AirMagnet Survey PRO Reviews

The interactive mapping tool: If you have a map, it'll scale the map to be accurate. You literally just click where you are as you are walking. It's very simple. Then, from that mapping, you can run reports and get a lot of information.

Bandwidth Monitoring: They have an option to set up iPerf on a server and it will check bandwidth as you do your survey to make sure your users have a quality WiFi experience.

Reports: The reports are amazing and very easy to run. At first you may need some assistance understanding what to do with the data but that’s just the technical part you will learn.

Android Mobile APP: They have a version of this that can run on Android. For quick surveys that you can later import into Air Magnet this can be really handy for your field technicians to share or use for troubleshooting.

We survey hospitals, schools and any other business that would like a survey. We sell our service and it creates another avenue for revenue.

If you have an older version of Air Magnet get caught up. It use to crash a lot. Version 9.1 is great. It’ll run all day with no issues (we always restart at lunch time). The only main improvement point I can make is offer free training

We have used it for about 9 months.

We use to have issues with crashing. If you do just get it updated. It’s worth it! It’s much better!

No issues. I’ve heard people say they’d like to do multiple floors on one survey but I like having the smaller surveys to work with anyway.

Tech support does a pretty good job. I’d give them a 8 or 9 out of ten.

We didn't have a previous solution.

Setup is a little complex, not because of any issues but because of the nature of the beast. You have to know a lot of different things to make it work properly, but that might just be because the software is complex. Not in a bad way; there's just a lot of things you have to know. A few more wizards for setup would help us not forget things. It’d be nice to have a wizard that asked if you are doing certain channels or both bands, etc.

The only reason we use this software is because the people that hire us to do the surveys require the software. We then found other ways to create revenue with it since it is very expensive.

My biggest complaint is their training shouldn't be so expensive. I personally think they should have online videos of free training and if you want to have a need for more complex training then pay for a class. Maybe a “how to understand reports” class would be nice! If they would give us some training, it wouldn't feel so complicated. Their training is so expensive, it's hard to be good at it without spending a lot more money and when you already spent $4000 on the software it’s not a good feeling to open the software and not know what to do next.

Get training or ask others since training is so expensive. Try YouTube videos and just ask others to get some details. If it’s too complex after watching YouTube then you may ask for training with your purchase or something like that. I wish we did!

• Planning module - I use it for wireless network deployment at the construction stage.
• Survey module - wireless coverage map and spectrum date integration is useful for checking the wireless coverage and performance.

Before using this product we performed a wireless project design with a rough understanding of how the wireless network should look like. Very often the final quantity of APs was not what was planned on paper. With AirMagnet Survey we can make a floor plan import. Now in v9.1 we have the possibility to even use the AutoCAD floor plan where the walls, doors, and window materials are designed by an engineer, and the survey can apply this characteristic by itself which decreases our time preparing the floor plans.

AirMagnet Survey then automatically calculates the required number of access points, which is quite close to the final quantity. After deploying the access points we make a coverage map report for the customer including data about interference, physical data rates, noise level, signal noise ratio coverage, user capacity, and throughput.

It helps us to fully support 802.11 a/b/n/g/ac standards.

AirMagnet Survey is very useful for designing and deploying wireless 802.11n/a/b/g/ac projects, in any company from small offices to large campus buildings.

We have been using AirMagnet Survey about five years, since it was from Fluke Networks and now it is a Netscout brand.

Yes, normally it happens with products from different vendors. We have had a problem with the reporting module, as it can't put the full size picture of a floor plan in the report. After we initiated several support cases these problems were solved with the new release.

A year ago there was a problem with huge floor plan pictures which was hanging up the software during reporting. It was solved with the release update.

Technical support is one of the important things that customers appreciate, and Netscout have some very qualified engineers who help very rapidly with every question.

Yes we used the Ekahau Site Survey, which is also a good quality product, but they are still growing and have lots of bugs. These guys try to do their best and it looks like they are good professionals on their job. We chose the AirMagnet Survey because it was recommended by Cisco, also we like the functionality of it and of course the main reason was the Russian localization of reports which is essential in our country.

