The presence of such a strong signal on that side of the house understandably confused the software and it placed it closer inside the boundary of the map than you would expect.You want to see exactly what the quality of coverage your Wi-Fi access point provides (and whether you should move it, add another access point, or otherwise tweak your network).
Sure, you could do it the really tedious and difficult waylike say, making 101 readings off the Wi-Fi strength meter on your smartphonebut that information isnt immediately and easily accessible in a way that allows for easy analysis. This map isnt just a cryptic collection of signal strength readouts, but is instead a detailed signal strength map laid out like a heat map so we can easily and immediately see where Wi-Fi signal strength is weak. Wifi Heat Map Survey Free Version OfWe selected Ekahau HeatMapper because its an easy-to-use application that is essentially the free version of the multi-thousand-dollar Ekahau SiteSurvey. For surveying a small home or office network, HeatMapper is a powerful tool at a great price. We grabbed a pad of graph paper, a ruler, and a felt tip pen and whipped up a rough and approximately-to-scale floor plan in a few minutes. As long as youre creating a blueprint thats roughly to scale, just about anything will work. On Vista and above, you will need to authorize admin privileges for installation, click next a few times, etc. The only unusual thing during the installation process is that youll be prompted to install a special network driver just for Ekahau. If you have a map (and we strongly suggest you use one), click the I have a map image button. If you dont have a map, click the second button (youll use a simple grid for reference instead of an actual map of your space). You will then be dumped into the main HeatMapper interface like so. Dont be concerned about the presence of access points you dont care about (such as APs from another office, your neighbor, etc.) as we can filter them out later before saving our heatmap. You can click on the narrow vertical strip on the inner edges of both the AP list and instructions to minimize them to the side of the HeatMap application window. Left click the mouse approximately where you are standing on the on-screen map. Walk a few feet and repeat, clicking on the new approximate location on the map. The map will immediately turn from the trail-style map to the heat-style map as seen in the image below. First, notice how we walked the perimeters of the room and then doubled back to walk the center of the room. This is an easy way to increase the number of readings and get a better sense of what kind of coverage you have both at the edges and the center of the space. As we walk and add reference points to the map, HeatMapper is both displaying Access Points it can reach and attempting to locate them spatially. It is indicating that one of our APs is physically outside the building and the other is apparently stuck to the front door. The rest of the routers are placed along the edge of the map in the direction their signal is strongest. The one exception is a phantom AP that appears directly above the left red arrow in the imagethats our neighbors Access Point that, thanks to small city lots, is a scant 20 feet off the edge of the office.
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