How to Choose the Right Wi-Fi Survey

Wireless network performance is akin to business performance these days; productivity, efficiency and automation all rely on agile, fast, reliable connectivity, meaning your Wi-Fi can make or break your organisation. Consequently, it goes without saying that if you’re experiencing problems with your Wi-Fi, you can’t afford to let them go unresolved. A professional wireless survey is the best way to resolve any issues both in terms of efficiency, ensuring a thorough job is done, and also to give you certainty that your solutions won’t cause additional problems down the line.

A Wi-Fi survey needs to be conducted by a qualified professional who can draw on years of experience, industry best practice, uses the most accurate and informative tools, and can deliver recommendations and a fresh design based on emerging technology and industry trends. A professional wireless network engineer can also ensure you don’t waste your IT budget on unnecessary products, or on a network design that fails to support your organisation in the ways you need. We won’t wax lyrical – not here anyway. You can read more on the benefits of expert Wi-Fi surveys here!

What are the three types of wireless surveys?

1. Passive surveys (sometimes called a remote Wi-Fi survey)
2. Active surveys (also known as a Wi-Fi site survey)
3. Predictive surveys

1. What is a passive Wi-Fi survey?

Remote WiFi surveys rely on both your floorplans and usage insight to create a simulated version of your wireless LAN that takes variables like square footage, wall types, user requirements, applications and many others into account. Software can create simulated heat maps so that network engineers can remotely design and demonstrate a solution that will deliver optimum performance, whether you’re looking to improve your existing wireless network or design a new one.

These types of survey are convenient and quick to get to the bottom of your network performance quickly and work towards solutions faster. They’re also a more affordable option than a full site survey with a visit from a network engineer.

Passive or predictive surveys are best used in simple environments with little interference, low density/capacity. For most organisations, this isn’t the best way to go about designing a new network, especially in busy workplaces like schools, colleges, warehouses or offices which are high risk environments in terms of capacity, density, bandwidth requirements and interference. These factors make predicting current and required performance difficult without real-time, real-world data.

2. What is an active Wi-Fi site survey?

An active Wi-Fi site survey is the most accurate and informative type of survey available, and is strongly advised by our engineers if your budget and timescales allow.

A network engineer will walk the entirety of your site (hopefully using the best industry tools such as Ekahau!), capturing live data and mapping real-time performance against your floorplans. This means they can account for all the extenuating circumstances that a passive (or remote) survey can’t, including interference, prove times between APs, and pinpointing signal loss.

This is then used to create an interactive, digital replica of your workplace that can be used to demonstrate real-world performance of both your current network and a proposed design. Only an active survey gives the ability to mimic real-life workplace scenarios at your workplace, looking at spectrum analysis, RSSI, latency, the seamlessness of roaming and capacity checks.

An active or site survey also has the benefit of making installation a smoother process by eliminating surprises that take time and budget to work around.

3. What is a validation survey?

In a perfect world, this is done the day after installation during business downtime (out of hours, or school holidays for example). Primarily this will validate that your coverage is adequate and there are no black spots or patchy zones – especially if they are in crucial areas.

Often this out-of-hours approach isn’t possible, especially in always-on environments such as warehouses. This means that the switchover from your old network to your new one will be done whilst users are active, making a seamless transition vital. In this situation (at least in our case), engineers will stay on site for the switch-over from your old network to your new one.

At Redway we don’t consider our job done until you’re 100% satisfied with the result, and consequently we always recommend following up with a verification survey post-install to ensure your new solution is offering the predicted performance. Validation surveys help ensure the best possible performance through optimising configuration based on a live, active network that is in situ. They are an affordable way of ensuring a successful design that won’t require potentially costly fixes down the line.

How should you pick the right kind of Wi-Fi survey?

Choosing the right type of Wi-Fi survey will largely depend on the type of organisation you work for, your timescale and your budget. If a new network solution is going to actually be a solution to your current IT problems, these first steps are crucial as they can lay the foundation for a successful investment, and any Wi-Fi specialist worth their salt will take the time to get to know your organisation, its requirements (current and future!), it’s challenges, and key considerations.

