AirMagnet recently AirMagnet Surveyor, a comprehensive site-survey tool for Wireless LAN deployments, combining all the critical components for pre-installation site surveying and ongoing provisioning of wireless 802.11a, 802.11b and 802.11g networks into one package. Unlike competitive solutions, AirMagnet Surveyor also includes active and passive surveying, flexible and detailed analysis, and the ability to simulate and view changes to the network. AirMagnet Surveyor is designed for the thousands of network installers and integrators, network managers and managed service providers tasked with deploying and managing ever-changing Wi-Fi networks.
"Surveyor, like all AirMagnet products, is intuitive and easy to use. The interface displays complex information in a logical and intuitive way. The automated simulation dramatically reduces the time and effort to do a real-world survey and interpret the results," said Ronald Shaul, national network manager, Smart City Networks. "When working in large public facilities, covering millions of square feet, we need to get the design right the first time. Surveyor is also useful to validate our network designs and verify coverage areas. Often we need to communicate engineering results to non-technical people and Surveyor helps us do that. Numbers and statistics cannot communicate nearly as well as a graphical coverage map. We have worked with other site survey products but have found them to either lack robust features or to be too complex and costly. Surveyor has the right combination of features and ease of use at a price point that makes it an excellent fit for our organization. Combined with AirMagnet's other solutions, we are armed to offer our wireless users with consistently fast and reliable coverage."
Unlike competitive products on the market, AirMagnet Surveyor offers both active and passive surveying. A passive survey records Radio Frequency (RF) data from all Access Points (APs) and devices in the area to provide an overview of the wireless environment including sources of noise and neighboring networks. AirMagnet takes surveying a step farther than its competitors by layering active surveying on top of this, providing an even more accurate picture of the wireless environment and all its nuances. In the active process, AirMagnet actually associates to a specific AP or Service Set Identifier (SSID) and culls in-depth information such as connection speed, packet retry rates and packet loss, reflecting the actual end-user experience. AirMagnet Surveyor can automatically merge the results of any number of passive and active surveys to provide the most precise analysis possible, allowing network managers to gauge the network environment and make more informed decisions and changes.
AirMagnet Surveyor not only creates a complete picture of the network environment, but also allows network managers to view results according to their needs. For instance, if network managers opt to analyze the data holistically, a complete set of data is made available for analysis and plotting, including signal, noise, signal to noise ratio, frame speeds, retry rates and packet losses. Network managers also have the flexibility to view results by channel or SSID -- another difference from competitive solutions -- and to see overlap between APs to pinpoint areas of RF interference.
AirMagnet Surveyor also allows network managers to simulate changes to the network and view the impact without manually conducting trial and error tests. Installers can experiment with a variety of changes to AP channel, transmit power or SSID until they find the optimal combination for their network, saving considerable time.
AirMagnet Surveyor offers a suite of tools and utilities to identify problems and insure a reliable network, including a signal test tool for multipath interference, Ping and DHCP tools for connectivity testing, and a host of formulas for performing scientific calculations.
Surveyor allows users to import a broad variety of map file types, including BMP, DIB, DXF, EMF, GIF, JPG, WMF.
AirMagnet Surveyor boasts support for a variety of wireless adapter cards from Cisco, NetGear, Proxim, Enterasys, Nortel, and other leading Wi-Fi vendors, letting users collect network health information that closely matches their end customers' experience. "The demise of the Wi-Fi site survey has been greatly exaggerated -- real customers need live, on-the-ground site surveys to make their wireless networks perform. Early users tell us that Surveyor cuts their site planning time in half, so more than 100 existing customers and prospects have asked us for a stand-alone site surveyor product," said Dean Au, chief executive officer of AirMagnet. "Our new solution addresses a real customer pain point -- Wi-Fi networks are constantly in flux. With the addition of Surveyor to our product line up, our customers can manage the complete life cycle of their Wi-Fi networks -- from installation, to deployment and management."
AirMagnet Surveyor starts at $1,995 and is available now.