AirMagnet Survey PRO Reviews

We use this product in the hospitality, education (K-12), and healthcare industries.

It has helped us when dealing with the hospitality industry.

• Clear and easy to use maps.
• It is easy to upload the maps
  

The pricing needs improvement.

The most valuable feature is the predictive survey. The antennas' RF patterns are reflected correctly on the drawing when preparing predictive heat maps.

The predictive survey creates heat maps which are accurate and save a lot of time. The results are accurate enough to rely on when considering quantities and locations of wireless access points.

This is very helpful, especially when you need to know the required number of access points to price a project. You can rely on the results and the location of access points without an actual survey.

The actual site survey will be useful for fine-tuning. It will be shorter because you will do the survey when you already know the location of access points. You will not have to start from scratch.

The user interface needs a lot of improvement. The auto-placement of access points is not accurate.

User interface:

The UI is missing lots of simple features like multiple selection and modification of objects (access points and walls), undo, re-do, and stable zooming.

After a site survey, it is a hassle to point the access points to their correct location on the drawing. Reports are very basic and bad. Modification and formatting is very tiring. The results depend on the drawing and the site survey without considering the areas excluded from coverage.

Auto-placement:

Auto-placement of access points (for predictive survey) is a basic feature in AirMagnet. You cannot use it because the number of access points will be excessive. You should place access points on the drawing manually, one-by-one based on specs, RF pattern, wall attenuation, obstacles, and your experience.

We have used this solution for three years.

The software crashes frequently which requires you to restart your PC.

AirMagnet has no issues with scalability.

Customer service is good.

Technical support is good and fast. I have contacted technical support couple of times and they know what they are doing.

We used Ekahau, as per a client request. I started using AirMagnet afterwards.

It is easy to setup the software and to start projects.

In-house

For technical support, you need an annual license, but it is not worth it.

I evaluated Ekahau.

If you are going to do predictive surveys, then doing tests and passive site surveys to check wall attenuation is a must. You cannot depend on the default values of concrete and bricks.

The support for multi-floor surveys.

It allows us to prepare more real designs. Later, we validate them with actual surveys.

Less time consumed doing the real surveys.

Since 2012.

The main issue was when you define obstacles for the wi-fi signal, you cannot define the height of them. For example, if you have a brick wall of 1.7 meters (6 ft.) high and on top of it a 60 cm. (2 ft.) window, you are only able to define a 2.20 meters brick wall. For example, this setup is very common in schools where they prefer to have the wi-fi router outside of the classrooms.

In general, it is very stable, most of the issues were with Windows stability.

No.

An eight out of 10.

An eight out of 10.

We acquired this solution to work with Ruckus Wireless eq., the AirMagnet version that we used was a OEM for Ruckus.

It is very straightforward to implement, the only issue is if you change wi-fi for the MAC address.

In-house

Not applicable.

This version was okay in price when it was dedicated to only one vendor. The moment we began needing more of the vendor's support, the cost became very high; we switched to another solution.

Aruba and VRF Plan.

I recommend doing a comparison between the newer version of AirMagnet and Ekahau before purchasing.

We normally use AirMagnet products to meter voltage coming off any number of services at the venues that we go to, or generators in the instance that we're doing something that's a temporary powered situation; so, metering voltage, and then also metering amperage draw.

The biggest mission-critical function would be safety concerns. We are dealing with a lot of real sensitive electronics that can be damaged if the incorrect voltage is sent down to them; so, using the products to ensure the safety of our equipment that we have a lot invested in.

I would say some of our newer techs that are going out to job sites can be a little bit intimidated by the interface. A more user-friendly interface for the meters; knowing which setting to use, if I'm testing amperage, and if I'm testing voltage, which setting do I need to be on. Maybe there's a better way to identify if I'm looking to meter a service and what setting should I have my meter, it needs to be in this position. Or if I'm going to check amperage draw, which setting do I use.

We're talking about a multimeter product, like a voltmeter, and I think that the user interface on the screen and dial could be spelled out better for a novice.
But the physical features are in line with most of the other competitors.

I have been using it for the last five years.

It has been stable.

It definitely is tracking fine for what we're using it for.

We haven't used technical support for five years.

I think if anything we've switched to Fluke because it's definitely a more industry standard. Before, we had used some different products that were more economy-level kind of things.

Setup is straightforward. We were only involved in some of the real smaller, handheld products, like voltmeters and things.

