AirMagnet Survey PRO Reviews

• Ability to delete and redo sections in the middle of a survey.
• Ability to click and walk a straight route to the end without multiple clicks.
• AM Survey can be programmed to automatically collect information at specified intervals, so rather than having to walk, stop, click, walk, stop, click; you walk a steady speed in a straight line and click once at the end of the line, and Survey evenly spaces information for that entire path. Now say you finished half of a survey area and you accidentally click across the building, I can take that path of information out, go back to the start of that one line or row and do it again. Some products would force you to resurvey the entire area.

It allows me to easily verify WiFi signal strength and faults associated with the constant changing warehouse environments.

If anything, the rendering speed when doing or looking at large surveys could be faster, but I understand that sheer volume of information is the issue. So with a faster Laptop processor, more memory will help that. I use AirMagnet for very large high density warehouse installs and maintenance. One million plus square feet with multiple floors and/or open mezzanines. While you can do these in multiple sections where rendering isn't an issue, sometimes you want to see the big picture all in one place. It's these large, high density areas that can be slow at rendering information. A high-end laptop with lots of memory improved this greatly. I don't believe this is a big problem for most organizations, but my environments were taking 10+ minutes to render. After upgrading to a new laptop with 16G of memory, rendering was down to one to two minutes.

Nine years

No problems.

No problems.

No problems.

Excellent.

Excellent.

Yes, NetStumbler, Ekahau, and hand drawn survey with a laptop.

Setup is straightforward. Overall setup can be straightforward or complex depending on the users knowledge of WiFi. Under educated users can setup, use, and get good information, but setup can get very complex for advanced engineers to troubleshoot advanced issues.

In-house.

I think a basic version with no access to advanced setting at a low cost would generate more interest from small companies.

Know how to create or obtain scaled diagrams.

WiFi planning, RF measurements and roaming capability.

The feature of AirMagnet to build predictions is awesome, we can simulate the APs placement without the need to go to the installation place. The many ways to measure the RF environment with AirMagnet are great. The software has the capability to perform roaming among APs in many different ways, not all survey software do that.

Now we can attend the expectations of our clients, about indoor and outdoor site surveys.

• Interface layout - I think for a better user experience, the software GUI layout could be more elaborate, just for simplicity.
• PDF file support - the current software version doesn’t support PDF files, and PDF is a very common format to ignore it.

3 years.

Yes, sometimes the radios disappear, and then show up again.

Some WiFi devices vendors are not present.

Good technical support.

Yes, a simple free WiFi tool. We switched for the tech support and richer features.

Easy, they have plenty of documentation.

The pricing and licensing are expensive, but for us, it was fair.

Yes, the Ekahau solution, but it is more expensive, and in our point of view delivers the same functionalities.

This is a very good product.

The most valuable feature is that I use it mostly for doing predictive surveys and for validations, when I go back out and test whatever install has been done. Its capabilities to do measuring and with the use of the spectrum analyzer to be able to give me the spectrum analysis right away is very helpful.

We provide our customers with a report based on analysis, whether it's something after an install that we've done or going in and they need a report of where they stand now and possibly improving. We get with them and do an analysis and try to create a report from that.

The features I would like to see is better capability of importing floor plans into the design. With other software that I've used, I'm able to take a CAD drawing or even a PDF and just upload it right away without converting the file. I think it converts the file for me. Especially with a CAD drawing, if the measurements are already in there, it accepts them and, if you want it to, it can also go ahead and create walls and windows based on the drawing, how it was drawn and how it was designed. That would be a nice feature.

I haven't been able to decide whether it is stable. I've had issues every now and again, but I cannot 100 percent say it was the fault of the software or the fault of my laptop. There have been times where, in the middle of doing a survey, it will all of a sudden decide it doesn't see a certain type of card. I have to either reboot the program or reboot the whole laptop. That does the trick and then it starts working fine.

It is one of those solutions that I think my organization is going to use moving forward. It continues to grow with us.

I haven't needed to call in for support yet.

