AirMagnet Survey Room for Improvement

David Olofson - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager at DD&P Services LLC

It would be nice to have some more training resources for younger techs. We can use them if we need some assistance, but that usually requires one of us who knows what we're doing to calibrate the programs properly.

There's one thing our nXG handhelds do that AirMagnet doesn't do out of the box. The nXG devices can analyze the wired and wireless networks simultaneously and map the networks out. We find it handy. However, if I have that plugged into our older OptiView XG tablets or our laptops, I have no way to analyze both the WiFi and the wired network at the same time and build a single picture with all that data. 

So far, that's something only our nXG handhelds can do. It would be nice if there were a way to integrate all the network discovery, troubleshooting, and mapping of the WiFi and the wired at the same time. There are almost no products that do that currently. If they managed to do that, they'd probably open up their market pretty quickly.

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Donna Obeid - PeerSpot reviewer
General Manager and Co-founder at ForeLogix

We would like to get more details and extended capabilities for the solution. The clients want a list of rogue SSIDs, heat maps, etc.

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ID
Technical Support Engineer at A&O IT Group Limited

When you conduct an active survey and then want to use it for design work, it's actually not very useful. When you color the IP within the software and move it around, the person doesn't change. It's just a screenshot of the pattern it made when you did the survey, except you can put a point more in the way you'd expect the pattern to change. It doesn't get a true reflection of how the signals would truly propagate, instead only shows a screenshot of the pattern made during the survey.

Therefore, there is an area of improvement in the functionality of AirMagnet Survey when conducting an active survey and then using the results for design work.

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Buyer's Guide
AirMagnet Survey vs. Ekahau Site Survey
March 2024
Find out what your peers are saying about AirMagnet Survey vs. Ekahau Site Survey and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
CC
IBS Engineer at Nera Philippines Inc.

AirMagnet Survey doesn't cover certain devices in the system. 

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it_user599010 - PeerSpot reviewer
National Networking And Wireless Service Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

They need to get it up to speed with surveying and using the product on a tablet-based platform. Sometimes you don't have a stylus with you and you don't have the right-click functionalities in certain areas, like with the merge.

If you have a mouse, as was the case in previous years, I always used it on a laptop. It was right-click, data merge up, and SVD files.

I've been using the SurfacePro 4 for the last couple of months with AirMagnet. It just has the right-click functionality. It does not respond well in AirMagnet with the stylus. There are certain things you can do, but there are other things you can't do. It's very finicky as far as picking up right-clicks.

Some more functionality with tablets would be good. Just to make sure that it runs smoothly and you can do everything on the tablet that you could do on the laptop.

With previous versions, there was a way to exclude erroneous data. Anything over a certain decibel rating would not be included in the final merge of the data, which was pretty neat. That got taken out in Version 9.1.

The only thing that I've seen people struggle with is reading the floor plan as they're walking. I was discussing this with my co-worker.

It would be great if there were a way to have the floor plan actually flip with you as you're walking. That would require having some kind of GPS integrated indoors, which I don't even know if it's possible to have an indoor GPS survey. It would be sort of like Pokemon. You just walk around, and whatever is inside the tablet will just walk around with you.

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TS
Customer Systems Analyst (Senior Design) at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

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:


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it_user602424 - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager, Enterprise Infrastructure And Operations at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees

The product is working much better than it had been. We can get it down to a tablet now, which was something that I was asking for. Now, we can run it on a Microsoft Surface. I don't use it now quite as heavily as I had been.

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it_user561837 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Network Engineer at a comms service provider with 501-1,000 employees

If you have an older version of Air Magnet get caught up. It use to crash a lot. Version 9.1 is great. It’ll run all day with no issues (we always restart at lunch time). The only main improvement point I can make is offer free training

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it_user599019 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Network Engineer at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees

It's been working for us, so I'm good. It does everything we ask it to do.