We use commercial electric products, as well, that tend to be a little bit more affordable. But once again, if it is a mission-critical application, sometimes we would lean their way.

I would say that employee training becomes really important, so that everyone who's using the products knows how to use them safely. You know, you're dealing with electricity, so it can get a little dicey.

I use almost all AirMagnet features. For the survey, I use PRO. I use Planner for planning tools. I use WiFi Analyzer for troubleshooting, and XT for the troubleshooting, as well.

The predictive survey has improved the way my organization functions. I use their planner when making the walls. You can create a real-world environment and then come up with the plan for APs. Once everything is in place or if a real-world survey is needed, then the active survey or passive survey is used for that purpose.

For the WiFi Analyzer, if there is trouble in a wireless environment, I use it to see the signal interference, the co-channel interference, the devices, and those kinds of things.

For spectrum analysis, if issues are reported, to check the overall health of the wireless, I use Spectrum XT.

Before AirMagnet, most of the survey work was guesswork, depending on the expertise of the engineer. They used to place the APs, and then go back and do the survey. So, when AirMagnet Survey first became available, that became a lot easier. Before that, there was another tool called Ekahau Site Survey. With AirMagnet, you have all of the solutions, all of the tools, from the one platform.

The worst thing that is built into AirMagnet is, if your laptop crashes in the middle, all of the work you have done is gone. There should be an auto-save functionality. Currently, even if you stop the survey, save it, and your tool crashes, that thing is not saved. The auto-saving should be more reliable, so that your done part is not gone. Auto-saving must be a key factor.

On the survey side, they need to have more adapters to support. In the adapter, there should be more preset values. Because right now, the way the survey tool is designed, you have to set the specific power before you start the survey, but most of the vendors, with the current environment, they are going on automatic power and channel settings. AirMagnet lacks that capability. They need to have an option with the auto-channel and auto-power, so we can come up with more accurate surveys.

Another main problem I have with the tool is, in Spectrum XT, you have to select the band, like 5 GHz, lower, middle, Uni1, Uni2, Uni3 and extended. So you cannot have the whole thing on one screen. That is needed. There should be one screen which has all of the spectrum on the dashboard, so you can see the whole picture in one place, instead of having four screens open. If somebody's using a 10- or 12-inch laptop, a notebook, a tablet, then you can imagine opening four screens side by side, how small they will become.

They need to have a dashboard which will show the entire spectrum on one screen. They could add additional screens. If somebody wants to know further details of a screen, they could open up another screen, like they have in the WiFi Analyzer, which has different tabs. The first tab shows the main screen. Then, if you want to go and look into specific things, you go to that screen.

I've been using the Proxim adapters. They are not really roaming well.

Also, the USB adapter is not reliable with the users. For example, we have the AirMagnet tool on the laptop and everybody uses that USB. If the laptop is gone, you can't assign a license to a laptop. If that is gone, you have to redo the whole thing.

If AirMagnet can come up with their own adapter that is more compatible with their tool, I think that's more preferable. The reason is if you use this Proxim adapter, you get different results. If you use NetGear or some other adapter, you get a different result. The reason is the adapters don't have the same sensitivity on the wireless side. That should be standard, so that we are sure we are getting data that is reliable.

This tool does not work with the drivers of those USB adapters. The adapters and drivers should be more consistent. Changing the adapters should not change the result of the survey.

They need to change the way AirMagnet starts a project. It is exactly the same as when they started in 2004. They have not changed it. They need to change it according to the current wireless settings, according to current wireless environments. It needs to change, because if you look at AirMagnet 4 and AirMagnet 11, the start of the project, and how you build the thing and get to the survey screen, that is exactly the same. Between 2004 and 2016, wireless has changed a lot.

We have been using the solution since 2004.

There were stability issues. It takes up a lot of resources and it crashes in the middle.

It does a pretty good job with scalability, because this is all software which is installed on hardware. It doesn't have hardware. If you have hardware, you still have software installed on it. So, I think there are some tweaks on the software side that need to be more specific for some main vendors: Cisco, Aruba, Motorola and those vendors. If there are some presets for their main antenna patterns, that would be more helpful to do the survey.

I called technical support several times but most of the time, the people I talk to are not so intensively knowledgeable technically. For example, I have 12 years of radio frequency (RF) wireless experience and those people are just sales and support kind of people. So, I don't blame them. I rate technical support 10/10.

