How to do a wireless AP on a Stick Survey in Mist

This is all about doing an ap on a stick survey with a Juniper Mist AP. It’s because I tweeted a picture about it the other day and someone asked where my blog was. I’ve not got round to it yet, but this is a start. “A journey of a thousand miles”, and all that

Here is a picture of what we’re talking about

    If you’ve got this far and wondering what the I’m talking about, panic not – I’m about 6 steps down the line here and this will make more sense later

    If you want to learn more stay tuned and I’ll explain what’s going on.

    There’s loads of resources out there on AP on a stick surveys (pre-installation validation survey to give it a more business friendly name) so I don’t want to reinvent the wheel. This is more aimed at some tricks I’ve seen, with new stuff we use today (Juniper Mist cloud, Ekahau connect, iPad app) and so on.

    The general idea. When you design a new wireless environment, on a tool like Ekahau, you place simulated APs on a floor plan. Right off the bat, you’re making quite a few assumptions: that floor plan has to be half decent for a start, a ‘simulated AP’ is kind of a clue, and it’s likely for all your walls, doors, windows etc you’ve gone with the preset attenuation values right? (We’ve all done it.) But what’s to say that’s all accurate? How can you be sure that your model represents real life? You won’t know until your installer (the cable guys that are allowed to use ladders and grown-up tools) have put each AP up. Then you get complaints the wireless is (still) bad…

    What if I could have temporarily installed an AP where I need it, measure it like I would doing a survey, maybe even throughput test it? Doing all that, before you commit to an install, is what AP on a Stick Surveying is all about. (And trust me, as soon as you say it’ll save time, effort and money in the long run, you should get support!)

    So now you get the gist, and if you want to get away from the desk, hands dirty and stuck in to the sharp end of your operation, (maybe even get into the ceiling of a 60ft warehouse!!) Read on…

    You will need:

    • Your predictive model. Ideally the Ekahau model.
    • An AP. Preferably the ones you plan on installing
    • A means to power up the AP (we don’t care about network access at the moment, just getting power to it.)
    • A means to position the AP and the height and angle you have modeled in your predictive design