Creating Wi-Fi Heatmaps with Ekahau Connect. Heatmaps are a critical component of the Ekahau Connect suite of Wi-Fi tools. Generate simulated Wi-Fi heatmaps to test access point (AP) placement using Ekahau Pro in your initial design phase or connect your IPhone or iPad to Ekahau Sidekick and visualize real-time network coverage heatmaps from your site surveys with Ekahau Survey for iPhone. Apr 27, 2020 Spiceworks is a free network monitoring tool. You can also use a network mapping tool created by Spiceworks to compile an inventory of all of the devices connected to your network and create a network map. The design editor of the Spiceworks Network Mapping tool. Download Free Network Map Tools & Network Mapping Software from Spiceworks. We offer 100% Free Software: No Trials, Support Fees, or Upsells. WiFi heat map software can create an accurate map of signal strength during a site survey, producing a graphical representation of hot, cold, and dead areas. Many professionals responsible for installing and maintaining WiFi networks will find a lot of value to WiFi heat map software in order to implement an environment with the best wireless.
As the number of Wi-Fi networks rapidly explodes, detecting, managing, and maintaining your Wi-Fi can become problematic. When everyone around you is blasting their own Wi-Fi signals—particularly if in large apartment buildings or business complexes with lots of other large companies—you’re more likely to experience problems with Wi-Fi signals dropping out, poor connectivity, and slow performance. https://jeansever365.weebly.com/blog/carbon-copy-cloner-software-mac.
Even within your own Wi-Fi network, several optimizations could help ensure your network is functioning appropriately, including router placement, appropriate channel, and security measures. And of course, analyzing and understanding your wireless network is key.
One of my favorite tools for discovering and solving these problems is SolarWinds® Network Performance Monitor (NPM). It includes high-performance network monitoring and insights and troubleshooting features to ensure your network starts working again as soon as possible after a problem arises. In particular, the SolarWinds heat map feature allows you to see where Wi-Fi signal is strong, and “dead zones” with low connectivity.
What Does a Wi-Fi Analyzer Do?
Most Wi-Fi network analyzers work in a similar way, in which you can choose a wireless spectrum to examine, such as 2.4GHz or 5GHz. The analyzer then examines that spectrum to view networks, their channels, and signal strength.
In simple terms, a Wi-Fi analyzer gathers information about access points and channels on your network and displays it in an easy-to-understand, visually accessible way. A wireless network analyzer can help you maintain connection quality, which can be vital for numerous business needs and performance metrics. Wi-Fi signals are constantly changing, and small changes in the network can have massive effects on the overall connection uptime.
Using a Wi-Fi network analyzer can collect data and help you identify problems, or it can indicate potential solutions such as switching to another channel to reduce congestion. You can also use this type of tool to discover areas in your facility with a weak Wi-Fi signal.
Best Wi-Fi Network Analyzer Software in 2020
In my opinion, using Wi-Fi analyzer software can be an excellent tool for optimizing business and even at-home Wi-Fi performance. This kind of software is usually easy-to-use and can provide great benefits in terms of connection reliability, signal strength, and download speeds.
Network Performance Monitor
Of the different tools available on the market, the SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor, with its Wi-Fi analyzer, is the most comprehensive. Despite its extensive list of features, it remains simple for both beginner and advanced users.
The relevant feature here is the heatmapping capability allowing you to create multiple color-coded maps of your facilities using real device data to display signal strength. You can automatically update these maps for a real-time understanding of your wireless network. Having at-a-glance insights into your Wi-Fi can really help with troubleshooting (especially when end users come knocking with complaints about connectivity).
Beyond heatmapping, NPM offers a range of useful network management features. For instance, its proprietary NetPath™ tool lets you detect and display network pathways with a visual traceroute. This allows you to simply determine where slowdowns and issues exist, as you can see the performance and information between individual nodes. Furthermore, with the PerfStack™ feature, you can compare the performance of different metrics side-by-side, so you can correlate multiple types of data across a common timeline.
Overall, SolarWinds NPM has an impressive suite of tools, and each has clean and beautiful visualizations and displays. Furthermore, NPM scales well and includes the ability to hook in with the SolarWinds High Availability platform, to ensure even fewer network drops, with strong failover protection.
