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wireless site surveys

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by davida

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I am contemplating buying Air Magnets Air survey pro. Does anybody have any expeirence with this (or related) product(s)?
I will be starting the expansion of my business, hopefully first quarter of 2009, to provided wireless internet service for apt. complexes,etc.( you get the idea).

4 replies

by sirkozz

The question comes down to whether your customers require an ?Airmagnet? survey.
If the answer is yes then it?s adequate, but remember that Airmagnet and Ekahau both have algorithm issues and can insist that there is coverage where none exists. Now these issues are not that common and are site specific, but I?ve seen it burn large companies like IBM and UPS.
Personally I use a Cisco a/b/g card and run Aironet Site Survey Utility; this will give you SNR and link speed, at the same time run a dos continuous ping to AP with a packet size of 1Mb.
With this you can analyze RTT, SNR, link speed, and throughput.
What else do you need???
Sometimes I also use a Symbol 4121(b only) or 5030(a/b/g) pc card and run either mobile companion or Symbol Site Survey (freeware). Symbol Site Survey however is ?b? only, really quirky and can be hard to run on XP systems, but it gives you the best analysis of the actual RF packets without actually running a packet analyzer.
Neither of these options will give you the ?pretty? maps of Airmagnet or Ekahau, but they do not have algorithmic issues either.
Personally I use the Cisco option unless a customer requests Airmagnet or Ekahau surveys or requires detailed RF propagation maps.
The only costs in the above is the price of the PC card, the utilities are all free.

by davida

You refered to Symbol and it being a little quirky with XP. How does it work with Vista?I know vista kind of SUCKS right now but, it is the only laptop I have at this point.
I do appreciate the quick response.
you're correct with the price issue of Airmagnet, I found it at another site for 2900. whereas Airmagnet wants 36/3700.

Thanks again SirKozz.

by robo_dev

I used AirMagnet at another job quite a lot.

Here's an interesting site-survey tool combining NetStumbler and Excel:
http://whitepapers.zdnet.com/download.aspx?docid=177121

Symbol software quality: that's an oxymoron if I ever heard one!

Cisco is not perfect, but they are light-years better than Symbol.

Perhaps since they were purchased by Motorola they spend a little more on software development and QA, and less on their slimy salespeople.

by sirkozz

Site survey from Symbol will not work with Vista, It requires Mobile Companion which barely works with XP. Symbol Site Survey is not a graphical tool, it just gives you a great analysis of the RF environment, multi-path, RF interference, etc. become readily apparent.

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