Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Site survey tools

[Rick Brown]

I wanted to thank everyone for their input on site survey tools.  We originally had planned to use Wireless Valley's Siteplanner for our site surveys.  We purchased the software and attended their training.  It is great software but we found that the time spent in the field determining wall types, etc., setting up the drawings, and taking readings took too long.  We could take paper drawings, take readings, and mark them up much quicker.  All of our engineers attended Terrawave's Cisco wireless training.  We also have Airwave which we use for monitoring our system.  We have found that in newer buildings the predictive feature is spot on compared to our manual design.  However in older (much older) buildings it isn't a lot of help without verifying wall types and inputting them.  We have been designing for 2.4GHz coverage but enabling the 5Ghz radios.  As we move to 11N we want to start designing based on 5GHz so that we get the maximum benefit of 11N.  With that being said we're looking for new measurement tools since the old PCMCIA cards are useless.  We were hoping from an ease of use and portability standpoint the Fluke meters would work out.  However we can not afford to design based on levels that read higher than they should be.  The AirCheck is a great device for troubleshooting but definitely not a tool you want to design with. Thanks again! Rick On 1/22/2011 9:00 AM, Hanset, Philippe C wrote: Funny that you mention that. We did a comparison yesterday between a Fluke AirCheck and an Iphone4 using WiFiFoFum. The AirCheck was consistently 15 dBm better than the Iphone. (consistent with your data) Since Iphone like devices are showing all over campus much more than Fluke Aircheck, we have decided to corroborate our predictive surveys done in Airwave with Iphone or Ipod Touch running WiFiFoFum. Rick, I forgot to mention a detail in the corroboration step: We go on site with an Iphone and WiFiFoFum, but also the AP that we plan to install for the building powered by a battery. Aruba controller based AP will let you configure APs as stand alone. We plan the number of check points based on the size of the building, and also check anomalies reported by the predictive software. It is sometimes amazing how accurate those anomalies are reported. (not always!) I don't know how other survey tools work, but Airwave will let you pick in the predictive model the type of AP that you plan to use. Philippe Unfortunately, WiFiFoFum is not available at the AppStore anymore, but you can get it via Cydia. $2.99. Best, Philippe Hanset Univ. of TN, Knoxville www.eduroamus.org On Jan 21, 2011, at 1:28 PM, Rick Brown wrote: We have been using Motion Computing Tablet PC's with Cisco's CB21 wireless adapter card and the Site Survey Utility for conducting manual site surveys. Originally we had found that due to the nature of the buildings on our campus that a manual survey was much faster than using any of the predictive software such as AirMagnet and Siteplanner. We are starting to see problems with the older tablets. Replacing them doesn't seem to be an option since most tablets aren't coming with PCMCIA slots anymore. We've looked at the Fluke AirCheck meters but they tend to show RSSI anywhere from 10dbm to 20dbm better signal than what it really is. Are any of you still doing manual surveys? And what equipment and app are you using to read signal levels, etc.? Thanks! Rick -- <sig6.gif> ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. -- ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.