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it_user583098 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior E Learning Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

AirMagnet Survey is very useful for designing and deploying wireless 802.11n/a/b/g/ac projects, in any company from small offices to large campus buildings.

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DS
Senior Manager of Network at a legal firm with 51-200 employees

If anything, the rendering speed when doing or looking at large surveys could be faster, but I understand that sheer volume of information is the issue. So with a faster Laptop processor, more memory will help that. I use AirMagnet for very large high density warehouse installs and maintenance. One million plus square feet with multiple floors and/or open mezzanines. While you can do these in multiple sections where rendering isn't an issue, sometimes you want to see the big picture all in one place. It's these large, high density areas that can be slow at rendering information. A high-end laptop with lots of memory improved this greatly. I don't believe this is a big problem for most organizations, but my environments were taking 10+ minutes to render. After upgrading to a new laptop with 16G of memory, rendering was down to one to two minutes.

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MK
Network Engineer with 501-1,000 employees

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.

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it_user600762 - PeerSpot reviewer
Product Manager at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees

AirMagnet Survey very useful for designing and deploying wireless 802.11n/a/b/g/ac projects, in any companies from small offices to large campus buildings.

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it_user528888 - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant - Secure Mobility with 501-1,000 employees

Even though I was using an approved USB wireless adapter (Proxim Orinoco), I had many problems with getting the software to talk to the adapter and successfully start capturing data.

The “support” for OS X through Bootcamp or some other virtualization software is almost false advertising. I understand why the product does not work with OS X natively, but stating that it does work by using virtualization software and installing Windows should probably be avoided.

The licensing model is very strict and based on the hardware MAC address of the capture adapter (which is why I purchased the Proxim USB). While I understand the need for software security, in order to change the MAC address to a different adapter, a service ticket needed to be entered with Fluke Networks to have a support engineer make the necessary changes for me. On two out of three occasions where this happened with my organization, the response time was unacceptable and caused a significant loss of productivity. I do not know how this model now works with Netscout, however.

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DC
Account Manager / Senior Network Engineer at Stowe Australia Pty Ltd

The surveying features are in need of improvement, along with general usability. For example, they should import functions from other products that make things easier from a planner's point of view.

The antenna options should be enhanced.

It takes a little while to render the coverage maps.

The price could be lower.

The updates are few and far between, so they should release them more regularly.

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it_user621039 - PeerSpot reviewer
Works at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

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.

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it_user519708 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Admin at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees

I'd really like to see integration with the cloud, being able to have a central repository for data. If I have multiple engineers working on a project simultaneously, it might be nice to have all of that automatically backed up into one comprehensive centrally managed project file online.

I would definitely like to see more ability to generate custom reports. The reports in there are great but don't always have the flexibility to allow me to bring in my own template and expedite our report writing process even further.

I'd also like to see if there’s a way to incorporate multiple adapters or even more types of wireless; maybe not just 802.11 but maybe an LTE survey or Bluetooth low-energy survey, multiple different wireless platforms. If it was in fact able to support a lot of other Wi-Fi services, that would be a great feature.

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WS
Network Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

If you're using AirMagnet, it's a special use case. As long as they really walk you through it you should be fine. However, you do need some direction and training. If you don't have very much practice with it, it is difficult to troubleshoot.

It'd be nice if it was cheaper, however, you get value for your money.  

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it_user528882 - PeerSpot reviewer
PC Specialist at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees

When pausing during the middle of a survey, I often have issues when restarting because the survey tool can’t determine exactly where I am in the building when I click on the map. Also, when I get done completing a large survey, it often struggles to try and save all of the information.

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it_user605043 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Network Engineer - Network Information Systems at a tech services company

Last year, we had a project where the client was using Cisco 1700 series AP and they asked for a heat map. We have to select the exact model in the list provided in AirMagnet and, at that time, Cisco AP 1700 series was not present in the list provided. We have to add the device manually by adding its path and details. If the available list of APs is updated, it will be very good.

