AirMagnet Survey

Unlike other solutions that rely only on passively collected data such as signal strength, AirMagnet Survey allows users to perform active/Iperf surveys to ensure a superior site survey. During an active/Iperf survey, AirMagnet Survey associates to an AP to test the real quality of the connection. This allows surveyors to see how real world clients will perform at specific locations in terms of WLAN throughput, connection speed, retry rates, and packet losses. Note: Iperf available in PRO version only

After a survey, users can simulate a variety of changes to the network and preview the impacts. This includes changing AP transmit power, channel, SSID settings or the addition of environmental noise. Users can also simulate moving APs to new locations and preview the effect of adding additional APs. AirMagnet Survey powers users with an automated channel plan for APs that avoids interference and over-allocation.

AirMagnet Survey’s simultaneous multiple surveying capability, that leverages multiple adapters plugged into the same PC, provides users with the industry’s best solution to emulate real-world client behavior (using active and Iperf surveys) and at the same time reduce site surveying time, effort and cost by half. For example, users can perform simultaneous passive and active surveys or across multiple spectrums (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz).

The AirWISE® engine lets users set WLAN design/application requirements including signal coverage, WLAN throughput, PHY data rates, 802.11n specific parameters, etc. for their network and immediately identify any problem areas. Users are then alerted to the areas on the floor map that meet or do not meet the requirement, enabling them to take the necessary action to solve the coverage, performance or capacity problems. The capacity planning section allows surveyors to account for the number of end users the WLAN will need to support during the design and deployment phase.

AirWISE also includes pre-configured profiles for verifying the WLAN deployment’s readiness for a variety of vendor applications, including Location Services for Cisco and VoWLAN for Cisco & Vocera based on real-world survey data or WLAN modeling data. Users can also create their own profiles and share it with others.

Users can quickly verify WLAN requirements by assessing the Pass/Fail status for each requirement criteria for the deployment, thereby ensuring that the WLAN network will do what it is supposed to. Users are powered with insight into the areas on the floor that meet/do not meet the requirement. This single-click assessment of the WLAN network helps save time, effort and money by avoiding costly re-designs of the WLAN network and helps minimize IT troubleshooting costs. Users can generate a Pass/Fail report that enables an efficient hand-over of results of the survey to the installer or the end-customer.

AirMagnet Survey users can look at multiple floors of a single building to see if AP signals are bleeding to adjacent floors. This gives users the ability to design their network to reuse services of a single AP across multiple floors in order to lower equipment and deployment costs.

AirMagnet Survey includes the industry’s only 802.11n Iperf and Active surveys that take into account the real-world impact of multipath encountered at each individual location to actively test both uplink and downlink performance of the 11n network. Users can design and deploy Wi-Fi networks that employ APs with three spatial streams and deliver performance at data rates up to 450 Mbps (software is ready for up to 600 Mbps). AirMagnet Survey PRO includes built-in coverage maps that are specific to 802.11n networks, such as Operating Mode coverage map, MCS Rate Transmit/Receive coverage map and the Channel Width coverage map.

Before making any design and deployment decisions, it is important to account for RF interference from non Wi-Fi devices. Users who own AirMagnet Spectrum XT, AirMagnet Spectrum Analyzer, Fluke Networks AnalyzeAir or Cisco Spectrum Expert applications can collect both Wi-Fi and spectrum analysis data in a single survey With this integration, users can visualize the RF energy at any location and identify and display the presence of non-802.11 devices interfering with the WLAN. Users also have the ability to visualize the average power level in the RF spectrum for each channel at any given point on the map. Note: AirMagnet Survey PRO must be installed on the same machine as the users’ spectrum application.

AirMagnet Survey addresses challenges faced by network installers and IT staff while deploying VoWLAN networks, and powers them with a built-in voice readiness verification system (includes pre-configured support for Cisco 792X phones and Vocera badges, plus the option to add profiles for other vendors) that allows users to ensure that their network design is inline with the recommendations of the phone vendor, and also allows them to perform real-world voice surveys. With the industry’s first voice survey capability, users can validate and plot the phone call quality, capacity and other voice specific parameters at every location on a floor map, to help identify and minimize issues that may be causing low call quality.

Coverage maps that are built specifically for voice networks, including, WiMOS score or call quality, number of active calls, phone roaming zones (includes roaming statistics), channel utilization, retries and many more, are included in the application and allow users to design the voice network to ensure the highest performance.

Note: Ability to perform RF Spectrum Surveys requires supported RF Spectrum Analyzers and Survey PRO to be installed on the same machine, and Voice-over-WLAN surveys require AirMagnet VoFi Analyzer PRO to be installed on the same machine as AirMagnet Survey PRO.

AirMagnet Survey PRO includes a completely integrated reporting module that can instantly create custom outputs of site surveys and simulations. Additionally, customized templates provide users with the flexibility in terms of creating reports that vary based on project requirements. Reports can be output in over 15 formats including PDF, XML, HTML, Excel and Word.

AirMagnet Survey’s Diff View feature allows side-by-side visualizing of differences between two separate surveys. This helps show how a site’s wireless environment has changed over time. Likewise, users can use this feature to quickly compare AirMagnet Planner results with actual site survey results.

AirMagnet Planner is built into AirMagnet Survey PRO, providing a single, seamless application with the industry’s most complete approach to wireless LAN design, deployment and ongoing optimization for 802.11a/b/g/n networks. With this integrated solution, AirMagnet Planner can be used to accurately design WLANs by modeling building construction materials/obstructions and 802.11 APs and visualizing coverage across multiple floors, then validating the results with real-world data in AirMagnet Survey PRO. Using active end-user performance metrics, users can further perfect their planning models over time.

No other solution combines state-of-the-art predictive modeling with real-world performance data. Users also gain additional planning capabilities with the ability to test network plans against the AirWISE® engine for design requirements. AirMagnet Planner also integrates with AirMagnet Survey Express.