AirMagnet Survey Reviews

The interactive mapping tool: If you have a map, it'll scale the map to be accurate. You literally just click where you are as you are walking. It's very simple. Then, from that mapping, you can run reports and get a lot of information.

Bandwidth Monitoring: They have an option to set up iPerf on a server and it will check bandwidth as you do your survey to make sure your users have a quality WiFi experience.

Reports: The reports are amazing and very easy to run. At first you may need some assistance understanding what to do with the data but that’s just the technical part you will learn.

Android Mobile APP: They have a version of this that can run on Android. For quick surveys that you can later import into Air Magnet this can be really handy for your field technicians to share or use for troubleshooting.

We survey hospitals, schools and any other business that would like a survey. We sell our service and it creates another avenue for revenue.

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

We have used it for about 9 months.

We use to have issues with crashing. If you do just get it updated. It’s worth it! It’s much better!

No issues. I’ve heard people say they’d like to do multiple floors on one survey but I like having the smaller surveys to work with anyway.

Tech support does a pretty good job. I’d give them a 8 or 9 out of ten.

We didn't have a previous solution.

Setup is a little complex, not because of any issues but because of the nature of the beast. You have to know a lot of different things to make it work properly, but that might just be because the software is complex. Not in a bad way; there's just a lot of things you have to know. A few more wizards for setup would help us not forget things. It’d be nice to have a wizard that asked if you are doing certain channels or both bands, etc.

The only reason we use this software is because the people that hire us to do the surveys require the software. We then found other ways to create revenue with it since it is very expensive.

My biggest complaint is their training shouldn't be so expensive. I personally think they should have online videos of free training and if you want to have a need for more complex training then pay for a class. Maybe a “how to understand reports” class would be nice! If they would give us some training, it wouldn't feel so complicated. Their training is so expensive, it's hard to be good at it without spending a lot more money and when you already spent $4000 on the software it’s not a good feeling to open the software and not know what to do next.

Get training or ask others since training is so expensive. Try YouTube videos and just ask others to get some details. If it’s too complex after watching YouTube then you may ask for training with your purchase or something like that. I wish we did!

We use the AirMagnet Survey tool to predetermine where we need to place wireless access points in our buildings and within construction areas.

It's been about three months since we've used it, and we just purchased an OptiView XG tablet from NetScout that has that installed on it. It's very pricey, but my boss gave me the money to buy one, so I was happy about that. It cost us about $36,000, but we were able to afford it, so life is good. But we have not used that tablet yet. We're still using an older version on our laptops, so we haven't made the switch internally. We're hoping to do that in the new year.

The product takes away the guessing. It gives us hard evidence on how to engineer and determine where we need to place wireless access coverage or points for optimal coverage. We use the tool to help us engineer our wireless network.

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

We've been using it for about five years.

Occasionally, it crashes or locks up. Every now and then, it just stops working and we reboot the system and then go again. It hasn't happened enough that we've opened a ticket on it.

We have not used technical support. We just reboot our system and move on. I'd be more concerned if it happened frequently.

We have never used a different solution.

It was straightforward and easy. The training piece is an ongoing issue, in that the software does have a lot of functions. Getting comfortable with all those functions has been time consuming. We only uswe the software maybe four or five times a year, so we just chalk it up to not using the software enough.

We evaluated Ekahau.

I would definitely say that as far as implementing, get a demo, run it, and make sure it will work in your environment. Then, if you're comparing it with another product, do your homework and run your tests. But, we found for our needs, the AirMagnet Survey tool was the best product.

• Planning module - I use it for wireless network deployment at the construction stage.
• Survey module - wireless coverage map and spectrum date integration is useful for checking the wireless coverage and performance.

Before using this product we performed a wireless project design with a rough understanding of how the wireless network should look like. Very often the final quantity of APs was not what was planned on paper. With AirMagnet Survey we can make a floor plan import. Now in v9.1 we have the possibility to even use the AutoCAD floor plan where the walls, doors, and window materials are designed by an engineer, and the survey can apply this characteristic by itself which decreases our time preparing the floor plans.

AirMagnet Survey then automatically calculates the required number of access points, which is quite close to the final quantity. After deploying the access points we make a coverage map report for the customer including data about interference, physical data rates, noise level, signal noise ratio coverage, user capacity, and throughput.

It helps us to fully support 802.11 a/b/n/g/ac standards.

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.

We have been using AirMagnet Survey about five years, since it was from Fluke Networks and now it is a Netscout brand.

Yes, normally it happens with products from different vendors. We have had a problem with the reporting module, as it can't put the full size picture of a floor plan in the report. After we initiated several support cases these problems were solved with the new release.