NetSpot
NetSpot has a beautiful, easy-to-use interface, and is suitable for both beginners and experienced network administrators. It uses two different modes: discovery mode and survey mode. The first mode looks at a snapshot of the Wi-Fi networks near you, while survey mode can provide more detailed heat maps of Wi-Fi strength.
NetSpot is easy to install and includes several other visual representations of the wireless spectrum and the data it can collect. There are four different versions: free, home, commercial, and enterprise. The difference between them is the number of zones you can look at, how many access points you can scan, and the number of data points you can collect with a scan.
InSSIDer
Another product to consider is InSSIDer. This established Wi-Fi analyzer tool for Windows is very reliable. The InSSIDer tool is generally intended for enterprise and business use, rather than for home users. Despite being geared toward admins, it’s still relatively easy to use.
It gathers the data you would expect: channel, signal strength, MAC addresses, and encryption type for each access point on the network. InSSIDer then provides you with a “link score” for each connection. The higher the score, the better. The software is easy to install, with comprehensive guides and links to free webinars if you need more assistance.
NetCut
Consider NetCut if you’re looking for a solution for professional or enterprise use. It was originally created to be a back-end solution, but it can be used by anyone for network investigating and debugging.
NetCut allows you to monitor LAN activity and can display all the IP and MAC addresses and data of devices that are connected or have ever connected to your network.
With NetCut, you can kick someone off your network or restore their access at will. The main issue with NetCut for beginner users is that it has a lot of machine-translated documentation that may be hard to understand for someone who is not a network administrator, and a slightly more complex interface.
NetCut includes an extra layer of protection called NetCut Defender, which protects your computer from ARP and MAC address spoofing.
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WiFi Analyzer
Unlike NetSpot and NetCut, WiFi Analyzer is intended primarily for home or temporary use. It is an app for Windows 10, available on the Microsoft Store. It comes in basic and pro versions, and the basic version includes everything you need to analyze your Wi-Fi network. The app takes your network and turns the data into easy-to-understand visualizations, suggesting which channel you should use to reduce congestion. Spyder 3 elite software mac reviews.
For someone new to Wi-Fi analyzer tools, this would be a potential choice. For enterprise needs or larger networks, it’s probably much too limited.
Vistumbler
Like most other Wi-Fi analyzers, Vistumbler scans nearby networks for access points and can map your Wi-Fi network and connectivity strength while showing you detailed information about each network. It provides network status, MAC address, SSID, signal strength, channel number, and network type.
Vistumbler is set apart by its GPS support, which can integrate with Google Earth to display Wi-Fi networks. This feature is for people who may be driving, walking, or cycling around to try to find Wi-Fi networks to use. When Vistumbler discovers a Wi-Fi network with this feature, the app can show you where the network is on a map and other network information.
The main downside is that Vistumbler is not easy to use, and the user interface can be difficult to navigate. Again, it’s not a full enterprise solution for Wi-Fi analysis.
WiFi Commander
With good-looking graphics and sophisticated UI, WiFi Commander is one of the more attractive Wi-Fi analyzer tools. You can scan and filter nearby Wi-Fi networks and create 3-D graphs of the results. If your laptop has touchscreen capabilities, you can use touch to move and interact with the 3-D visualization.
The WiFi Commander app shows Wi-Fi signal strength and displays it in real-time so you can use the most recent data to join the strongest or most stable Wi-Fi network.
Wireshark
If you need a free or open-source Wi-Fi analyzer tool, check out Wireshark. Its purpose is to analyze and troubleshoot different communications protocols, and it includes the ability to look at Wi-Fi. Wireshark is very complicated to use, and you’ll need some training to use it. As such, it’s normally only used by networking and Wi-Fi professionals. In addition, there are obvious disadvantages for relying on open-source tools for business use, so you may want something with a bit more built-up functionality.
If you’re looking for something a little more basic when it comes to Wireshark, SolarWinds has a free tool called Response Time Viewer for Wireshark designed to help you analyze packet capture files as well as visualize response time in Wireshark.
Wi-Fi Analysis Solutions
In general, there’s no shortage of tools and software to help you monitor and organize your Wi-Fi networks, whether you’re a casual user or an enterprise professional. With the inclusion of high-reward tools such as heatmaps, visualizations, and performance metric graphs Web design software mac. , the best Wi-Fi analysis tools and network management tools can revolutionize how you get the most out of your connection.