AirMagnet is a very stable and time-tested product, as proved by the fact that the world's leading IT companies use AirMagnet Survey and if we look at the release notes we can see a lot of new features instead of bug fixes as in the Ekahau Site Survey.

Installation is very simple, you just need to register the software key on the AirMagnet web account, then download and install the software on your PC, every time clicking the "Next" button.

The price is not so high compared with other products of similar quality. My recommendation for customers is to periodically renew the support contract, because some software releases which contain new interesting features can be downloaded only if you maintain an active support contract. As this product now belongs to Netscout I'm sure they will develop it to be much more interesting and useful.

Yes, before purchasing we requested evaluation software of each AirMagnet product: AirMagnet Survey Pro, AirMagnet WiFi Analyzer, AirMagnet Spectrum XT.

Also we compared it with Ekahau Site Survey as it is the only quality product with the same functionality, but our purchasing decision was AirMagnet Survey.

My advice, before purchasing request an evaluation license to test it and then choose the product which is stable, useful, and very well known in the IT industry.

I use AirMagnet Survey heavily for the work that I do. My responsibility is to make sure that we have good coverage in our facilities. I have also used it in the past to do the site survey for placement of APs in a hospital.

I use it heavily, primarily for troubleshooting issues where there are complaints of inadequate coverage in an area. The product itself provides us a visual tool that we can use to show our clients that the wireless is either working or not working in that area. We use it to make adjustments, if we have to, to the coverage.

The product is working much better than it had been. We can get it down to a tablet now, which was something that I was asking for. Now, we can run it on a Microsoft Surface. I don't use it now quite as heavily as I had been.

I have been using AirMagnet since 2005; about 12 years.

We will get lockups every now and then. I still get those; not near as frequently as I used to. The product seems to be much more stable than it was even six years ago. I just used the product at a couple different sites and I think I only had one lockup in probably three or four hours of work, which is good. It was actually the application that locked up because everything else on the tablet was still functioning.

I used to have a lot of problems if we had a large amount of data. If we were doing a large area in a passive survey and we had a large amount of data, it would stop recording. I've not run into that problem now for the last three years. I can do a large-area passive survey and it will continue to record without issue.

Improvements in laptops and other devices has helped. I'm currently running it on a Microsoft Surface Pro 3. I have not run into that problem since moving to that device and with the latest versions.

I had a couple issues a long time ago primarily around lockups and those types of issues. Also, when we were collecting a large amount of data, it would stop collecting data. I had talked to technical support about that at the time. That was a long time ago; probably 8-10 years ago. They were helpful. We tried several things to resolve the problem. The problem was probably resolved with newer hardware and improvements that were made to the program over the years. The stability of the application now is probably the best it's been, from my point of view.

We did not have a solution prior to AirMagnet. This goes clear back to 2005. I was getting ready to start doing site surveys for installing wireless networks in hospitals in Iowa. I had four large hospitals and roughly 100 clinics to survey and I was looking for a product. This was recommended by a colleague, so we went ahead and purchased AirMagnet Survey. At that time, it was called Laptop Trio. We used that to perform the actual site surveys for all of our hospitals.

When we first got AirMagnet back in 2005, I had a Fujitsu laptop. It was convertible to a tablet. We got the product purchased. I installed it and was doing surveys within a couple of hours. It's very straightforward. I've not had a lot of trouble with it.

Again, I've been working with it for 12 years. I'm familiar with it. Sometimes, I'm a little rusty, so it takes a little while to figure out how to do a survey again, but it's not that difficult.

At the time we bought this, it was one of only a couple products out there that was as thorough at what it did. With the proliferation of wireless in our facilities, and throughout everywhere, we've become a very mobile society.

I have been approached in the last year about another product that's out there that's not as expensive as AirMagnet. One of the problems with AirMagnet, in our organization, is the cost it takes to maintain our licensing. We've purchased the product and it feels like you're purchasing it every year again.

