WifiNigel

The phrase “game changer” is banded around a great deal by our good friends in sales and marketing. It seems to accompany  just about every new product or service that they may introduce. Being a techie (and a rather reserved Brit), I’m not one for throwing around such emotional, bombastic language lightly. But after having been given early access to a new product from Ekahau, I’m going to say it: yes…this is a “game changer”. Read on to find out why… (Download a PDF of this article here ) Background If you’re a current user of Ekahau Site Survey (or any wireless survey product come to think of it), you’ll be familiar with the ritual of assembling your survey dongle collection each time you need to perform a wireless survey. To correctly survey, you’ll need at least two dongles gathering Wi-Fi RF data (one per band), together with one or two spectrum analysis dongles scanning both bands of the Wi-Fi spectrum. In most cases, all of the dongles are invariably connected to ...

If you carry out wireless survey activities, you’ll be painfully aware how much your precious survey kit cost you. And, I’m pretty sure you want to keep it in pristine, working condition. Here is a great little add-on for your kit that can help preserve your survey laptop and your survey wireless NICs. The Problem Yes, I know it’s not fashionable to use the word “problem” anymore, but if you’ve ever been surveying on site and had a passing pedestrian or unexpected filing cabinet damage one of your wireless survey NICs, then you know that it’s a “problem”. Fig.1 - This is never going to end well... When performing on-site surveys to measure Wi-Fi network coverage or performance, there is generally a requirement to have one or more wireless NICS or dongles attached to a survey laptop. These cards gather data to feed into survey software as a survey engineer moves around a coverage area. However, plugging the cards into the standard USB ports on your laptop can mean th...

If you’re looking for a wireless survey engineer for a forthcoming Wi-Fi network project, or you’re a wireless survey engineer who’d like to snag a few new customers, here is a great site you’ll want to check out! I was lucky enough to attend the Wireless LAN Professionals Conference in February of this year (2017). Among the feast of Wi-Fi presentations and products was a very nice survey kit offering from a company I’d not heard of before called HiveRadar. They offer a complete survey kit in a flight case for survey engineers. The beauty of this kit is that it has everything you need to perform an on-site, “AP on a Stick” survey packed into one, robust flight case (yes... even the survey pole !). If you’re a Wi-Fi engineer, this is certainly an offering you will appreciate, particularly if you have to do plenty of plane journeys. Fig1. Engineer Locator However, in addition to their great products, one thing that really caught my eye was an “ engineer locator ” to...

When it comes to designing WLAN RF environments, everyone seems to have their favourite cell edge signal level that they like to shoot for. Common figures include -67dBm for voice grade WLANs, maybe -60dBm for higher 802.11ac speeds and perhaps -72dBm for general data traffic coverage. Each vendor and wireless consultant seems to have their own preferred cell edge design target that will vary with WLAN requirements. However, these figures are meaningless without some type of explanation or context. If you rely solely on these types of figures, you are very likely designing incorrectly.... Background Around 18 months ago, I was involved in a project that required the deployment of a new wireless LAN network at many sites around the globe. The project required that all sites would be subject to the same standard of RF parameters to provide a consistent design approach at all sites. A team was sent to the first site to perform an “AP on a stick” survey using an AP of the same mo...