I recommend SolarWinds NPM due to its more robust suite of offerings and simple learning curve for new users. It’s much more robust than some of the limited-scope tools I mentioned above. Even so, I find the SolarWinds platform both intuitive and efficient.
Related Reading
How to Tame—and Redefine—Your Network Now – If you’re interested in considering how networks are changing and evolving, as well as the ways in which you may need to adapt your network management, read this article on how to prepare for tomorrow’s network topography.
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What is a Wi-Fi heat map? Put simply, a Wi-Fi heat map visually represents your wireless signal strength and coverage. It uses a color-coding approach to do this, with green typically representing strength and red representing weakness, with yellow and orange in between. These colors correspond to the rooms or areas in your building. To use a common example, if your office is green but your meeting rooms are red on the map, then the office gets the better signal.
So where do Wi-Fi heatmappers come in? Wireless heat map solutions usually allow you to import images and blueprints of the area you want to map out, so your Wi-Fi heat map is accurate and corresponds to your environment precisely. Below, I’ve listed my favorite Wi-Fi heatmappers, and I’ve chosen SolarWinds® Network Performance Monitor as the best of the best on the market today. This is because the tool is extremely feature-rich, boasting a comprehensive suite of network monitoring utilities. It features a Wi-Fi analyzer and has the capacity to quickly generate Wi-Fi heat maps. It is efficient, but also user-friendly. If you want to see some of my other favorite Wi-Fi heatmappers, check out the rest of my list.
What Is a Wi-Fi Heat Map?
A Wi-Fi heat map lets you view the coverage of your network and Wi-Fi access points. This can help you understand which specific areas lack coverage and which have strong and dependable signal strength available to them. Several factors can interfere with signal. This could be the presence of physical objects, like walls, or non-physical objects like wireless devices emitting frequencies on the same wavelength.
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The most common issues interfering with your Wi-Fi signal strength include walls, doors, furniture, ceilings, drywall, wireless radios, microwaves, and neighboring Wi-Fi networks. Such interferences can cause speed problems, dropouts, and entire dead zones. A Wi-Fi heat map is a simple solution to this problem, giving you visibility of your wireless coverage, including where your signal is strongest and where it’s weakest.
A Wi-Fi heat map can help you do the following:
- Identify Wi-Fi dead zones
- Eradicate slow Wi-Fi speeds
- Take the guesswork out of setting up a wireless network
- Give you access to reports and images which you can hand over to upper management
- Automate Wi-Fi network evaluations
Best Wi-Fi Heat Mapping Software
Network Performance Monitor provides an extremely versatile suite of features. This program is suitable for enterprise-grade requirements, as it comes with a Wi-Fi analyzer component to serve as an effective Wi-Fi heat map tool. This program lets you create wireless heat maps quickly and easily.
Of course, it includes other intelligent and thoughtfully designed features for comprehensive network mapping and management. With NPM you can gain insight into wireless network performance, helping you safeguard network uptime. You can view external connectivity issues and get full visibility of key performance metrics. This includes autonomous access points, clients, and wireless controllers.
![Free Free](/uploads/1/3/3/9/133907733/219247247.jpg)
This tool also comes with performance, fault, and availability monitoring. You can conduct cross-stack network correlation and hop-by-hop network path analysis. The dashboard itself is customizable, so you can tweak it to suit your needs and preferences. What’s more, the straightforward visual display makes it user-friendly.
Another great thing about this tool is it’s highly automated, with auto-discovery for network devices. The heatmaps are also generated automatically, to ensure business-level signal strength. You can even create a library of wireless heat maps, giving you a color-coded and easy-to-interpret visual overview. Your visual Wi-Fi layout can be configured with color-coding, signal strength details, connected clients, and dead zones.
NPM also gives you insight into data associated with client connections to Wi-Fi access points, including MAC addresses and IP addresses. A fully functional 30-day free trial is available, if you want to give NPM a try.
Ekahau HeatMapper is a great tool for home users and small offices. It’s available for Windows 8, 7, Vista, and XP. The visualization and layout of the heat maps provided by Ekahau is impressive, with vibrant color-coding to make interpreting signal strength variations easy. This wireless heat map tool rapidly identifies available networks, locates access points, and detects security settings. One of the best things about this program is it only takes a minute to install, so you can get started pretty much instantly.
