Wifi Survey Software

[KarlGoddard]

Morning All!

 

Hope we're all safe and well..

 

While school is pretty much empty - only a few Key Worker children in - I've decided to get on with some 'summer jobs', one being improving our current wifi coverage...

 

Can anyone recommend any tools / applications to assist with doing the wifi survey?

 

We have a mix of build types on site - some buildings less than 7 years old with stud walls, some are early 19th Century builds so have incredibly thick internal walls so I'll need to visit each building and do a walk around to build a map of signal coverage.

 

Any pointers or anyone recommend a tool/application they've used?

 

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks

Karl

[Connor_Net-Ctrl]

Hi Karl,

Here at Net-Ctrl we use Ekahau Site survey to perform all our pre-design and on-site surveys. As this is an expensive tool, it's probably not feasible for a school to purchase the software and hardware required to run this.

 

Ekahau have a tool called HeatMapper which is their free-of-charge tool. I’m afraid we’ve never used this tool but could be a good starting point and allows you to import plans and start plotting your walk to build your heat map.

 

https://www.ekahau.com/products/heatmapper/overview/

 

There is other ways to create some sort of RF map of your site but it’s not going to be all pretty colours and easily identify dead spots of coverage. You could get your site plans and mark on all AP locations, then you could use MetaGeek InSSIDer to measure the signal strength you’re receiving from the AP you’re currently connected to and mark this onto the plans. You may need to wait some time for your client device to roam as you may get false readings if your client hasn’t roamed to the closest AP yet.

 

Once you’ve measured the signal strength for all the rooms, you could use the following table to compare against your requirements for coverage:

 

This would only be surveying for coverage, if you were wanting to do capacity planning, you’d need to go into more details on number of devices per room/per AP and their applications.

 

Alternatively, we have the capacity to run free-of-charge predicative site surveys. If you’re able to provide scaled site plans and information regarding internal/external walls etc. We can then build a predictive RF map for your site. If you then mark on the plans all your existing AP locations, we can then see where there may be dead spots in your WLAN which can then reviewed and rectified.

 

Thanks

 

Connor

[Meldrew]

A while back I happened across a wifi survey utility, I think it was free. Instead of recording the signal strength, it does a bandwidth test to see actually how much data it can download and upload, therefore giving a survey that should give better information. Unfortunately I can't remember for the life of me what it was called!

 

Meldrew