AirMagnet Survey Reviews

• The planner
• Latest data on AP and antenna propagation
• More accurate representation of attenuation than Cisco Prime

AirMagnet is one of two survey software tools that are recognized by the industry. We often are requested to use AirMagnet for surveys.

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

I have been using AirMagnet for four to five years.

Often, AirMagnet will crash and you will have to reboot your laptop or tablet to start it again. Data will be lost if you haven’t saved it.

Large sites are often an issue. It requires a lot of CPU and RAM.

Technical support is very good. We have Gold support.

We didn’t have any previous solutions.

Setup was very easy; a straightforward installation and almost fully automated.

Make sure you don’t go over one year without licensing. Otherwise, you will have to buy the full product. It’s a lot cheaper to keep it licensed.

We looked at Ekahau. We found it user friendly but it feels too simple. Heat maps aren’t granular. It’s great for the customer though, from non-technical point of view.

Definitely do the training and study CWNA or CCNP Wireless.

The support for multi-floor surveys.

It allows us to prepare more real designs. Later, we validate them with actual surveys.

Less time consumed doing the real surveys.

Since 2012.

The main issue was when you define obstacles for the wi-fi signal, you cannot define the height of them. For example, if you have a brick wall of 1.7 meters (6 ft.) high and on top of it a 60 cm. (2 ft.) window, you are only able to define a 2.20 meters brick wall. For example, this setup is very common in schools where they prefer to have the wi-fi router outside of the classrooms.

In general, it is very stable, most of the issues were with Windows stability.

No.

An eight out of 10.

An eight out of 10.

We acquired this solution to work with Ruckus Wireless eq., the AirMagnet version that we used was a OEM for Ruckus.

It is very straightforward to implement, the only issue is if you change wi-fi for the MAC address.

In-house

Not applicable.

This version was okay in price when it was dedicated to only one vendor. The moment we began needing more of the vendor's support, the cost became very high; we switched to another solution.

Aruba and VRF Plan.

I recommend doing a comparison between the newer version of AirMagnet and Ekahau before purchasing.

It carries out wireless surveys and records wireless signal strength. That's what we use it for.

The software really does what it has been doing for years now. It records the wireless signal strengths and that's mainly it. It doesn't really improve our process. It just does what it's supposed to.

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

We use it on a daily basis, and it crashes 1 out of 20 times.

It seems to be something with the software, or with the Windows' configuration.

We have used technical support. They obviously continue working on improving it. Their support is good.

We haven't really used any other solution because there really wasn't anything out there like AirMagnet. It had no other competition at that time.

The setup was pretty straightforward.

The more you use, the better you get at it.

The Spectrum Expert is very useful in troubleshooting, and just day-to-day operations of wireless engineering.

It just makes the whole process of doing wireless network surveys way smoother, and way faster. It does the same for any kind of wireless network troubleshooting.

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.

I have used this for four years.

I don't believe we have had any stability issues with the software itself. I have had some issues, but I believe it was related to the actual laptop that the software was running on. I don't believe it was the software or AirMagnet product issue.

I haven't seen any problems in the uses I have used it for, but I haven't really done any large-scale testing with it. Most of the stuff I do is fairly small-scale stuff.

I have had to call support a few times over some minor issues, and I never had any problems. I would rate them 5/5.

This is the first and only solution I have used.

Setup was pretty straightforward. When I started using it, it was already set up. I just got a rundown from somebody else that was familiar with it. It seemed pretty straightforward.

I did not evaluate any alternatives.

It is a good product and has good support. There is a lot of positive feedback from the wireless community, or networking community, so it's a trusted brand.

The solution is primarily used for wireless design; it's a wireless design tool.

For example, if you're going to design a wireless internet network. That's what we used it for. The process is: you take a blueprint and you walk around that office or what have you with AirMagnet, the software. And it has an antenna, almost like a wireless antenna. You just walk and set your parameters. It's pretty simple.

The solution as a whole has been quite valuable for us. That's why we've used it. The heat mapping, the signal with noise, all of these are great. 

Some people who aren't as technical as me, some of our project leads, really liked the graphical interface of it. You can take some of the more technical stuff off of it and just represent items in very ways. For example, green means good, red means bad.

Customer service is great. 

The initial setup is very simple. 

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.  

I've dealt with AirMagnet since 2014. It's been a while.

It's definitely pretty stable. It has never crashed on us. It really just depends on your laptop or whatever device you're using it on. The solution itself, however, does not crash or freeze and there are no bugs or glitches. 

As far as scalability, that I don't know. We've never used it like that. I don't know if I can talk to that. 

We had the software and then we had two licenses to use it on two separate laptops, which means two separate antennas. If that's what you mean by scalable, then yes, it's extremely scalable as you can use up to six antennas for one software license.

Their customer service is great if you get the gold package or whatever the highest support package is. That is what we have. It's not just decent. It's excellent service. We are very satisfied with it. 

The initial setup is extremely straightforward. One of the things, now years and years ago, was that it might have been a bit difficult to implement, however, these days, it's very easy.  Today, as in this version, it has an extremely straightforward setup.

I don't handle the buy-side of the solution. I'm just one of the engineers that use it. I'm pretty sure we quoted it, however, that was a while ago. I know it's not cheap. However, I cannot speak to exact pricing.

I've used every version they've had since 2014, just as it increments up. We have the latest. Whatever the latest version is now is what we're using today.

