The goal of a WiFi site survey is to optimize WiFi coverage by helping you find the best place possible for your WiFi router.
WiFi issues are one of the most common problems Mac users experience, and their computers are seldom to blame. The real culprit is almost always poor WiFi coverage caused by the fact that most people place their router near the closest unused electrical outlet, sometimes hiding it away from view behind a piece of furniture.
Unless the router is so powerful that it can provide sufficient coverage despite poor placement (something not many home routers can do), its less-than-optimal place of installation results in the so-called dead zones, which are areas of signal weakness that can cause slowdowns and connection drops.
Three main types of WiFi site surveys exist:
Combined, the three main types of WiFi site surveys can tell you everything from signal strength, signal-to-noise ratios, and interference to throughput, round-trip time, and packet loss, among other useful information.
Best of all, performing them isn’t nearly as difficult as it may seem at first. You just need to choose the right WiFi site survey tool for Mac and let it do the hard work for you.
As a Mac user, you can choose from a multitude of WiFi site survey software tools with support for active, passive, and predictive surveys, but you should know that the differences between them can be quite pronounced.
Here are some things you should look for when selecting the best WiFi site survey software for Mac:
One WiFi site survey tool for Mac computers that meets all the above-described criteria is NetSpot. Besides being the best tool currently available, NetSpot was actually the first WiFi site survey tool to release on Mac. The latest version is also available on:
NetSpot offers compatibility with all Macs running Mac OS X 10.10+, support for all 802.11 networks, remarkable ease of use thanks to its polished user interface, excellent accuracy, and plenty of great features to meet the needs of home users and professionals alike.
Unlike many other WiFi site survey software solutions for Mac, NetSpot receives updates on a regular basis, so its users can enjoy a bug-free user experience and access to new features, such as the upcoming support for predictive site surveys.
The current version of NetSpot has two main modes of operation (called Discover and Survey), allowing you to perform both active and passive WiFi site surveys. A soon-to-be-released version of NetSpot will introduce support for predictive surveys, making this WiFi site survey app the most complete WiFi analysis solution for Mac.
When you use NetSpot in Discover mode, you can collect every detail about surrounding WiFi networks and presents the gathered information, including channel info, transmit rate, vendor, security type, band, etc., as an interactive table.
By switching to Survey mode, you transform NetSpot into a powerful active WiFi site survey tool capable of creating interactive heatmap visualizations with detailed information on all surveyed wireless networks.
Learning how to perform a WiFi site survey with the Mac version of NetSpot couldn’t be easier:
NetSpot can turn the gathered data into a number of useful WiFi heatmap visualizations, showing everything from the signal level to frequency band coverage to wireless transmit rate.
Once you’re done analyzing the results of your WiFi site survey, you can click the Export button in the top-right corner and export your survey in several different ways. For example, you can export only the current visualization, save your heatmap as an image file, or export all raw data as a CSV file.
As you can see, NetSpot is a remarkably capable and easy-to-use WiFi site survey tool for Mac, which explains why it keeps receiving so many raving reviews from professional reviewers and real users alike.
If you’re currently experiencing issues with your WiFi coverage or performance, don’t hesitate and download its free version right now. In no time and without any expert skills, you’ll be able to solve your WiFi issues and provide your Mac and other devices with the fest and reliable access to the internet they need to perform flawlessly.