Webinar Recording & Slides – 5 Effective Ways to Improve Wi-Fi

Last week, we hosted two webinars, called “5 Effective Ways to Improve Your Wi-Fi”.

A big thank you for the 500 participants, who remained on the line all the way to the end, although both times we ran 30 minutes overtime with the Q&A.  

SLIDES:
http://www.ekahau.com/misc/Webinar-Ekahau-5-Ways-to-Improve-WiFi-Feat-Trent.pdf

RECORDING (European webinar):
https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/645782590

Cheers,
Jussi Kiviniemi / Ekahau

Wi-Fi Capacity Part 2: Designing a High Capacity Wi-Fi Network

How To Design A Network For High Capacity?

When designing a network for high capacity, keeping a few basic things in mind will take you pretty far. Some of those are listed below. At the bottom of the article are a example images on creating a high capacity Wi-Fi network.

• You now will have two basic requirements: Signal coverage, and capacity. Both requirements need to be met.
• You may have additional requirements too, like minimum AP overlap, or minimum data rate
• Carefully calculate how many Wi-Fi client devices (laptops, smartphones, tablets, etc)  you have today, and how many you will have 2 years from now
• Estimate which applications are used on each device type. For example, smartphones that are used for Skype calls and Youtube HD videos cause much more – and different type of – traffic than laptops used for e-mails.
• Take the number of client devices and their types into consideration when figuring out the placement and capabilities of the access points
• Careful with the walls: Thick and thin walls, windows, and doors make a difference to the coverage. Very rarely is the coverage pattern of an AP circular in a real-world environment.
• Think 3D! When talking about high capacity, the signal (and intereference) bleed through floors plays an increasingly large role: Staggering the APs in different locations between floors is critical, as is floor-to-floor channel optimization.
• Go with 802.11n (minimum 2 spatial streams, utilize channel bonding on 5GHz)
• As a general rule, force all the devices you can to 5GHz. Leave 2.4GHz to legacy and specialty devices.
• Minimize the cell size of the access points so that enough calls can be served and enough overall data can be transmitted
• If done manually, pay extra attention to channel planning
• Reduce the Tx power on the access points to avoid interference (if dynamic Tx power adjustments are not used)
• After planning the network, perform walk-through site surveys on-site to see how well the real world matches with the plan
• Once the network has been taken to production use, monitor it from the client device perspective, using actual client devices. Tools like Mobile Survey Wi-Fi Android App are great for continuous monitoring from the client-device point-of-view.

Below are a few examples of how it looks like when planning a network for coverage and capacity using a software tool.

The software tool suggests AP locations and configurations after you tell it how much coverage and capacity is needed. It also accounts for walls, and different floors of a building.

—

Jussi Kiviniemi
Ekahau

Starting to create a network plan automatically. The tool allows you to insert coverage and capacity requirements. Once you hit "Create Plan", the tool will suggest AP placement & configurations.

Going into details: When planning for capacity, consider the applications run on the devices

End result: Dual-radio 802.11n access points placed and configured automatically on 3 floors. Showing signal strength coverage map. You can (and should) fine-tune the computer-generated plan.

The same end result looking from the capacity point-of-view: The number of devices for the entire building, and for this map shown in the bottom right corner. All is green so all is good. If there were different shades of red on the map, it would have indicated problems with VoIP capacity, too many associations for some APs, or an overall RF capacity overload.

Ekahau Webinar This Wednesday: Design and Deploy Better Wi-Fi Networks

We will show, hands-on, how to design, deploy (site survey), and troubleshoot Wi-Fi networks.

Coverage, performance, and capacity are all considered.

We will also showcase our new Wi-Fi monitoring and troubleshooting tool that runs on Android tablets and smartphones.

> Register Here

Webinar This Thursday: Easier Wi-Fi Troubleshooting and Monitoring

I’m hosting a webinar this coming Thursday about how to make life a little easier for those of us who have to troubleshoot, analyze and monitor Wi-Fi networks.

It’s no secret I’ll be demonstrating Ekahau Mobile Survey, our brand-new Android phone/tablet based Wi-Fi tool there.

If you have time, register now and join in on Thursday at 10am pacific, 1pm eastern, early evening in Europe

I’ll also record the webinar (given we get no tech difficulties with the webinar system….)

—
Jussi

Videos: Ekahau Mobile Survey – Better Wi-Fi with Android

How does Ekahau Mobile Survey, the yesterday-announced Wi-Fi analysis tool for Android phones and tablets work?

Please find  few links to short videos covering much of the  features. For some reason, WordPress did not work when I tried to embed these particular videos directly to the post (other videos would work). Sorry for the inconvenience of not being able to play the videos directly on this page…

Overview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP0_CCewwb0

Test tab: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8umz5Cj4O9A

Map: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7h1w2xdRr0

APs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sddIpx6Tc_s

Background Monitoring: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1s44qPgfjOs

Logging: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yx1cysOtl2I

Cheers,
Jussi

Ekahau Mobile Survey: Wi-Fi Analysis goes Android

Today Ekahau will release Ekahau Mobile Survey. It’s an Android based application for analyzing, troubleshooting, and monitoring any Wi-Fi network. Mobile Survey runs on modern, android-based phones, as well as tablets, such as the Samsung Galaxy S.