It's really simple to use. I had a guy who's never used it and once we went through half a day with it, he could do it. He couldn't troubleshoot with it, however, he could definitely do tasks and he could use it for the purposes we needed.

While there's other software out there, it really just depends on your projects and your budget. We had a large budget. It's a pretty big project, so we chose AirMagnet due to the fact that I'm familiar with it. I knew that the support was excellent. 

It's good for any project you have. You just have to have the budget for not only the software but also the support package. With the support package, even if you don't know how to use it, they'll show you how to use it.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten.

For us, for what we used it for and for the majority of my career, I've found that it offers everything. There are other versions and other flavors of AirMagnet you can get. I've just never needed it. There's the spectral analysis and stuff like that. I've never needed that part of it. However, for others, just know there are options.

We are using the multi-floor planner, which is very useful for us to create heat maps. We are also using the AirMagnet site survey. It's really helpful for us to know in which areas we are losing the signal and in which areas the signals are very good. So, this is very nice for us.

We have created lots of plans through this AirMagnet tool. It's very good.

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.

I have used the AirMagnet solution for the last year, i.e., for more than a year or so.

In regards to the stability, things are okay. I didn't find any problem with the software as such. Everything was fine. As of now, it's fine. I didn't find any difficulty other than that. It's a good software.

As for the scalability, it's okay because we are doing at a time up to 15 access points with the controller support; so based on that, it's fine. There's no scalability problem and we can do more access points also at a time.

We were doing at least 3-4 surveys before when our project was here and it was a big project. So we are doing at least 3 to 4 surveys per day and it was good. It's all good. There's no issue with the scalability. It's fine.

The last time one of my colleagues opened a ticket for some installation, as there was some problem with the installation/re-installation, we got proper support from the technical guys. There's no issue with support.

Personally, I didn't use any site survey software before, but I don't know about my colleagues. Maybe they used something else. Once I joined this company, I started with AirMagnet itself. Before there was some Snyder solution which was a free software that we used. However, comparing that to this tool, AirMagnet is a good and reliable solution. It's not giving us fake results; it's in real time.

The setup was simple and very straightforward. There's no complexity as such. It's simple.

As I mentioned earlier, the only thing is that we are not able to find the new devices from vendors like Cisco and Aruba; access points. We need them to include those access points and it would be really helpful for us. The rest of the things are okay. It is a good solution. My advice is to include only the newer version of the access points in the AirMagnet tool, so that it will be really helpful for us.

We do site surveys, so we use the Spectrum Analyzer and we use the Site Survey PRO to get a good feel of the signal strength in the company.

It gives a good view of the signal strength. There are other tools in the market as well, but we work with this one. I'm not sure why we choose this one, but it helps us to give a good feel of the network, the wireless coverage plan, the signal strength, signal-to-noise ratio, and so on.

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.

I have been working for this company the last half year now, so I’ve worked with this tool at least a half a year.

We have not had stability issues. The tool works great. Most of the time, it does what we want.

We have not had scalability issues.

So far, we haven’t needed technical support for this product.

We did not switch. At my previous company, I used another tool. Our company did not switch. We are still using this tool on a daily basis.

Initial setup was not complex.

I cannot provide any advice about pricing and licensing, since I'm just an assistant manager. I'm not involved in licensing and pricing. We do the AirMagnet training internally. All new employees get a demo from the other co-workers.

This product was chosen before I started working here.

If they want a good feel of the network, it has all the tools and information you need to know for problems with coverage and signal strength. It gives a great view of the network that you have in your wireless environment.

I'm using it both for designing purposes and for active site survey.

It's helping me a lot for designing and for carrying out large implementations. By using this tool, we can also deploy a very big WiFi network. I have used other solutions like the Ekahau Wi-Fi tools, but I think this one is more user-friendly.

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.

I have been using this product for the last four years.

I feel like the software crashed on my laptop so many times, as compared to when I was using the Ekahau, but it's fine. For me, while using the AirMagnet, it crashed on my laptop around two to three times and this is my experience that I had with the AirMagnet range.

It crashed at any time and affected my work in regards to saving stuff and things like that. Also, it had a small impact while getting back to what I was doing. I didn't save it when I was working on a somewhat big project and it happened to me about two or three times.

In terms of capacity, it's stable. AirMagnet is stable in regards to the traffic and capacity. I did not feel any difficulty with scalability.

I did not use any technical support.

At first, I started my work in WiFi designing with AirMagnet and then later on, I switched to other solutions so as to seek better compatibility, to check how it works, etc.

I wanted to check what are the differences and extra features that are being provided by other vendors, so that's why I switched to another vendor. Thus, simultaneously I was using maybe two or three solutions at a time. However, I prioritized the AirMagnet ones.

The setup was simple. Even if you don't have much knowledge in terms of WiFi, you will be able to understand what features are included in the software.

In terms of the prices, I am aware how much this product costs and the other vendor prices as well. However, I don't know how to compare them. In regards to the means of solution or the technical aspects, it's easy to implement it for an open-minded person.

When I first started using it, I was forced to use this solution because my company was only providing AirMagnet for me. That is when I used AirMagnet for the first time and later on, I got a chance to go check out other solutions. Thus, I didn't get a chance to evaluate other products during my first time experience. Later on, I did look at other tools.

I will definitely suggest the AirMagnet solution for WiFi implementations. This is the best solution that I can suggest to others.