A year ago there was a problem with huge floor plan pictures which was hanging up the software during reporting. It was solved with the release update.

Technical support is one of the important things that customers appreciate, and Netscout have some very qualified engineers who help very rapidly with every question.

Yes we used the Ekahau Site Survey, which is also a good quality product, but they are still growing and have lots of bugs. These guys try to do their best and it looks like they are good professionals on their job. We chose the AirMagnet Survey because it was recommended by Cisco, also we like the functionality of it and of course the main reason was the Russian localization of reports which is essential in our country.

AirMagnet is a very stable and time-tested product, as proved by the fact that the world's leading IT companies use AirMagnet Survey and if we look at the release notes we can see a lot of new features instead of bug fixes as in the Ekahau Site Survey.

Installation is very simple, you just need to register the software key on the AirMagnet web account, then download and install the software on your PC, every time clicking the "Next" button.

The price is not so high compared with other products of similar quality. My recommendation for customers is to periodically renew the support contract, because some software releases which contain new interesting features can be downloaded only if you maintain an active support contract. As this product now belongs to Netscout I'm sure they will develop it to be much more interesting and useful.

Yes, before purchasing we requested evaluation software of each AirMagnet product: AirMagnet Survey Pro, AirMagnet WiFi Analyzer, AirMagnet Spectrum XT.

Also we compared it with Ekahau Site Survey as it is the only quality product with the same functionality, but our purchasing decision was AirMagnet Survey.

My advice, before purchasing request an evaluation license to test it and then choose the product which is stable, useful, and very well known in the IT industry.

• Ability to delete and redo sections in the middle of a survey.
• Ability to click and walk a straight route to the end without multiple clicks.
• AM Survey can be programmed to automatically collect information at specified intervals, so rather than having to walk, stop, click, walk, stop, click; you walk a steady speed in a straight line and click once at the end of the line, and Survey evenly spaces information for that entire path. Now say you finished half of a survey area and you accidentally click across the building, I can take that path of information out, go back to the start of that one line or row and do it again. Some products would force you to resurvey the entire area.

It allows me to easily verify WiFi signal strength and faults associated with the constant changing warehouse environments.

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.

Nine years

No problems.

No problems.

No problems.

Excellent.

Excellent.

Yes, NetStumbler, Ekahau, and hand drawn survey with a laptop.

Setup is straightforward. Overall setup can be straightforward or complex depending on the users knowledge of WiFi. Under educated users can setup, use, and get good information, but setup can get very complex for advanced engineers to troubleshoot advanced issues.

In-house.

I think a basic version with no access to advanced setting at a low cost would generate more interest from small companies.

Know how to create or obtain scaled diagrams.

The most valuable feature is the predictive survey. The antennas' RF patterns are reflected correctly on the drawing when preparing predictive heat maps.

The predictive survey creates heat maps which are accurate and save a lot of time. The results are accurate enough to rely on when considering quantities and locations of wireless access points.

This is very helpful, especially when you need to know the required number of access points to price a project. You can rely on the results and the location of access points without an actual survey.

The actual site survey will be useful for fine-tuning. It will be shorter because you will do the survey when you already know the location of access points. You will not have to start from scratch.

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.

We have used this solution for three years.

The software crashes frequently which requires you to restart your PC.

AirMagnet has no issues with scalability.

Customer service is good.

Technical support is good and fast. I have contacted technical support couple of times and they know what they are doing.

We used Ekahau, as per a client request. I started using AirMagnet afterwards.

It is easy to setup the software and to start projects.

In-house

For technical support, you need an annual license, but it is not worth it.

I evaluated Ekahau.

If you are going to do predictive surveys, then doing tests and passive site surveys to check wall attenuation is a must. You cannot depend on the default values of concrete and bricks.

• Planning module: I use it for wireless network deployment during construction stages.
• Survey module: Provides a wireless coverage map and spectrum data integration. This is useful for checking wireless coverage and performance.

Before using this product, we did wireless project designs using a rough estimate of how the wireless networks will appear. Very often, the final quantity was not the same as it was planned on paper.

With AirMagnet Survey, we can make a floor plan import. We can use AutoCAD floor plans which include the walls, doors, windows, and materials designed by engineers. The survey can apply these characteristics by itself, which decreases the time necessary to prepare floor plans.

The solution automatically calculates the required number of access points, which is very close to the final quantity actually needed.

After deploying the access points, we make a coverage map report for customers. The report includes the data about interference, physical data rates, noise level, signal noise ratio coverage, user capacity, and throughput.