Mobile Survey runs on mobile phones as well as tablets, such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab

This is a completely new way of approaching Wi-Fi analysis: Before, you’ve had the analysis applications either on a laptop, a PDA-style device, or a dedicated piece of hardware.

Mobile Survey, however, allows you to start analyzing and troubleshooting immediately after discovering a problem – because it runs on your phone!

Also, Mobile Survey can be used to monitor your Wi-Fi network even when you’re not using the application. So just put your phone in your pocket, and Mobile Survey will make network tests every now and then – without interrupting you in any way. This allows you to walk about the facility, do your daily business, and use your phone normally.  Only when Mobile Survey detects a network error, will it notify you.

The background monitoring feature brings a true end user device point-of-view to network monitoring: Whereas access points and sensors monitor the Wi-Fi network from the ceiling, Mobile Survey monitors the network where the users actually are.

After all, the RF environment is quite different in the ceiling compared to the floor level.

Video: Ekahau Site Survey in 1:58 Minutes

What does Ekahau Site Survey actually do, in short?

A big thanks to Toni for the 3D animations.

Ekahau HeatMapper 64bit Released!

Ekahau HeatMapper, the free Wi-Fi coverage mapping tool for homes and small offices, finally works with 64bit operating systems. In its first 1,5 years of existence, HeatMapper became one of the essential Wi-Fi tools for anyone working with Wi-Fi.

We were actually a bit surprised by how well HeatMapper was received by the public: When the tool came out, we had to up our outgoing bandwidth and reconfigure out servers to handle the increased traffic. Today, the free tool has hundreds of thousands of users, and has received blazing reviews from the Wi-Fi authorities.

Download HeatMapper for free at www.ekahau.com/heatmapper , and check out HeatMapper’s big brother, Ekahau Site Survey at www.ekahau.com/ess .

A big thank you for all of you who have downloaded HeatMapper! We’ll release new stuff for HeatMapper in 2011 – stay tuned, and let us know what you would like to see.

Ekahau HeatMapper draws Wi-Fi coverage maps, locates access points, and shows AP information in real-time

Cheers,
The HeatMapper Team

Videos: Wi-Fi 802.11n Site Surveys and Network Planning

Just posted a couple of videos to YouTube, explaining how a couple of new features in the latest Ekahau Site Survey work:

• Automatic 3D Network Planning (available in Ekahau Site Survey 5.0)
  ESS automatically suggests Wi-Fi access point locations and channels based on your requirements, like voice over Wi-Fi, RTLS, or video 

• Hybrid Site Surveys (available in 4.6 and newer)
  ESS performs active and passive site surveys simultaneously = less on-site work 

Also, do remember there’s quite a few (older) UI videos at wifithatworks.com

Cheers,
Jussi Kiviniemi
Sr. Product Manager
Ekahau

Wi-Fi Site Surveys: Passive, Active, RTLS

We’ve discussed Wi-Fi site surveys in a couple of blog posts already (basics and when to perform site surveys). However, not all site surveys are equal. There’s three common types of on-site surveys that can be performed:

• Passive site surveys are performed to get an understanding of the RF characteristics on-site. By RF characteristics I mean Wi-Fi signal strengths, noise levels, SNR (signal-to-noise ratio), and the like.  The reason the site surveys are called “passive” is that your Wi-Fi network adapter is pretty much just listening to packets when performing passive site surveys. OK, the NIC might send some probes out, but that’s about it.
• Active Site Surveys provide more insight on the network connectivity and/or performance. Things like packet loss, packet delay, and access points you’ve associated with, can be measured during active site surveys. As the name suggests, with active surveys the Wi-Fi adapter is receiving AND sending packets to figure out what’s truly going on with the network.
• RTLS Site Surveys (aka RTLS calibration surveys) are performed to enable high-precision asset and people tracking using Wi-Fi (location engine and Wi-Fi tags required).  It’s hard to get good accuracy with Wi-Fi RTLS without surveying the site first. From the technical perspective, RTLS site survey is similar to a passive survey.

Two of the first mentioned surveys should pretty much always be performed when deploying, verifying or optimizing the network. RTLS surveys are necessary only when either considering or deploying RTLS.

Many Wi-Fi tools only support one kind of a survey (typically passive). Some provide more options, but only allow you to perform one type of a survey at a time. I typically try not to advertise Ekahau products too much on this blog, but: To save on-site time, Ekahau Site Survey supports making all three at once. Let’s see how long it takes for our competitors to catch up on this one…

Should we talk about RTLS or Wi-Fi design/management the next time? Any suggestions for blog topics?