Wireless Access

I have a couple of questions regarding AMP and VisualRF. 

 

Should the imported floor maps in AMP via VisualRF have walls drawn on them?  My thought is that if the imported floor maps don't have any walls drawn on them, we would have less accurate signals since it's assumed that they are located in an open space?

 

We are currently using Airmagnet for our plans/surveys and we draw the walls when doing the plans/surveys.  Every other video that I've seen they don't do such thing.   Any advice/help/reading resources would be appreciated.  Thanks.

Drawing the walls will make the visualization more accurate, but it can be time-consuming.  If you had to choose, just draw the external walls, first.

Just to add onto what cjoseph said, you can also 'define the region' when importing a new floor plan; during this step it asks you if you would like to create walls where the region has been defined. This has helped to save me from drawing the walls twice.

 

Didn't know if this helps or not.

In regards to planning, VisualRF tends to be very conservative, so unless you've got really thick walls I'd say you should better omit inner walls if you don't want to end up having an AP each 10 meaters.

 

However, if you want more acurracy I would go for a real site survey.

We don't use VisualRF for planning, we use Airmagnet instead.  

If you do not use it for planning, you can get away without drawing the walls, or just drawing the external wall.  If you are using it live, the AP neighbor data is used to draw the heat map, etc.

 

Hi All,

 

I like to ask a question about this, as I strugle to grasp the following and if somone is able to explain this to me, I will be really greatful.

 

If your physical enviroment does not change, your rf coverage should stay the same regardless if you draw walls on the maps or not, right. I also understand that there is a predictive calculation that takes place when there is no other ap's in the area.

 

Here is my concept that I struggle to grasp, the signal strenght has not change in the physical enviroment and no new wall has been introduce physically, so by drawing the existing wall on a maps for airwave, your visual RF should stay the same, so why does you RF coverage suppositely change according to Airwave.

 

It does not make sense.

Could any one explain this to me please?

 

Regards,

Walls are not the only attenuators. People who are made of water play a very important and changing role in RF. Drawing walls are much more important for planning rather than visualization of RF. Your environment can change significantly during the day and a lot of it has nothing to do with the walls.

I personally like putting the walls - let me elaborate a little, I like putting the significant walls (ie: concrete, firewalls, drywalls etc) but not the minor ones (ie: seperators, cubicle etc).  My thought is that I would rather be conservative while in the planning stage and have couple of extra APs than install it and find out that there are dead spots.

 

It is true that when you draw the walls, it is very time consuming but my take again is you end up saving time of possibly having to go back an adding another cable run and installing another AP (and provisioning it) later once your network is already operational - PLUS the hassle of having to hear about how there are dead spots in places.

 

But I do agree with some other suggestion that if you truly want a good coverage then you have to do a true site survey and AirMagnet might be a better choice.

I think the simple rule is:-

 

Simulations (ie planning) need Walls

Surveys (ie, post install)  need Data

 

Actual data should speak for itself - a reading of -50dBm is a reading of -50dBm, whatever.