Connor_Net-Ctrl

Hi Rundc, Just a short breakdown of the main stages in regards to surveying and quoting, we would typically do the following: Project Scoping Call – Firstly, an initial call to discuss your current deployment, pain points, dead spots and how your requirements have changed. Typically, your requirements of the WiFi have evolved since your last installation. Predictive Design – You can provide a reseller with your scaled site plans and information about your internal building structure and they would be able to create a predictive design and give you an estimated AP quantity with locations +/-10%. This will take into account the requirements you have provided the reseller in the project scoping call. If additional APs are required or existing ones are to be relocated, this will help you understand the costs associated with new infrastructure cabling and potential switches. On-Site Surveying – It wouldn’t make much sense to get 3 different resellers to provide you with 3 different full on-site survey reports, this would take up vast amounts of time from both theirs and your perspective. If a customer would like to get an on-site survey completed, we would recommend this is done after you have chosen your selected vendor and reseller. You could ask resellers if they wish to attend site to get some measurements from each of your buildings as this data could be used in the predictive design and offer a more accurate predictive design. Quoting – This is dependent on whether you want a multi-vendor bidding process or if you have decided on the vendor and you want a multi-reseller bidding process. Typically, the reseller would like to use their own design for quoting as it will be done by engineers that are part of the same company. Post-Installation Site Survey – This is the most popular choice as it would give you a full site report with your installed hardware. This can be used as a comparison against any predictive designs or pre-installation surveys. If the reseller has opted to design to a set transmit power, it will be an easy comparison rather than any dynamic power levels. Hopefully that gives you a bit of structure to the options available. Thanks Connor

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

Hi @aidenbran2000 we're a leading Ruckus reseller based in the UK and have a vast number of Ruckus customers within education, if you wish to explore Ruckus further and would like to organise a technical chat to discuss your requirements i'm more than happy to facilitate this for you. Drop me a PM and we'll get it sorted!

Hi i'm Connor and i am part of the Net-Ctrl sales team. I will be looking after Ruckus, iBoss, Palo Alto Networks and Allied Telesis in EDU. If you have any queries regarding any of the solutions and want some assistance i'm more than happy to help