you can put an AP. Go around with an independent AP/SSID, survey as far as required, with Ekahau freeze the AP in place on the survey, then go ahead and move the AP to the next location, meaning you can simulate a full deployment with just 1 AP, a proof of concept before you spend the money.
Free Survey Software
Wi-Fi projects really need to be given the appropriate amount of time and some early investment, otherwise it's the end result that suffers, your reputation or the product that you deployed just gets slated by everyone else.
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