At Redway, our whole focus is on offering a bespoke service that puts your organisation and its needs at the centre. We don’t make assumptions on the type of survey you need before we fully understand why you need it, and how we can help you move towards an optimally performing network. We focus on providing services that have actionable, positive outcomes to help support your IT department and push your organisation forward, and that starts with our surveys.

How are our surveys different to our competitors?

• Our experience across a range of sectors means we make sure to ask questions that might not be pertinent to your daily network management, but can be catastrophic if overlooked during the design phase. Common examples we come across are factoring in additional capacity in school halls for exam periods, or specific AP placement in storage areas where interference fluctuates due to stock movement.
• We pride ourselves on being vendor-neutral Wi-Fi specialists who focus on fully understanding your organisation’s requirements and resources before recommending a solution. We turn this understanding into a design that responds to your needs, before recommending products. We don’t have preferred partners; we match your organisation and its requirements with the right solution – not the other way around.
• We don’t view surveys as a ‘one and done’ service, whether you’re designing a new network or fault-finding and fixing an existing one. Our goal isn’t to install or improve your wireless network and walk away – we want you to be happy with your solution for its entire lifetime. We recommend a Wi-Fi survey at least once a year to keep your network performing optimally, ensure it is adapting to fit how your organisation is changing, and keep you up to date with the latest technology. If you’d like to know more about our management services, take a look at our network support packages.

How do we present our findings from your Wi-Fi survey?

• We do things differently to our competitors. We deliver the results and recommendations from your survey by WebEx, giving the us the ability to demonstrate our designs. This also gives us the opportunity to go through your site room by room, floor by floor to make sure of your requirements and any details you feel we should know. This is vital in the case of passive, remote surveys.
• We make sure a highly qualified network engineer is always on the call to go through the survey report and design in a live simulation. They can also answer any questions you may have about your wider network – outside of your wireless – from switches to security. We see our role as helping you achieve an optimally performing network – not just WiFi.
• Our way of resolving your network issues is a 2-way conversation – a ‘non-technical’ technical discussion! We make a complex subject simple so that you never feel out of your depth when discussing your network, its shortcomings or our recommendations.

What if you have questions about your wider network infrastructure?

Your wireless network is only part of the wider picture. As your network gets increasingly complex, you may find that a broader understanding of product performance and longevity is helpful, from switches to cabling. This is where our network audits come in. These audits look at your entire network, and provide an in-depth assessment of your hardware, configuration, architecture and security, enabling you to see clearly where your current network is not giving the performance you need.

As with our wireless surveys, these are performed by our highly qualified network engineers, giving you a comprehensive report that in-house staff may not have the time, resource, experience or equipment to produce.

Rest assured, we don’t put pressure on you to revamp your entire IT infrastructure all at once. Our network audit reports are produced on a ‘traffic light system’ basis with immediate, medium term and long-term actions. Find out more about our network audits.

7 tips to get the best insight from your Wi-Fi survey

As we’ve (hopefully!) expressed, obtaining the best possible data from your wireless survey is vital. In the words of someone very insightful, “proper planning prevents poor Wi-Fi performance”! Below we’ve listed some tips on how you can prepare ahead of time for whichever wireless survey you go.

• Make sure that your floorplans are up to date. You’d be surprised at how many clients have sent us plans with entire buildings missing!
• You’d be shocked at how many DIY floorplans we’ve received over the years that aren’t in any way to scale! This is a nightmare for mapping data against, and even worse if you’ve opted for a passive survey where engineers can’t use their physical survey walk data to compensate.
• Include large objects such as warehouse racking or machinery in your floorplans as these can have a bearing on interference and coverage
• Ensure access will be available for the engineer. It sounds silly, but our engineers are often found tapping on various doors and windows to get in if your survey is taking place out of hours or on school holidays!
• Give the engineer advance warning of any health and safety or PPE requirements, including DBS checks. If these are a non-negotiable, you don’t want the survey to be rescheduled!
• Inform the engineer of any specific requirements such as aesthetics (camouflaged APs, anyone?) or zones with high capacity usage
• Be sure to let the engineer know of any tricky spots with poor/problematic connectivity so these can be investigated – and perhaps easily resolved there and then!

We hope this article has helped clear up some of the questions about the different types of Wi-Fi surveys, as well as how to get the most out of them!

For more advice you can get in touch with us here or call our technical sales team on +44 (0)1908 046 400.