We performed a comparison between AirMagnet Survey, DX Spectrum, and LinkRunner based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about NetAlly, Auvik, Wireshark and others in Network Troubleshooting."The heat maps are quite good, and some features are easy to use."
"The most valuable feature is the predictive survey. The antennas' RF patterns are reflected correctly on the drawing when preparing predictive heat maps."
"Using the products to ensure the safety of our equipment that we have a lot invested in."
"Clear and easy to use maps."
"It is reliable and easy to use (user-friendly). The heat mapping, passive network surveying, and doing the heat mapping of a building's wireless network allows me to see what level of coverage an area has."
"The addition of the AirMapper software on the nXG and our AirCheck G2s has helped a lot because we're mostly not drilling down into the data. Local managers only need to see the coverage on their end and whether there are performance bottlenecks. These things are easy enough for us to ascertain with iPerf."
"It allows us to prepare more real designs. Later, we validate them with actual surveys."
"The benefit is with the ease of use of the software, I am able to show the customer, "Here is what your wireless coverage looks like." It is set up in a fashion that non-technical people can understand it."
"The product’s stability and robustness are valuable."
"The fault management is perfect."
"The monitoring just comes to us: "Oh, there's something wrong with that machine." It tells us. There are some 50,000 machines or so, all doing different things. And if they go down we hear about it."
"Some of the most valuable features are it's highly scalable, the carrier is great, and if something has SNMP, it can monitor it. It's a great network fault management solution."
"Spectrum is very useful for us, because the product lets us monitor and control all the various components of our infrastructure that support our business from an IT perspective."
"It creates transparency and makes everything work by being more transparent."
"We can plan changes and replacement of end-of-life products in our environment very well because it's very accurate."
"I have found the cross analysis feature to be the most valuable."
"I've found the VLAN test feature to be most valuable. That's because not many devices do VLAN tests. Normally, I have to send a center technician to check a line and see if it's alive. If it's working, then I have to send a network technician out to log into a switch and see which port it's on and on which VLAN that port is. That's two persons and two separate visits. This device does all of this in a matter of seconds, and that has saved me a lot of time, troubleshooting, and resources."
"AutoTest is very helpful. It's very streamlined and it's very easy to set up and very easy to identify what we want to achieve. It's probably the feature we use the most. It provides us with LLTD, which is very useful."
"The LLDP decoding is better than on some of the other devices that we've used. Specifically, it goes beyond the minimum of the LLDP data to decode, and it shows the LLDP port descriptions. That makes it vastly simpler to identify which port you're connecting to on a switch that's patched back to some other building, rather than having to figure out an SNMP index or something else."
"The AutoTest feature makes it easy for you on both ends. It's an excellent feature, especially if you're by yourself. You plug one end in and you hit AutoTest. It sits and waits for you to plug in the other end and it starts testing."
"Performance testing is the most valuable feature. It gives a brief summary of the information we're looking at, such as latency, jitter, and the available throughput."
"I like that LinkRunner is an all-in-one device with a touchscreen interface. You don't have to pair it with a phone or anything else to get the full functionality. The built-in tests are one of the most significant advantages. It will pull an IP, ping the gateway, ping out to the intra, and report everything on the screen. It will tell you when a test completes or fails and why."
"I like the fact that I can tell the equipment to stop at a certain point during the test of a cable, to see whether or not there is basic connectivity. I can stop it before it starts pinging the outside world, such as Google or, perhaps, our core network switch. Those basic results—do I have a basic connection and power—finish up fast and I can move on."
"The most valuable feature is the end-to-end testing with the "dart," as they call it, where you can test for faults in the cable or if they've been terminated properly."
"The user interface needs a lot of improvement. The auto-placement of access points is not accurate."
"AirMagnet Survey doesn't cover certain devices in the system."
"Printouts are JPEG printouts. The AirMagnet software is proprietary. I can't send my customers a file, because it is AirMagnet file, even for building projects. I can only send JPEGs or screenshots of heat maps."
"It'd be nice if it was cheaper, however, you get value for your money."
"Less time consumed doing the real surveys."
"But it's definitely a more expensive solution than other ones."
"The surveying features are in need of improvement, along with general usability."
"When you conduct an active survey and then want to use it for design work, it's actually not very useful."
"Make it easier to certify devices."
"It needs better integration with other CA products."
"The Spectrum OneClick is a Java-based client, and that's aging. Really, before any new feature integration, I'd love to see a comprehensive rebuild of the UI."
"DX Spectrum needs to incorporate faster support."
"The product should provide performance management features."
"I would recommend AI capability built-in so it becomes more predictable and we jump ahead of the curve. This is the one really important feature I would really like to see in any product that provides alarms."
"If they could interact with the MIBs of vendors better, and have a lot more pre-loaded ones, that would be amazing for us right now."
"It was somewhat complex to implement."
"One area where LinkRunner could be improved is the battery life. Depending on which tests are run, it gets a decent six to eight hours. However, sometimes we need to do back-to-back shifts to meet a deadline, and we need access to an outlet to keep it plugged in and charging. It takes about an hour or two to charge."
"I wish they had software that could create continuous streams of traffic. I'm not sure if that's possible with LinkRunner, but it would be very helpful in some of the test case scenarios that clients are looking for, in regards to quality of service"
"If it weren't for the battery, it would probably get an eight out of 10. But because of the battery, it's infuriating and it's not reliable."
"A feature that I would like to see is the ability to send a tone down the cable. That would be great. I have to use a separate tool for that. If I'm trying to troubleshoot a cable that is not plugged into a network switch, I need the ability to tone."
"It's a little bit tough getting used to at first, but once you get the hang of it, and once you start using it more, like anything, it gets easier. The difficult part, at first, is knowing where to find each test and how to use the tests."
"It is a great tool, but in the long-term, they can make its processor more powerful to do more functions. They can upgrade the hardware to make it run faster and more efficiently from the process point of view. That'll be beneficial because the technology is evolving and the network traffic is going higher and higher. We have to leverage better spec products to handle the traffic load."
"Being really nitpicky about the LinkRunner G2, I wish the form factor was a little bit smaller. However, I'm sure that the size of the unit is compromised by the fact that the battery is large. If that were to mean having less battery life, I would not change it."
"They should allow firmware updates even if you don't have an AllyCare contract. I'm in a situation right now where they've released firmware for bug fixes, but we cannot access those, which makes the device almost useless. You almost want to just throw it out the window because they're not supporting their product unless you have an AllyCare contract."
