Forum

We have been using AirMagnet in conjunction with Network Stumbler and seems to be a good tandem.

Anyone have a suggestion of something better than Network Stumbler? It seems to be fine for a freebie but I am open to any suggestions of anything better and robust. - free or otherwise.

Thanks!

Might want to check out Kismet. You need to be running Linux/Unix as an OS or in a VMWare machine.

Audit Security Collection is a "live" linux CD with Kismet and lots of other really useful security tools you can use as well. You can run from the CD without making any changes to the operating system on the hard drive. If you like it, it is a very straight forward process to install it along side your XP load and dual boot. Especially helpful if you are working through the labs in the CWSP book and don't have a Windows box imaged with all the stuff you need to get the labs working.

AirMagnet's Site Surveyor Pro was ranked number 1 in something I read recently...can't recall where at the moment (it's 4:45am)...and it's a great product. We have a licensed copy here, and I couldn't say better things about it.

Also a great product in this category is Ekahau's site survey. I've heard many people say it's just as good as AirMagnet's product in many respects...I can't speak from experience on this one. I'm sure several of you guys could chime in on this one.

The real question is will the tool give you what your customer requires from you. :-)

Devinator

We're tested the Ekahau site survey and I like it. I am not talking about a site survey tool however, I am talking about something similar to Net Stumbler.

We (my boss) went for the Air Magnet instead of Ekahau - his decision after trying both.

Thanks everyone...

We have been using AirMagnet as well. However, I have been made to understand Ekahau Site Survey with RF Planning option makes RF designing easy for new sites prior to on-site RF survey.

Has anyone compared the two apart from the cost ?.

Thanks - DDS

We use (and like) AirMagnet Surveyor Pro for most of our site survey work here. It's expensive but works well. We also use AirMagnet Laptop for analysis and troubleshooting.

If you decide to go the AM route, look into what cards are supported AND the sample rates that are supported. For our Surveyor Pro, we use the Cisco Air-CB21AG cards - multiple samples/second.

For AM Laptop, we use Proxim a/b/g cards (purchased before I started here). These work well, too - except the chipset (Atheros) is the same as the built in wireless cards on our survey tablets. We had to disable the internal wireless to get the AM drivers to recognize the Proxim PC cards.

It's actually good practice to disable any built-in wireless (802.11a/b/g, BlueTooth, etc.) that may interfere with your surveying hardware and skew your data.

We opted for external cards so that we can "float" licenses among different tablets and laptops as needed. BTW - tablets RULE for surveys using Surveyor Pro...

I am a huge fan of Ekahau for their planning software. For the price, there is nothing that approaches their ease-of-use and reporting features.

If you like Netstumber, you should check out what Helium Networks offers. They have their own special version of Netstumber used in conjunction with a special cart that features "senson wheels" that tracks your path while taking RF samples.

For a manual site survey solution, this smokes AM, Ekahau, Wireless Valley, or anything else I've seen. However, they don't have a planning solution, so I normally use Ekahau (or WV when necessary) to model the site, then validate with Helium Networks.

Another route may using something like Yellowjacket, though I don't like using a PDA for site surveys. Hope this helps.

I don't know why you would use NetStumbler as a survey tool. If you use Surveyor, you get mapping of RF and S/N, + it will associate to the AP as you walk, making a real connection a real time with real throw put. Plus, reporting. Check it out...

We're using BOTH Netstumbler so we can 'watch' the signal strength as we taek the survey, and AirMagnet.

I was seeing if there's anything besides NetStumbler that does what it does...thanks!