Site Survey Checklist

Good Day, and Welcome to another adventure in the "Backyard Blog". Today we are going to discover what it takes to create and work with a Site Survey Checklist. I was doing my research and found (once again) many very interesting looking articles and templates for site surveys. Some of them even pertained to network installation. Understand now, I have taken classes on Civil Surveys, building surveys and such, it just really didn't dawn on me that I was in the wrong boat.

Well, anyway... I found Conducting a Site Survey - AirWISE Community in PDF form and could not in all reality find anything better.It goes like this:

Phase 1: Preparation Checklist

 Do you know all the stakeholders?

 Are there specific business considerations and policies?

 Capacity

How many users require wireless service?

What applications will they use?

Will they transmit bandwidth-intensive files?

Where are they located in terms of geography?

Will they be using applications where they need to roam?

What are their throughput requirements?

 Is this a new wireless deployment or are you planning to make changes to an existing wireless network?

 If there are changes being made, is it because the business is expanding?

 Are you satisfied with the existing wireless deployment? Or are users complaining about coverage or performance issues with your existing wireless network?

 What wireless equipment is already installed? Who is the vendor? Where are they APs installed?

 Will this be an open (unencrypted) network or a highly secure one (WPA, WPA2)?

 Is wireless access needed for indoors, outdoors, or both?

 Where is coverage required? Is it only in certain areas like conference rooms, or is it for the entire facility? Do you need coverage in the parking lot?

 Are there building/floor blueprints available?

 Have you performed a visual inspection of the facility?

 Are there any known major non Wi-Fi interfering sources? Do you know their locations?

 Is this a multi-floor deployment?

 Where are the power and Ethernet drops throughout the facility? Are you open to installing new drops?

 What is the anticipated growth for the future in terms of users or technology?

 Are you implementing specialized application like voice or video over the Wi-Fi network? If not at this time, do you want to plan the network for seamless migration later?

For 802.11n Networks

 Is this an 802.11n Greenfield network or do legacy 802.11a/b/g devices need to be supported?

 Will 802.11n devices be deployed in 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz band?

 What type of clients will be connecting to the network? Laptops? Phones? Handheld scanners?

 Will 802.11n APs be used for the Guest Network?

 Is there coverage overlap from your neighbor’s APs? Do they have 11n or legacy 11a/b/g devices deployed?

Phase 2: Performing Site Survey

 Have you loaded the floor plan maps and calibrated your floor map scale?

 Have you specified the correct “Signal Propagation Assessment” value?

 Are you performing the site survey at times when wireless is primarily used?

 Have you selected the correct channels that you plan to use?

 Have you planned your walking path?

 Have you performed passive surveys?: Collect signal data from all APs and stations in the area

 Have you performed active surveys?: Collect real-world performance metrics (data rate, retries, losses, etc.)

Mandatory for 802.11n deployments

 Have you performed Iperf surveys?: Collect uplink/downlink performance statistics (critical for 802.11n networks)

 Have you performed a RF Spectrum survey?

Non-WiFi devices operate in the same spectrum as Wi-Fi

Best to collect RF data at the same time as a Wi-Fi Survey

 Have you performed a voice survey?

Mandatory for deploying Voice over WLAN networks to validate phone call quality

Phase 3: Analysis

 View Wi-Fi signal coverage at every location

 View real-world user performance metrics

Data rates, retries, losses

Uplink/downlink performance

 View roaming areas

 View areas that suffer from channel interference

 View areas that suffer from interference from non wi-fi devices

 Locate RF coverage and Capacity/performance ‘dead spots’

 Know coverage/performance for “backup” APs

 If implementing 802.11n networks:

Verify the 802.11n coverage maps

Operating mode: Visualize operating modes of the APs

Channel width: Visualize 20/40 MHz settings for the APs

MCS coverage maps: Visualize the MCS rates for the APs

Visualize uplink and downlink performance parameters

 If implementing voice over WLAN networks:

Verify if your network is ready for voice based on the phone vendor’s deployment guidelines

Validate phone call quality, coverage and capacity maps at every location

Are there areas where the phones roam

____Verify if coverage, capacity and performance design requirements are met for your deployment?

Phase 4: Reporting and Sign-off

 Output survey report

 Have you saved the report for future reference for surveys and other deployment changes?

Phase 5: Periodic Site Surveys

Recommended to survey environment every 3-4 months to account for changes in

environment (or neighbors), interference sources, user behavior, obstacle changes,

etc.

 Was this a periodic site survey?

 If yes, have you observed changes in the RF environment or the Wi-Fi network since the last survey?

 If no, when are you planning to conduct one?

This form would be used by a network consultant while checking a potential clients property for a network retrofit. How it works is simple, you read the list and fill check marks in the blocks which won't reproduce themselves in this word packet. I highly suggest going to the AirWISE community website and checking it out for yourself. It looks much better in its original format.

Right now I can not think of any additions or deletions I would make. I guess that is why I chose this template. Well, for now, it is off to the great outdoors to clean snow off my driveway, I hope this "mess" was helpful.