Ekahau HeatMapper is a very simple tool, which is both a benefit and a disadvantage, because some users may find it too simplistic. If you want sophisticated features, then you may want to consider an alternative tool. If you prioritize ease of use, however, then Ekahau may be for you. It doesn’t have a massive range of functionalities, which is worth bearing in mind, but the utilities it offers are well-designed.
Generating a heat map couldn’t be much easier. Just import a file representing your office or home layout, then walk around the space with the laptop Ekahau is installed on to survey the area. The tool will automatically generate the map, plotting signal strengths directly onto the map of your area.
This Wi-Fi heat map tool can be upgraded to Ekahau Pro, which is an enterprise Wi-Fi organization, planning, and site survey application. The requirements are fairly minimal. All you’ll need is 1GB RAM, 2GB hard disk space, 1GHz processor, and a Wi-Fi (WLAN) adapter.
This tool specializes in giving you visibility of the access point or Wi-Fi router used by your home and neighbors. You can visualize Wi-Fi channels in 5Ghz and 2.4Ghzs, and view a range of access points, including smartphones, laptops, and APs. The free version of this program is Windows 10 compatible. If this version doesn’t suit your needs, you can upgrade to the more versatile paid alternative.
The signal strength graphs and Wi-Fi heat maps provided by Acrylic Wifi are dynamic and easy to read. These Wi-Fi heatmapping utilities are functional and simple. If you upgrade, you also gain access to the following features:
- Airpcap card holders
- Unlimited inventory
- Information about connected devices
- Extra information on APs and clients
- Technical support
- Screen mode
- Integration with Wireshark
- Able to be used for professional purposes
Heat maps and reports can be generated in a range of common file formats, including PDF, Word, Excel, CSV, and KMZ. Heat map functionalities are flexible and can be based on online maps or user-imported maps, or both.
Acrylic Wifi can be used to build heat maps of both outdoor and indoor areas, giving you in-depth insight into coverage drops and inconsistencies. The tool comes with active and passive mode scanning, lets you view channel overlap, latency, bandwidth and packet loss, and offers heat map reports that can be produced in 3D. There are 15 types of heat map graphics and reports available.
If you want advanced features suitable for professionals, then you’ll want to choose Acrylic Wifi pro. But if you want a Wi-Fi heat map tool for personal, home use, then the free tool should be suitable.
Site Survey, by VisiWave, is a fantastic tool for Wi-Fi infrastructure surveying. It functions on a granular level and is suitable to enterprise requirements. This program allows you to create coverage heat maps, view channel overlap and usage, and much more. It appreciates the importance of the finer details without overwhelming you with them.
![Heat Heat](/uploads/1/3/3/9/133907733/125820129.jpg)
It boasts advanced data collection, letting you drill down to gain greater insight, and its visualization features are highly dynamic. Site Survey is appropriate for 802.11 networks. The only issue is data isn’t as easy-to-interpret as it is with other tools.
You can collect data with this program by using GPS, walking around the area with your device, or by capturing the data one point at a time. This flexibility is useful, as data captures are typically time-consuming and labor-intensive. Having the option of just walking around the area with your laptop is valuable. Data can even be mapped onto a Google Earth layout.
Custom report generation is another great Site Survey feature. Create from scratch or re-use report templates, which cover all the key metrics you’ll need. For extra utilities, Site Survey Pro is a viable option. With this paid version of the program, you can perform predictive surveys, which involve describing the barriers in the survey area (i.e., walls, solid objects), location, and access point characteristics. Then a simulation is run of how radio waves would move through the area, resulting in a coverage heat map to predict signal strength. This is by far the most impressive Site Survey feature, but you have to upgrade to access it.
How to Start Wi-Fi Heat Mapping
Of all the wireless heat map tools I’ve included in this list, SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor comes out on top. While the other tools have their merits, NPM is the most appropriate tool for business use. It has the backing of a vast community of loyal users and SolarWinds support agents who are on hand to assist you 24/7. The tool combines sophisticated and wide-ranging functionalities with simplicity, making this an enterprise-grade heat mapping solution requiring minimal training and zero experience.