The tool helps us to fully support 802.11 a/b/n/g/ac standards.

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.

We have used this solution for about five years.

No, it is very simply deploying.

Yes, normally it happens with any product of different vendors. We have had a problem with reporting module, it can't put the full size picture of floor plan in report. After we initiated several support cases these problems was solved with new release.

A year ago, there was a problem with huge floor plan pictures which were causing the software to hang during reporting. It was solved with the release update.

Special for existing customers they have an AirMagnet Account, where you can see all yours registered products and any documents for it.
Also if there is a new release, you can download it from there. As for me there is all nesessary and usefull information.

Technical support it is one of important things that customers appreciate. NETSCOUT has very qualified engineers who help very fast with every question.

We used Ekahau Site Survey. It is also a good quality product, but they are still growing and have a lot of bugs. These guys try to do their best and it looks like they are professional.

We chose AirMagnet Survey because it was recommended by Cisco. We like the functionality of it. Of course, the main reason was the localization of reports into Russian, which we need in our country.

AirMagnet is a very stable and time-tested product. It proves that the world's leading IT companies use AirMagnet Survey. When we look at the release notes, we can see a lot of new features instead of bug fixes, as is the case with Ekahau Site Survey.

Installation is very simple. You just need to register the software key on an AirMagnet web account, then download and install the software on your PC. This is all done by just clicking the "Next" button.

The price is not so high compared with other products with the same quality level. My recommendation is for customers to periodically renew your support contract. Some software releases contain new and interesting features that you can only download if you have an active support contract.

Because this product now belongs to NETSCOUT, I'm sure they will develop more interesting and useful features.

Before purchasing this solution, we evaluated the software of each AirMagnet product: AirMagnet Survey PRO, AirMagnet WiFi Analyzer, and AirMagnet Spectrum XT.

We compared it with Ekahau Site Survey, as it is only quality product with the same functionality. However, our purchasing decision was AirMagnet Survey.

Before purchasing the solution, request an evaluation license to test it. Think carefully and then chose a product which is stable, useful, and very famous in the IT industry.

I was able to conduct pre-implementation surveys for floors using the production access points to see where potential dead spots were going to be. No matter how accurate the results and my reporting, there were still quite a few challenges with translating this to building contractors and electricians that did not see the benefit of accurate access point placement.

The software itself is pretty basic actually. There is a lot of detailed information that is provided; however, I would state the most valuable information would be the SNR and RSSI information received to optimize access point placement.

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.

The product would frequently crash and this was on different laptop platforms. It was even advised due to frequent crashing that surveys should last between 5 and 10 minutes and that multiple surveys should be merged together to form a complete picture of a survey area. It would be great if there was a switchable “feature” to perform this action for me, so I wouldn’t have to remember to stop a survey before the program crashed.

The program did seem to work well with multiple floors as well as multiple surveys within a particular floor. The most complex survey was a HQ building that was comprised of 54 floors and I had all of them added to one survey file (for vertical stacking and wireless “bleeding”).

Other than having technical support change out the adapter MAC address on the license for me, I did not have much experience with technical support. There was one ticket initially that only confirmed what the software told me upon startup that the USB endpoint protection software that my company used would have to be removed to allow the program to identify the adapter correctly and start.

AirMagnet Survey PRO was the first survey solution that I used.

Application setup was straightforward. I ran into a lot of discrepancies with our corporate laptop image, so I had to use a bare-bones machine with no other software on it.

I believe pricing is a little high and the company, Fluke, at the time was not willing to work with our organization on a discount, which was disconcerting. We ended up purchasing only 25% of the licenses we originally wanted and sharing the Proxim USB adapters between engineers. I have already mentioned my response issues with the licensing. Note: Both of these issues might have changed since the Netscout acquisition.

Before choosing this product, no other products were evaluated.

Make sure you are not using any custom software on the platform you are installing this onto. Disable all security, whether it be endpoint protection or other. Be patient with the software and find an “order of operations” combination that works for startup and surveying.

I am a consultant and I work with this product at a high level. It is used for spectrum analysis and wireless surveying.

The most valuable features are the survey, spectrum analysis, and reporting. 

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.

I have been using AirMagnet Survey for ten years.

Overall, the stability is not too bad.

Technical support is a little bit slow to respond. I would say that they are about average.

This product is very expensive.

Our license is coming up for renewal and we're planning to have a close look at Ekahau. We will be comparing the two and possibly look to change.

My advice for anybody who is considering AirMagnet is to have a look at Ekahau Survey, as well. This is something that we plan on doing before our next renewal.

I would rate this solution a six out of ten.