Wireless Site Survey

[Ali Bahnam]

Dears,

I need to do a site survey so please can you advise what is the required cisco tools that I must use to do the site survey and to get the required AP that I have to put on my design.

Thanks                  

[Scott Fella]

First off, you need to define what AP you or your client is going to be purchasing and you need to use that AP if possible.  Then you need a software tool like AirMagne or Ekahau.

[Ali Bahnam]

Please can u support with thelink to download this software in addition to the configuration guide.

Thanks,

[Scott Fella]

AirMagnet and Ekahau are vendors that make a tool to perform a site survey... its not free.  You can just Google the names and get to their site.

[Leo Laohoo]

I agree with Scott here.  AirMagnet (owned by Fluke) and Ekihau are two premier wireless site survey applications in the market and they are NOT free.

If you are not sure on how to operate these applications, I'd recommend you hire a consultant to do it for you and OBSERVE how it's done. 

[blakekrone]

Agree with Leo, if you have never done a site survey before hire that part out and observe once. While it may seem simple it isn't.

A bunch of us seasoned wireless engineers discussed various software tools on a podcast not too long ago:

http://nostringsattachedshow.com/2012/01/04/e01-rf-whisperer/

[fbarboza]

Here is a very usful link from Cisco website where it has the FAQ for a wireless site survey.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk722/tk809/technologies_q_and_a_item09186a00805e9a96.shtml

Tools you could use for a site survey are Cisco spectrum expert and also Air magnet, but they are not free. 

Basically when working with wireless setup we need to do a site survey to determine 
the amount of access points you need to get to cover the required area, where to locate 
each AP and power levels to use so that the overlapping of each cell is not more than 15%
to avoid roaming issue for the wireless clients, the required data rate needed per client
since wireless is half duplex and a shared medium and finally when working on the 2.4GHZ 
distribute the 3 non overlapping channels (1-6-11)so that the access points do not create
interference between them. 

[Ali Bahnam]

Thank you all for your support, I will do the survey and I keep you update.