Ralph

Hey,

yes i know the PDF-export features the details of the WAP’s used in the survey.
But it looks really basic, with the information about the SNR and other details of the WAP.

What i mean is, that it would be nice to have more details about the WAP’s. I cannot hand out the PDF to a customer because they want to have fancy looking documents with graphs and so so on.
I think there are more possibilities to get a more detailed PDF, like at which distance of the WAP which signal level will be reached, so the network can be designed using this PDF.

Any sort of additional information would be useful. I mean you are able to choose “Signal level”, “Noise level”, “Download/Upload speed”, “Wireless transmit rate” and so on in the survey, but it wont be exported in the pdf. It hasn’t to be especially the graphical results, but a few numbers and statistics would give the document a more professional look.

I hope you understand what i mean =)

Regards,
Ralph

Alright, thanks for your time.

Here is the story about how I solved the problem:
I went to the customers site and they literally had not finished the building yet. There were just some Cables hanging from the ceiling and they started to build up some dry-walls. Well the windows were installed aswell, but no kitchening and no toilets, not even the elevators were installed.

I had the floor plans of all 4 levels and they were pretty identical, just the ground-floor was a little bit different because of the entrance area.
Alright I thought, where do i start from? I installed my WAP (FritzBox FonWlan7170) in the center of the 4th level and enabled WPA2-Security because i think WPA2 encryption will be used in the real scenario, once the building is ready.

Next step was: I started up NetSpot and did a survey in the zone with the floorplan of the 3rd floor. I wanted to find out how strong the signal will be at a certain point of the map and when does the signal drop. When i found out that the signal will drop to 30% signal strength at a radius of 8meters, that was the information i needed.

So i started to locate my WAP with a distance of 8 meters to the outer wall and in the middle of the building(the building was like 60meters long and about 8 meters wide).Now i started the “real” survey. i went around and checked the signal in each corner until I went like 10 meters away from the WAP, then i stopped my zone survey and unplugged my WAP.

I relocated the WAP to where the “30% signal strength – border line” will overlap with the second WAP(which is 16meters away from the first WAP{8m radius + 8m radius}). Now i created a new “zone survey” in the same “zone” and walked a round in a 10 meter radius of the WAP and did my measurements.

Then i repeated the same procedure again until i reached the other end of the building. The “walking around” was quite exciting, because there were rooms with no light at all and places where holes were in the floor. so I had to be really careful when walking around. I ended up with 1 Zone for the 3rd floor and 3 zone surveys for that floor.

So how do I create a documentation about what I found out was my next thought. especially for someone who has no idea about WiFi or internet or whatsoever. I started to create a documentation in Word-format and put all the information about: “what WAP did I use(FritzBox); what wireless receiver did I use(Macbooks AirPort); what security settings; where are possible interferences; and so on” into that documentation. Then I used the PNG´s of that surveys to tell them where are the best locations for the WAP´s and marked the border where the signal will drop to a 30% signal strength.

All in all i would say, it is OK to create multiple “zone surveys” when you only have 1WAP. It is just more work to get the borders for roaming correct, because you are not able to set 1 WAP multiple times in the same zone survey. And when you create the documentation, you will have to spend more time an that aswell, because you will have to edit each picture of each zone-survey and add that edited picture to your documentation.

It would be really handy if NetSpot had an option where you can use the same WAP multiple times for 1 zone survey. Because thats what you do when you come to a site where the WiFi is being planned. You don’t come to a site with 15 WAP’s and start to locate them. Who has 15 WAP´s anyway?

In the end, I like the app very much because its just very simple to handle and NetSpot did the job just fine, but I thinks it lacks of a lot of features, which are essential for professional site surveying. Like Alex said, there are plans for some good features, which I think will improve the app quite a bit. I hope one of them will have that feature I miss =).
If someone is interested in my .netpsd feel free to send me a message.

Thank you so far and regards,
Ralph