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it_user598989 - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Manager at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees

Better integration of the Spectrum XT. Instead of just having the basic information of your spectrum analysis alongside Pro, I'd like to see the full report, and actually be able to highlight over where I walked and what I saw at that point in the walk. I'd like to be able to arrow over a certain area and say, "okay, this is what was going on in that area as far as Spectrum XT."

Also, another good thing would be to have a notes page that as you're doing your survey, you can take notes and say, "in this area I noticed that there was glass features", or to be able to notate in certain areas as you walk around.

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it_user621033 - PeerSpot reviewer
Office Manager

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.

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it_user539502 - PeerSpot reviewer
Wireless Consultant at a tech company with 501-1,000 employees

Compatibility with other adapters and drivers for Windows 10, and the licensing methods need improvement.

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FP
Gerente Soporte Técnico at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

Less time consumed doing the real surveys.

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it_user622740 - PeerSpot reviewer
National Services Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

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

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it_user561648 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at a tech company with 51-200 employees

I would just like to see integration of more wireless cards to have a broader group of cards you could use, instead of just a couple of specific ones.

I would like some more documentation, or training materials. I know I don't use the software to it's full capability. A lot of it's just because I don't know it's full capability. It's probably out there and I just haven't found it, or looked for it hard enough, either.

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it_user599034 - PeerSpot reviewer
CCIE Engineer at a tech services company

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.

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it_user599016 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer Wlan at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

I would like it to be able to automatically calculate the best way to place the access points; more like hybrid manual planning. I'm not sure if the product has that already, but we are not using it, at least.

Other products in this area do more automatic planning. You just give it the wall measurements and the area, and then it plans how many access points you need and where to place them. So, instead of going to the site, you fill in, per wall, the value of the loss. The program will calculate automatically the best place for the access point.

Then, you can check that with the Site Survey, whether it's a good measurement or not.

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PK
Department Manager at a computer software company with 1-10 employees

The throughput should be more advanced in the future. They need to add more versions of WiFi than just one.

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it_user621834 - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineer/Project Coordinator at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

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.

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it_user591867 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Network Engineer at a university with 501-1,000 employees

I would like to see a clearer representation of different power readings/levels when the survey tool renders heat maps.

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it_user545730 - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Engineer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

The features I would like to see is better capability of importing floor plans into the design. With other software that I've used, I'm able to take a CAD drawing or even a PDF and just upload it right away without converting the file. I think it converts the file for me. Especially with a CAD drawing, if the measurements are already in there, it accepts them and, if you want it to, it can also go ahead and create walls and windows based on the drawing, how it was drawn and how it was designed. That would be a nice feature.

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it_user531645 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer / Project Manager at a comms service provider with 501-1,000 employees
  • Interface layout - I think for a better user experience, the software GUI layout could be more elaborate, just for simplicity.
  • PDF file support - the current software version doesn’t support PDF files, and PDF is a very common format to ignore it.
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TG
Information Technology Specialist at a government with 51-200 employees

Printouts are JPEG printouts. The AirMagnet software is proprietary. I can't send my customers a file, because it is AirMagnet file, even for building projects. I can only send JPEGs or screenshots of heat maps.

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it_user884223 - PeerSpot reviewer
C.E.O at Metronet

The pricing needs improvement.

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it_user528270 - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineer Radio Networks at a comms service provider with 501-1,000 employees

It would be great to have the possibility to use multiple floors on the same project (and not create a project for each map).

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SS
Network Infrastructure Team Leader at PT Nusantara Compnet Integrator

There is a feature "no auto-save" when the Proxim USB is disattached accidentally during survey. Newer adapters (adpter that support 802.11ac) not support noise Reading (I'am using Proxim 9100 USB Adapter).

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Buyer's Guide
AirMagnet Survey vs. iBwave Wi-Fi
March 2024
Find out what your peers are saying about AirMagnet Survey vs. iBwave Wi-Fi and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.