There's a product by MetaGeek called inSSIDer. That product is a 1/10 of the cost. And it does very similar functions to AirMagnet. I'm very familiar with AirMagnet, but have been looking at inSSIDer. The cost difference for our organization starts leaning us. We can afford to put inSSIDer in more hands with our technical folks than we can with AirMagnet.

I've maintained a license for this since 2005. I've got the Spectrum Analyzer. I've got AirMagnet Survey PRO. We had Laptop Trio. That continued maintenance cost is starting to seem a bit extreme compared to other products out in the market.

We did not look at anything else. This came highly recommended and that's what we went with. I didn't look at any other products.

If you're going to use it the way that we use it, I strongly recommend going to a tablet device that's as light as possible. The Surface Pro 3 is about 3.3 pounds. This is one of the things that I had actually talked to AirMagnet about not that long ago; maybe two years ago. I had asked them if they would port it over to an Android device, which was considerably lighter than a Surface Pro at the time. 3.3 pounds doesn't seem like a lot until you spend eight hours a day, five days a week, carrying the device around on your arm with it cocked.

You've got to constantly be putting a mark or, with a pen, you're constantly tapping as you're doing the survey. Now, that thing gets heavy. That would be one thing; if they could get it ported over to run on an Android device that weighs under a pound. That's a huge difference.

I'm not sold on it, like an Apple iPad, but either an iOS or an Android-based device where we can get it onto a tablet and it weighs less than the Microsoft Surface. I've seen guys using this that are carrying around a laptop. You get down to an Android device, it costs a few hundred dollars to buy that and you can run this product on that device. It becomes much more attractive than going out and buying a $1700 Surface Pro. It depends on how often you use it.

I liked two features the most:

• Multi-Floor Planner: We use it for multi-floor heat maps or for more than one heat map in one document.
• Planner: We use it for active site surveys. This feature is also very good.

It has helped us a lot in a very big hospital project with five buildings, each with more than 10 floors. We had to do an active survey on site and also provide the heat map. It helped us in giving us the best results.

Last year, we had a project where the client was using Cisco 1700 series AP and they asked for a heat map. We have to select the exact model in the list provided in AirMagnet and, at that time, Cisco AP 1700 series was not present in the list provided. We have to add the device manually by adding its path and details. If the available list of APs is updated, it will be very good.

I’ve used AirMagnet for almost two years.

No stability issues were encountered while we were using it.

No scalability issues were encountered while we were using it.

Customer service is very good, supportive and quick in response.

We did not have any previous solution.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We have our in-house team and I am involved in the team for the deployments.

ROI is always the best satisfaction that we get after the 99% accurate results.

I definitely recommend this product because of its features, flexibility, accuracy and ease of use.

I have been using AirMagnet for clients to do WiFi surveys. This is pretty much an AP-on-a-Stick survey. Right now, I'm on a deployment in which we are using it for a validation.

Everything about the AirMagnet is useful. It's good for work, giving us our SSID and throughput readings for the AC that is currently available. We have been using it primarily for the 2.4 and 5 GHz to create standard heat maps for their standard coverage.

They need to get it up to speed with surveying and using the product on a tablet-based platform. Sometimes you don't have a stylus with you and you don't have the right-click functionalities in certain areas, like with the merge.

If you have a mouse, as was the case in previous years, I always used it on a laptop. It was right-click, data merge up, and SVD files.

I've been using the SurfacePro 4 for the last couple of months with AirMagnet. It just has the right-click functionality. It does not respond well in AirMagnet with the stylus. There are certain things you can do, but there are other things you can't do. It's very finicky as far as picking up right-clicks.

Some more functionality with tablets would be good. Just to make sure that it runs smoothly and you can do everything on the tablet that you could do on the laptop.

With previous versions, there was a way to exclude erroneous data. Anything over a certain decibel rating would not be included in the final merge of the data, which was pretty neat. That got taken out in Version 9.1.

The only thing that I've seen people struggle with is reading the floor plan as they're walking. I was discussing this with my co-worker.