When I switched to AirMagnet in 2004-05, I also used Ekahau a little bit and at that time, Ekahau was also at the preliminary stage because wireless was not that popular. AirMagnet was more user friendly and there were more settings that you could tweak. There were more options compared to Ekahau.

I have pretty much stuck with AirMagnet since then.

The setup was easy. That's one of the reasons everybody is using AirMagnet. It is easy to set up, easy to operate.

I just got some of the reviews on the Ekahau tool I used because the other tools and other options available were not enterprise-type. On the enterprise side of wireless survey, Ekahau mostly provided survey tools and other things. But they were not intensive. AirMagnet is a one-stop shop for everything. That's why I'm still sticking to AirMagnet.

We are using the multi-floor planner, which is very useful for us to create heat maps. We are also using the AirMagnet site survey. It's really helpful for us to know in which areas we are losing the signal and in which areas the signals are very good. So, this is very nice for us.

We have created lots of plans through this AirMagnet tool. It's very good.

Whenever we are doing the site survey, it will catch most of the areas. However, for example, if we are creating the plan after doing the site survey, in some areas, it will show some signals but actually the signals are not there. The client will ask, "It is showing the signal here, but actually the signals are very weak. Even though it is still showing the green light." So, that is the only concern and the problem area. It will show the signal, but actually there will be less signal. That is the only part which can improve.

There are some requirements for new access points for Cisco. Right now, as to what access points we are using, we are not getting the same model more or less. It should have some updates. They should include those new access points, i.e., whichever access points Cisco or any other vendors are making, so they should be there. They should include them in their upgrades and updates, so that we can easily give those specifics to access points and we can start our work. But as of now, what I have found is that there are some model numbers that I'm not able to get the model number in AirMagnet. (I forget the exact model number, actually.) Hence, what we did was, we created it manually. We manually created the access point. Thus, if AirMagnet can upgrade the new model number for the access points and can include it in the updates, it would be really helpful for us (mostly for Cisco).

It should work faster than the current version that we have and should include some more features that can help us. It would benefit us, if we could have some more features. This is totally up to the developers, so as to include the specific features in a later version and how they can build up some new features that can help us. That would be good.

I have used the AirMagnet solution for the last year, i.e., for more than a year or so.

In regards to the stability, things are okay. I didn't find any problem with the software as such. Everything was fine. As of now, it's fine. I didn't find any difficulty other than that. It's a good software.

As for the scalability, it's okay because we are doing at a time up to 15 access points with the controller support; so based on that, it's fine. There's no scalability problem and we can do more access points also at a time.

We were doing at least 3-4 surveys before when our project was here and it was a big project. So we are doing at least 3 to 4 surveys per day and it was good. It's all good. There's no issue with the scalability. It's fine.

The last time one of my colleagues opened a ticket for some installation, as there was some problem with the installation/re-installation, we got proper support from the technical guys. There's no issue with support.

Personally, I didn't use any site survey software before, but I don't know about my colleagues. Maybe they used something else. Once I joined this company, I started with AirMagnet itself. Before there was some Snyder solution which was a free software that we used. However, comparing that to this tool, AirMagnet is a good and reliable solution. It's not giving us fake results; it's in real time.

The setup was simple and very straightforward. There's no complexity as such. It's simple.

As I mentioned earlier, the only thing is that we are not able to find the new devices from vendors like Cisco and Aruba; access points. We need them to include those access points and it would be really helpful for us. The rest of the things are okay. It is a good solution. My advice is to include only the newer version of the access points in the AirMagnet tool, so that it will be really helpful for us.

I'm using it both for designing purposes and for active site survey.

It's helping me a lot for designing and for carrying out large implementations. By using this tool, we can also deploy a very big WiFi network. I have used other solutions like the Ekahau Wi-Fi tools, but I think this one is more user-friendly.

In terms of the graphical representations, it can be improved.

Right now, the AirMagnet has the latest features, such as the 3-D structure feature, as opposed to the other solutions. I think that was implemented in the last year. So, that was the best feature and the scope of improvement in that sense.

I have been using this product for the last four years.

I feel like the software crashed on my laptop so many times, as compared to when I was using the Ekahau, but it's fine. For me, while using the AirMagnet, it crashed on my laptop around two to three times and this is my experience that I had with the AirMagnet range.

