What Is a Site Survey? Your Guide to Network Planning
In the world of WiFi, a site survey is a systematic process of mapping out an area to find out how many networks cover it, or how well a specific network covers it, or how many access points should be installed to cover it and where.
While network engineers rely on site surveys to design large-scale WiFi deployments, everyday users can also benefit from understanding the basics. Whether you're setting up a home office, improving your gaming experience, or simply aiming for better connectivity throughout your living space, knowing why and how to conduct site surveys is guaranteed to be useful.
Why Is a Site Survey Important?
The process of conducting a network site survey is essential for optimizing wireless network performance and can be performed by anyone who relies on WiFi. Let's break down why site surveys are so important by looking at the issues they help prevent:
- Slowdowns: Nobody likes waiting for web pages to load or videos to buffer. Yet, that's what so often happens to those who rely on poorly optimized or completely unoptimized WiFi networks.
- Connection drops: Ever been in the middle of an important video call when suddenly, poof, you're disconnected? Site surveys help achieve consistent coverage across your entire living or office space.
- Dead zones: The term "dead zone" is used to describe areas where there's no usable WiFi signal. A thorough survey reveals these problem areas, so you can say goodbye to that one corner of your house where Instagram refuses to load.
- Interference: From microwave ovens to your neighbor's competing network, interference can wreak havoc on your WiFi. Site surveys help identify other networks that are available in your area, including the channels they broadcast on, making it easy to use different channels.
- Capacity issues: In high-density areas like offices or schools, a network can become overwhelmed with too many devices. Site surveys help plan for capacity so that you have the right number of access points in the right places to meet your current and potentially even future needs.
Of course, the simple act of collecting WiFi data doesn't magically solve all these problems. However, it provides an excellent starting point for understanding your network's current state and identifying areas for improvement.
What Are the Types of Site Surveys?
There are three main distinct types of WiFi site surveys you should know about.
Passive
A passive survey involves walking through a space and collecting data about existing WiFi networks without actually connecting to them. This type of survey is useful for understanding the overall RF environment and identifying potential sources of interference.
For example, a network administrator might use WiFi survey software on a laptop to perform a passive survey of an office building to discover if there isn't a rogue network operating within the premises.
Active
An active survey goes a step further by actually connecting to the network being surveyed. This allows for more detailed performance metrics to be collected, such as actual throughput.
In practice, active surveys are often used to troubleshoot pesky issues. A good example would be a coffee shop owner trying to figure out why customers complain about slow Wi-Fi in certain areas. The owner might use a laptop with the WiFi site survey software to conduct an active survey. They would connect to their network and walk around the shop, stopping at various points to measure real-world performance.
Predictive
A predictive survey uses software to simulate WiFi coverage based on a floor plan and known characteristics of the space and equipment. This type of survey is useful when planning a new network installation or when physical access to a site is limited.
For instance, when planning WiFi deployment for a new house, the homeowner might use predictive survey software to create a virtual model of the space and input details like wall materials, floor plans, and proposed access point models.
When Is a Site Survey Done for a Wireless Network?
The short answer is that a WiFi site survey should be done before, during, and after deployment.
Imagine you're an event organizer planning Wi-Fi coverage for a large indoor conference. Before deployment, you would start with a predictive survey. By creating a virtual model of the venue, inputting details like wall materials, floor plans, and expected attendee numbers, you can plan optimal access point placement and estimate how many you'll need.
During deployment, you would conduct passive and active surveys. As your team installs access points, you would walk the venue with survey tools, checking that real-world signal strength and coverage match your predictions. This allows you to make on-the-spot adjustments.
After deployment, once the venue is packed with attendees (and their multitude of devices), you would perform another round of surveys. This post-deployment survey allows you to discover and fix dead zones and other issues.
Tip: Read more about how to plan a WiFi deployment so that your network is set up for success from the start.
How to Do a Site Survey
For home users, a simple site survey might involve walking around with a smartphone app to identify dead zones, while business owners and enterprises might use a more advanced desktop tool to map signal strength across their premises.
Regardless of which of these camps you belong to, you can use NetSpot to quickly and easily conduct a highly accurate site survey.
NetSpot offers a user-friendly interface that’s accessible to both beginners and professionals, provides detailed heatmaps for visual analysis, and works on multiple platforms, including macOS, Windows, and mobile devices.
Here is a step-by-step guide on how to do a site survey using the desktop version of NetSpot:
Download and install NetSpot on your laptop.
Open NetSpot and switch to the Survey tab. Click Create New… to start a new project.
You can either upload an existing floor plan or draw a new one directly in NetSpot. For uploaded plans, you’ll need to calibrate the scale.
Set the sampling distance (how often you’ll take measurements) and choose whether to run active or passive scanning.
Click Start Scan and move to your first measuring point. Click on the corresponding spot on your map.
Move around your space, stopping at regular intervals to take measurements. Ensure the blue circles on your map overlap slightly for comprehensive coverage.
Once you’ve covered your area, click Heatmaps to view your results. You can choose different heatmap types to analyze various aspects of your network.
For mobile users, NetSpot offers a powerful app that allows you to build realistic WiFi heatmaps right on your iOS, iPadOS, or Android device in minutes, without additional expensive hardware. The app includes additional features like:
- WiFi analyzer for diagnosing your wireless networks and connection speed
- WiFi scanner for collecting and visualizing your WiFi data
- WiFi tester for checking your Internet speed and recording historical results
Inspect, compare, survey, and analyze WiFi networks with NetSpot.
The data collected by the mobile version of NetSpot can be imported into the desktop version for additional analysis. You can continue to the following page for more information on how to perform WiFi site surveys using NetSpot.
Conclusion
A site survey is an essential process for optimizing WiFi networks, involving mapping an area to understand network coverage, identify issues, and plan improvements. There are three types of surveys: passive, active, and predictive. Surveys should be conducted before, during, and after network deployment to ensure optimal performance. Fortunately, that's very easy to do thanks to user-friendly WiFi site survey software like NetSpot, which is available on both desktop and mobile devices.
Site Survey — FAQ
Three very common reasons to perform a site survey when installing wireless access points in a new location include:
- To determine the optimal placement of access points
- To identify potential sources of interference
- To provide comprehensive coverage without dead zones
The basic procedure for performing a site survey involves:
- Installing a capable WiFi site survey tool like NetSpot.
- Creating or uploading a floor plan.
- Walking through the space, taking measurements at regular intervals.
- Analyzing the collected data using heatmaps.
- Making adjustments based on the results.
Wireless surveys are useful at all stages of a network's lifecycle. They should be conducted before initial network deployment to plan optimal access point placement and coverage. During installation, surveys help verify that the coverage matches the planned design. After deployment, a survey checks real-world performance under actual usage conditions.
Wi-Fi Site Surveys, Analysis, Troubleshooting runs on a MacBook (macOS 10.12+) or any laptop (Windows 7/8/10/11) with a standard 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax wireless network adapter.