We performed a comparison between AirMagnet Survey and LinkRunner based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Network Troubleshooting solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The most valuable features are the survey, spectrum analysis, and reporting."
"The benefit is with the ease of use of the software, I am able to show the customer, "Here is what your wireless coverage looks like." It is set up in a fashion that non-technical people can understand it."
"We use the solution for Wi-Fi and networks."
"Customer service is great."
"It is reliable and easy to use (user-friendly). The heat mapping, passive network surveying, and doing the heat mapping of a building's wireless network allows me to see what level of coverage an area has."
"Clear and easy to use maps."
"Using the products to ensure the safety of our equipment that we have a lot invested in."
"The predictive survey is the most valuable feature. I use it quite often."
"AutoTest is very helpful. It's very streamlined and it's very easy to set up and very easy to identify what we want to achieve. It's probably the feature we use the most. It provides us with LLTD, which is very useful."
"The most valuable feature is the end-to-end testing with the "dart," as they call it, where you can test for faults in the cable or if they've been terminated properly."
"Performance testing is the most valuable feature. It gives a brief summary of the information we're looking at, such as latency, jitter, and the available throughput."
"The solution's ability to simplify network validation and configuration of copper and fiber Ethernet networks is very useful to me. Otherwise, I’m guessing. Having a tool that I can trust doesn't solve all problems, but for the problems it solves, I can trust that it has told me “yes” or “no.” I would rate it highly for that."
"I've found the VLAN test feature to be most valuable. That's because not many devices do VLAN tests. Normally, I have to send a center technician to check a line and see if it's alive. If it's working, then I have to send a network technician out to log into a switch and see which port it's on and on which VLAN that port is. That's two persons and two separate visits. This device does all of this in a matter of seconds, and that has saved me a lot of time, troubleshooting, and resources."
"In terms of network validation, and copper and fiber Ethernet configuration, I can't imagine life without LinkRunner devices. The minute I got the 10G, everybody was fighting over it. They had never used such a device before and it was just breathtaking for them to very quickly see the validation you can gain from these devices."
"I like that LinkRunner is an all-in-one device with a touchscreen interface. You don't have to pair it with a phone or anything else to get the full functionality. The built-in tests are one of the most significant advantages. It will pull an IP, ping the gateway, ping out to the intra, and report everything on the screen. It will tell you when a test completes or fails and why."
"I like the fact that I can tell the equipment to stop at a certain point during the test of a cable, to see whether or not there is basic connectivity. I can stop it before it starts pinging the outside world, such as Google or, perhaps, our core network switch. Those basic results—do I have a basic connection and power—finish up fast and I can move on."
"I would say some of our newer techs that are going out to job sites can be a little bit intimidated by the interface."
"But it's definitely a more expensive solution than other ones."
"The user interface needs a lot of improvement. The auto-placement of access points is not accurate."
"The throughput should be more advanced in the future. They need to add more versions of WiFi than just one."
"Less time consumed doing the real surveys."
"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."
"The surveying features are in need of improvement, along with general usability."
"When you conduct an active survey and then want to use it for design work, it's actually not very useful."
"One of the things I'd like to see in future versions of LinkRunner is a wireless dongle embedded into the product so that I don't need to have a separate wireless dongle. It should be built into that."
"It is very stable. That being said, there is one feature that is not quite as stable as the rest of the product. You can leave it plugged into a location where you're doing some work and connect to it remotely by a program called VNC... sometimes that function breaks down, if you've been running for a couple of days... if you're remotely controlling it, you're probably not right next to it. That can be modestly annoying."
"A feature that I would like to see is the ability to send a tone down the cable. That would be great. I have to use a separate tool for that. If I'm trying to troubleshoot a cable that is not plugged into a network switch, I need the ability to tone."
"It doesn't turn off automatically, but the toning function goes to sleep. It seems to stop toning after five or six minutes if you don't find the cable. It could be up to ten minutes, but if you don't find the cable that you're trying to tone quick enough, you'll have to go back and restart the tone. So, it doesn't turn itself off, but while toning, it turns itself off."
"It's a bit bulky. It would be nicer if it were a little bit smaller and packed with all its features. I would also like it if the screen were a bit bigger."
"One area where LinkRunner could be improved is the battery life. Depending on which tests are run, it gets a decent six to eight hours. However, sometimes we need to do back-to-back shifts to meet a deadline, and we need access to an outlet to keep it plugged in and charging. It takes about an hour or two to charge."
"I wish they had software that could create continuous streams of traffic. I'm not sure if that's possible with LinkRunner, but it would be very helpful in some of the test case scenarios that clients are looking for, in regards to quality of service"
"It is a great tool, but in the long-term, they can make its processor more powerful to do more functions. They can upgrade the hardware to make it run faster and more efficiently from the process point of view. That'll be beneficial because the technology is evolving and the network traffic is going higher and higher. We have to leverage better spec products to handle the traffic load."
AirMagnet Survey is ranked 8th in Network Troubleshooting with 38 reviews while LinkRunner is ranked 1st in Network Troubleshooting with 20 reviews. AirMagnet Survey is rated 8.2, while LinkRunner is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of AirMagnet Survey writes "It fixes so many problems quickly that we don't regret spending more on high-end tools than most companies". On the other hand, the top reviewer of LinkRunner writes "Single Auto-Test button gives me all the information I need on most jobs". AirMagnet Survey is most compared with Ekahau Site Survey, Aruba Wireless, AirCheck G3, iBwave Wi-Fi and Ubiquiti WLAN, whereas LinkRunner is most compared with NetAlly EtherScope nXG, LinkSprinter, AirCheck G3, OneTouch AT Network Assistant and IxChariot. See our AirMagnet Survey vs. LinkRunner report.
See our list of best Network Troubleshooting vendors.
We monitor all Network Troubleshooting reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.