I used it before it was purchased by NetScout. The only one thing that did change is, when I am designing and I'm trying to create a report, I'll click on the screen of the heat map to try and do a copy of that screen so I can put it in my report. It throws a thumbtack on the screen and tries to take a measurement in that specific area. I've always got to disable that before I click on it. It's not a big deal, but it's something that I never had to do before NetScout. It was already disabled, whereas now it's fully enabled.

It is an excellent software solution . I would recommend, if you're getting AirMagnet, to also get the Spectrum. Get the Pro and get Spectrum Analyzer with it, because I think that's very useful when it comes to troubleshooting. That's where you get the most valuable information from. As far as using the software, it's going to give you true results and be very accurate.

There's other software out there that does the thing that AirMagnet does, but that also has the ability to import CAD drawings, accept the measurements and so on, which I like.

I was able to conduct pre-implementation surveys for floors using the production access points to see where potential dead spots were going to be. No matter how accurate the results and my reporting, there were still quite a few challenges with translating this to building contractors and electricians that did not see the benefit of accurate access point placement.

The software itself is pretty basic actually. There is a lot of detailed information that is provided; however, I would state the most valuable information would be the SNR and RSSI information received to optimize access point placement.

Even though I was using an approved USB wireless adapter (Proxim Orinoco), I had many problems with getting the software to talk to the adapter and successfully start capturing data.

The “support” for OS X through Bootcamp or some other virtualization software is almost false advertising. I understand why the product does not work with OS X natively, but stating that it does work by using virtualization software and installing Windows should probably be avoided.

The licensing model is very strict and based on the hardware MAC address of the capture adapter (which is why I purchased the Proxim USB). While I understand the need for software security, in order to change the MAC address to a different adapter, a service ticket needed to be entered with Fluke Networks to have a support engineer make the necessary changes for me. On two out of three occasions where this happened with my organization, the response time was unacceptable and caused a significant loss of productivity. I do not know how this model now works with Netscout, however.

The product would frequently crash and this was on different laptop platforms. It was even advised due to frequent crashing that surveys should last between 5 and 10 minutes and that multiple surveys should be merged together to form a complete picture of a survey area. It would be great if there was a switchable “feature” to perform this action for me, so I wouldn’t have to remember to stop a survey before the program crashed.

The program did seem to work well with multiple floors as well as multiple surveys within a particular floor. The most complex survey was a HQ building that was comprised of 54 floors and I had all of them added to one survey file (for vertical stacking and wireless “bleeding”).

Other than having technical support change out the adapter MAC address on the license for me, I did not have much experience with technical support. There was one ticket initially that only confirmed what the software told me upon startup that the USB endpoint protection software that my company used would have to be removed to allow the program to identify the adapter correctly and start.

AirMagnet Survey PRO was the first survey solution that I used.

Application setup was straightforward. I ran into a lot of discrepancies with our corporate laptop image, so I had to use a bare-bones machine with no other software on it.

I believe pricing is a little high and the company, Fluke, at the time was not willing to work with our organization on a discount, which was disconcerting. We ended up purchasing only 25% of the licenses we originally wanted and sharing the Proxim USB adapters between engineers. I have already mentioned my response issues with the licensing. Note: Both of these issues might have changed since the Netscout acquisition.

Before choosing this product, no other products were evaluated.

Make sure you are not using any custom software on the platform you are installing this onto. Disable all security, whether it be endpoint protection or other. Be patient with the software and find an “order of operations” combination that works for startup and surveying.

• The possibility to conduct both passive and active surveys at the same time (+ Spectrum integration)
• The possibility with Planner to customize the antennas (and use models that are not in the AirMagnet database)

It’s the essential tool for conducting an audit and identifying interference sources on a wireless network and improve the channel tuning.

It would be great to have the possibility to use multiple floors on the same project (and not create a project for each map).

I have used it for two years.

I had some crash issues due to the wireless card driver.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

Technical support is 8/10. I had one call with the support; they solved easily my problem.

Before AirMagnet, I used free tools that didn’t allow be to conduct an active survey.

During initial setup, there were some difficulties recognizing the proxim 8494 using the AirMagnet driver, so the software wouldn’t run (because the licence is tied to it).