It would be great if there were a way to have the floor plan actually flip with you as you're walking. That would require having some kind of GPS integrated indoors, which I don't even know if it's possible to have an indoor GPS survey. It would be sort of like Pokemon. You just walk around, and whatever is inside the tablet will just walk around with you.

I’ve used AirMagnet for about six or seven years.

Stability is not really too good when you have larger floor plans. Some of the floor plans that we imported into the AirMagnet software were almost 80,000 square feet. If you have a floor plan that big, it's unresponsive and lagging as far as capturing data and being responsive to the initial clicks.

There are some issues with the drivers as well. I guess that would be more of a user error. If you don't unload the drivers properly, you get blue screens and it crashes.

As far as what I have been using it for, we have not had scalability problems. But there were definitely scalability issues in the past.

It's been a long time since I've had to do an overly large floor plan. I haven't really looked through the floor plans for this site yet. As far as I know, everything should be smaller and run smoothly. It can handle a good amount of what we do.

It crashes only if you have too large of a floor plan or you're trying to merge a lot of data together. It does get hung up. I am using an i7 processor now that has plenty of RAM on the tablet.

Sometimes it could be an issue that the computer can handle, but the solution cannot handle it.

The quality of technical support varies for me. I was a 1099 contractor for quite some time. The AirMagnet software was actually provided to me through another company.

I wouldn't necessarily have the Gold service support like I've had with companies in previous years. It's been a really long time since I've had to call into support.

Ever since I started doing these WiFi surveys or site surveys, I've mostly used AirMagnet.

The initial setup for me was just a download of the software and then installing the right drivers. It was pretty straightforward on my end.

As far as pricing and renewing the licenses and things of that nature, I've only really had to do that once for my company.

From what I remember a couple years back, we were going through a phase where we did have to log in to my AirMagnet website account. I needed to remove all the people who left the company or their licenses were expired. From what I remember, I got pretty straightforward answers when I called support.

I don't remember if we evaluated other options. The only other survey software that I know that's out there is Ekahau. It acts similar to AirMagnet.

As soon as I started in this field doing the WiFi surveys, it's always been AirMagnet. It seems to be used very widely throughout the wireless community. There are very limited choices for software that provides the type of data that AirMagnet provides.

Definitely take the courses that they offer. I acquired the AirMagnet 30 and 40 certificates for running AirMagnet Survey Pro and the Spectrum Analyzer. It is pretty much the same learning base.

Teaching people how to use the tool is pretty straightforward if you just explain it to them. You need to teach about data merging or merging certain paths together.

• Planning module: I use it for wireless network deployment during construction stages.
• Survey module: Provides a wireless coverage map and spectrum data integration. This is useful for checking wireless coverage and performance.

Before using this product, we did wireless project designs using a rough estimate of how the wireless networks will appear. Very often, the final quantity was not the same as it was planned on paper.

With AirMagnet Survey, we can make a floor plan import. We can use AutoCAD floor plans which include the walls, doors, windows, and materials designed by engineers. The survey can apply these characteristics by itself, which decreases the time necessary to prepare floor plans.

The solution automatically calculates the required number of access points, which is very close to the final quantity actually needed.

After deploying the access points, we make a coverage map report for customers. The report includes the data about interference, physical data rates, noise level, signal noise ratio coverage, user capacity, and throughput.

The tool helps us to fully support 802.11 a/b/n/g/ac standards.

AirMagnet Survey very useful for designing and deploying wireless 802.11n/a/b/g/ac projects, in any companies from small offices to large campus buildings.

We have used this solution for about five years.

No, it is very simply deploying.

Yes, normally it happens with any product of different vendors. We have had a problem with reporting module, it can't put the full size picture of floor plan in report. After we initiated several support cases these problems was solved with new release.

A year ago, there was a problem with huge floor plan pictures which were causing the software to hang during reporting. It was solved with the release update.

Special for existing customers they have an AirMagnet Account, where you can see all yours registered products and any documents for it.
Also if there is a new release, you can download it from there. As for me there is all nesessary and usefull information.

