eWEEK Labs Walk-Through: AirMagnet Survey 3.0 Pro

During testing of AirMagnets AirMagnet Survey 3.0 Pro, we imported a CAD drawing for our blueprint, but just about any file format works. If we knew the building dimensions, we could enter them here.

To calibrate the map, we measured the physical distance between two points, then found the spot on the map and input the distance. AirMagnet Survey extrapolates the rest.

This displays the route we walked during our passive survey. We needed to click on the map periodically to indicate our location, to provide a frame of reference for the algorithms to do their thing.

This shows the heat map for one access point, highlighting where signal is strong (blue) or weakened (yellow).

The combined coverage our two access points.

At any given spot on the map, AirMagnet Survey will list the aggregate APs detected at that location.

The active survey shows different information in real time, including link rate, retries and lost packets.

The areas of our network where we encountered the greatest packet loss are shown in yellow.

This map predicts where link rates will drop when associated to one particular, poorly placed access point.

To look at the spectrum interference for a specific location along the path we had walked, we clicked on the location to get the corresponding information for the 2.4GHz (bottom left) and 5GHz (bottom right) bands.

We could do side-by-side analysis of one access points characteristics as seen from multiple floors.

We could simulate what a network would look like if we reduced the APs transmit power from 100 mW (above) to 25 mW (below).