It crashed at any time and affected my work in regards to saving stuff and things like that. Also, it had a small impact while getting back to what I was doing. I didn't save it when I was working on a somewhat big project and it happened to me about two or three times.

In terms of capacity, it's stable. AirMagnet is stable in regards to the traffic and capacity. I did not feel any difficulty with scalability.

I did not use any technical support.

At first, I started my work in WiFi designing with AirMagnet and then later on, I switched to other solutions so as to seek better compatibility, to check how it works, etc.

I wanted to check what are the differences and extra features that are being provided by other vendors, so that's why I switched to another vendor. Thus, simultaneously I was using maybe two or three solutions at a time. However, I prioritized the AirMagnet ones.

The setup was simple. Even if you don't have much knowledge in terms of WiFi, you will be able to understand what features are included in the software.

In terms of the prices, I am aware how much this product costs and the other vendor prices as well. However, I don't know how to compare them. In regards to the means of solution or the technical aspects, it's easy to implement it for an open-minded person.

When I first started using it, I was forced to use this solution because my company was only providing AirMagnet for me. That is when I used AirMagnet for the first time and later on, I got a chance to go check out other solutions. Thus, I didn't get a chance to evaluate other products during my first time experience. Later on, I did look at other tools.

I will definitely suggest the AirMagnet solution for WiFi implementations. This is the best solution that I can suggest to others.

It carries out wireless surveys and records wireless signal strength. That's what we use it for.

The software really does what it has been doing for years now. It records the wireless signal strengths and that's mainly it. It doesn't really improve our process. It just does what it's supposed to.

Since it crashes 1 out of 20 times, it would be great if they could make it more stable.

We use it on a daily basis, and it crashes 1 out of 20 times.

It seems to be something with the software, or with the Windows' configuration.

We have used technical support. They obviously continue working on improving it. Their support is good.

We haven't really used any other solution because there really wasn't anything out there like AirMagnet. It had no other competition at that time.

The setup was pretty straightforward.

The more you use, the better you get at it.

Spectrum XT running at the same time during survey mode: It allows me to investigate after the survey to see what was causing the interference and mitigate it before installing the access points.

The reports that are generated are very good and a customer can make since of them.

The ability to run both 2.4 GHz and 5GHz active surveys at the same time for 802.11n applications is a real time saver you don’t have to walk the floor twice to gather the data you need.

Another valuable feature is the ability to use CAD drawings and to select layers within the CAD drawing to cut down on clutter and make the CAD files easier to work with.

The ability to tie the license to a wireless adapter MAC or the MAC of the computer is a nice feature especially if you want to use the software on more than one computer.

AirMagnet allows our organization to relatively quickly provide our customers with a budgetary solution that meets their business needs.

The planner function would be better if there was the ability to change the antenna orientation for external antenna, e.g., tilt angle.

The multi-floor alignment tool is not very good; only having to use two points and hope that they line up is tough. I have had to alter the floor plan’s scale to get the alignment tool to work correctly.

Having better capacity planning, the ability to add different client devices would be nice.

The user manual is quite in depth; it would be nice for the price that you pay for the product that there could be a link in the user guide to see exactly how to use/run a particular function other than screen shots. For example, conducting VoFi Surveys:

I have used AirMagnet Survey Pro for 11 years. I have used AirMagnet Planner for six years.

No deployment issues where encountered during the installation process. At the time we purchased the software there were still CDs to install the software, it was very straight forward.

I have not encountered any stability issues with this version at all; a very vast improvement from some of the earlier versions.

I have not encountered any scalability issues; AirMagnet has made some substantial improvements with the product with each release.

The Gold Support is the best that I have dealt with. Everyone that I have encountered is very knowledgeable with the product and issues are quickly resolved, especially the ones are user orientated!!

AirMagnet was the first product that we have used since day one. We also use Ekahau in our tool kit.

Setup is very easy, very straightforward just download the new software and license and you are good to go.

It is worth mentioning that you need to delete the current version of software you are using before installing a newer version.

The MAJOR concern that I have with AirMagnet is the cost of the Gold Support renewal. It is very costly compared to Ekahau.

Before choosing this product, I did not evaluate other options; AirMagnet at that time was the only product available.

The product is very good and I highly recommend it, especially if you have to present the survey finding to clients.

This is an absolutely needed tool for the WLAN professional!!