Technical support it is one of important things that customers appreciate. NETSCOUT has very qualified engineers who help very fast with every question.

We used Ekahau Site Survey. It is also a good quality product, but they are still growing and have a lot of bugs. These guys try to do their best and it looks like they are professional.

We chose AirMagnet Survey because it was recommended by Cisco. We like the functionality of it. Of course, the main reason was the localization of reports into Russian, which we need in our country.

AirMagnet is a very stable and time-tested product. It proves that the world's leading IT companies use AirMagnet Survey. When we look at the release notes, we can see a lot of new features instead of bug fixes, as is the case with Ekahau Site Survey.

Installation is very simple. You just need to register the software key on an AirMagnet web account, then download and install the software on your PC. This is all done by just clicking the "Next" button.

The price is not so high compared with other products with the same quality level. My recommendation is for customers to periodically renew your support contract. Some software releases contain new and interesting features that you can only download if you have an active support contract.

Because this product now belongs to NETSCOUT, I'm sure they will develop more interesting and useful features.

Before purchasing this solution, we evaluated the software of each AirMagnet product: AirMagnet Survey PRO, AirMagnet WiFi Analyzer, and AirMagnet Spectrum XT.

We compared it with Ekahau Site Survey, as it is only quality product with the same functionality. However, our purchasing decision was AirMagnet Survey.

Before purchasing the solution, request an evaluation license to test it. Think carefully and then chose a product which is stable, useful, and very famous in the IT industry.

• The planner
• Latest data on AP and antenna propagation
• More accurate representation of attenuation than Cisco Prime

AirMagnet is one of two survey software tools that are recognized by the industry. We often are requested to use AirMagnet for surveys.

Compatibility with other adapters and drivers for Windows 10, and the licensing methods need improvement.

I have been using AirMagnet for four to five years.

Often, AirMagnet will crash and you will have to reboot your laptop or tablet to start it again. Data will be lost if you haven’t saved it.

Large sites are often an issue. It requires a lot of CPU and RAM.

Technical support is very good. We have Gold support.

We didn’t have any previous solutions.

Setup was very easy; a straightforward installation and almost fully automated.

Make sure you don’t go over one year without licensing. Otherwise, you will have to buy the full product. It’s a lot cheaper to keep it licensed.

We looked at Ekahau. We found it user friendly but it feels too simple. Heat maps aren’t granular. It’s great for the customer though, from non-technical point of view.

Definitely do the training and study CWNA or CCNP Wireless.

The Spectrum Expert is very useful in troubleshooting, and just day-to-day operations of wireless engineering.

It just makes the whole process of doing wireless network surveys way smoother, and way faster. It does the same for any kind of wireless network troubleshooting.

I would just like to see integration of more wireless cards to have a broader group of cards you could use, instead of just a couple of specific ones.

I would like some more documentation, or training materials. I know I don't use the software to it's full capability. A lot of it's just because I don't know it's full capability. It's probably out there and I just haven't found it, or looked for it hard enough, either.

I have used this for four years.

I don't believe we have had any stability issues with the software itself. I have had some issues, but I believe it was related to the actual laptop that the software was running on. I don't believe it was the software or AirMagnet product issue.

I haven't seen any problems in the uses I have used it for, but I haven't really done any large-scale testing with it. Most of the stuff I do is fairly small-scale stuff.

I have had to call support a few times over some minor issues, and I never had any problems. I would rate them 5/5.

This is the first and only solution I have used.

Setup was pretty straightforward. When I started using it, it was already set up. I just got a rundown from somebody else that was familiar with it. It seemed pretty straightforward.

I did not evaluate any alternatives.

It is a good product and has good support. There is a lot of positive feedback from the wireless community, or networking community, so it's a trusted brand.

We do site surveys, so we use the Spectrum Analyzer and we use the Site Survey PRO to get a good feel of the signal strength in the company.

It gives a good view of the signal strength. There are other tools in the market as well, but we work with this one. I'm not sure why we choose this one, but it helps us to give a good feel of the network, the wireless coverage plan, the signal strength, signal-to-noise ratio, and so on.