No support = no upgrades: Take this into consideration.

Ekahau is a good product, too, and more user-friendly, but AirMagnet is the reference.

Do all your surveys with two wireless cards.

We have a very disruptive environment for wireless internet. We use Air Magnet Survey Pro to help show our wireless coverage throughout the building. Once we have completed the survey, we move access points or make other necessary changes where it is needed.

We have had multiple issues with our wireless phone dropping from the network along with our RF gun scanners that are used to scan barcodes. We have used Air Magnet Survey Pro to help see how the access points overlap each other and the overall dbm.

When pausing during the middle of a survey, I often have issues when restarting because the survey tool can’t determine exactly where I am in the building when I click on the map. Also, when I get done completing a large survey, it often struggles to try and save all of the information.

I have used it for one year.

Overall, the software has been pretty stable; have not had any issues with the software crashing.

I have not had any scalability issues.

I worked with technical support when I was first learning how to use the software. They were helpful and willing to do some test surveys with me until I got comfortable. Since then, I have not had to contact them until I had to switch my license from one computer to another; overall good support.

I did not previously use a different solution. We priced out a few other solutions, but AirMagnet just seemed like the best solution for us.

Initial setup was a little confusing at first but, as I’ve mentioned, support was there to help me out.

When we were pricing out other solutions, AirMagnet came out with the best pricing. We purchased the one-year support and we are at the time to renew again, which we will be doing.

Before choosing this product, we tested out Ekahau and Fluke.

AirMagnet has a wide variety of products that fit in with the Survey Pro. The planner looks to be a great tool but unfortunately, I haven’t had the opportunity to test it out yet.

The integration with the spectrum analysis is a real time saver.

Being able to run multiple wireless adapters allows us to collect more data in different, more efficient ways.

Those features are valuable, as is the ability to generate reports out of it pretty quickly.

I'd really like to see integration with the cloud, being able to have a central repository for data. If I have multiple engineers working on a project simultaneously, it might be nice to have all of that automatically backed up into one comprehensive centrally managed project file online.

I would definitely like to see more ability to generate custom reports. The reports in there are great but don't always have the flexibility to allow me to bring in my own template and expedite our report writing process even further.

I'd also like to see if there’s a way to incorporate multiple adapters or even more types of wireless; maybe not just 802.11 but maybe an LTE survey or Bluetooth low-energy survey, multiple different wireless platforms. If it was in fact able to support a lot of other Wi-Fi services, that would be a great feature.

I have been using it for six to seven years.

It has not been entirely stable. There have definitely been some bumps in the road. In the past, various releases have had their issues, including the 8.8 release. It definitely had some bugs. That was, as I understand it, a complete re-build of the platform: new dates and structure - moving from a flat file to more of a database file structure for the data. So far, in the latest release, version 9.0, which we've been on for about three and a half weeks, everything's been pretty peachy.

I don't really have another alternative right now that I think is better. Scalability-wise, this is top of the line for the market at the moment.

Overall, the majority of their support engineers are exceptional. Especially when it comes to being able to react or assist us on something that's extremely critical through an ongoing project for us. Any time that we have engineers in the field burning money, AirMagnet, Fluke, now NETSCOUT, have always had engineers that are willing to tackle an issue in real time.

Our company has used AirMagnet exclusively since we launched about three years ago. Professionally, I used other products like Ekahau and Motorola Wireless LANPlanner.

We choose AirMagnet because we all agreed it was the best solution at the time. Then, a lot of our partner organizations required it as a standard, so we could all operate on the same page.

Initial setup is pretty darn straightforward. I've run into some issues with licensing. During an upgrade, it periodically tends to lose its license, which is an extra step you have to go through to re-download and install that license over again.

The more copies you can buy at once, the better deal you're going to get, which goes for just about any product out there.

Find a way to standardize, especially the adapters and the hardware being used. I just find that having consistent results in data is comparative. If you are using this for an organization like ours, where we have multiple engineers all working together, having a standardized hardware platform makes a big difference.

It's as good as it gets, in my opinion right now, and nothing is ever perfect.