I would like it to be able to automatically calculate the best way to place the access points; more like hybrid manual planning. I'm not sure if the product has that already, but we are not using it, at least.

Other products in this area do more automatic planning. You just give it the wall measurements and the area, and then it plans how many access points you need and where to place them. So, instead of going to the site, you fill in, per wall, the value of the loss. The program will calculate automatically the best place for the access point.

Then, you can check that with the Site Survey, whether it's a good measurement or not.

I have been working for this company the last half year now, so I’ve worked with this tool at least a half a year.

We have not had stability issues. The tool works great. Most of the time, it does what we want.

We have not had scalability issues.

So far, we haven’t needed technical support for this product.

We did not switch. At my previous company, I used another tool. Our company did not switch. We are still using this tool on a daily basis.

Initial setup was not complex.

I cannot provide any advice about pricing and licensing, since I'm just an assistant manager. I'm not involved in licensing and pricing. We do the AirMagnet training internally. All new employees get a demo from the other co-workers.

This product was chosen before I started working here.

If they want a good feel of the network, it has all the tools and information you need to know for problems with coverage and signal strength. It gives a great view of the network that you have in your wireless environment.

The whole program itself benefits me. We use all of it when we're doing our surveys. The surveys, just the software in general, all of it works great. We've done hundreds of these surveys and with very few issues and problems.

The software is pretty much the same as it was three years ago. I wouldn't say there has really been anything that we've added to the software that's any different than when we first started.

Better integration of the Spectrum XT. Instead of just having the basic information of your spectrum analysis alongside Pro, I'd like to see the full report, and actually be able to highlight over where I walked and what I saw at that point in the walk. I'd like to be able to arrow over a certain area and say, "okay, this is what was going on in that area as far as Spectrum XT."

Also, another good thing would be to have a notes page that as you're doing your survey, you can take notes and say, "in this area I noticed that there was glass features", or to be able to notate in certain areas as you walk around.

We've been using it for about three years now.

It does crash once in a while, but it just seemed like it was maybe the computer we were using wasn't processing fast enough. We did some things with the computer, and it ended up being okay where it wasn't really crashing it anymore. I don't know if the software that was doing it. Maybe it was more our PC.

We did have scalability issues. We were running tons of these reports and they would all back up and build up in our computer. We ended up moving it to a new computer because it just couldn't handle that amount of information. Once we did, it seemed like it worked fine. Now we archive a lot of the data off the computer and keep it off the computer. It seems to run pretty good.

It's been a long time since we've called techncial support, but I do remember it being a good experience and them handling what we needed. I would say it's probably an 4/5.

We didn’t use anything previously. We started off with AirMagnet. It was required by our customers that we had to use Fluke AirMagnet. It was like a specification. That's why we started with AirMagnet and we're still using it today.

Setup was pretty straightforward, but it does take a fair amount of time to understand everything that you're doing. That's the only thing I can say. There's a lot of great features in there, but unless you play around with it for quite some time, you're not going to know what those features are. As far as a basic survey goes, you can be up and running and doing one of those in a day, but to really give the customer a real good insight onto either design or maybe some issues with the current install, you have to know where to find that information in the software and provide that for them.

It's all there, but it does take a little bit of time. As you go through multiple projects, you start to learn where those features are.

It was a very specific requirement from our customers. We didn’t look at anything else. That's why we got that software. It was because a customer had asked us to do several of their sites, but the idea was that it would have to be done by Survey Pro and Spectrum XT.

Nowadays, it almost seems like you can get by without having to purchase the software and have somebody run the scan. In a lot of cases, you can just download the stuff off of Cisco's website and use theirs. You're pretty much going to get the same results. I guess my advice is don't spend too much money. You don't need it as much as you used to. Customers don't even require that we even do these walks anymore. What they've done is through the years, they've realized that they can almost have their own IT guys do it and run just any old brand software off the web for free or for really, really inexpensive, and they can get the same results.