By Claus Hetting, WiFi NOW CEO & Chairman
NetAlly’s handheld testers may be perceived as standing somewhat in the shadow of PC-based Wi-Fi planning tools from market leaders such as Ekahau and – more recently – Hamina and Sidos but make no mistake: When it comes to Wi-Fi troubleshooting and data sharing, NetAlly’s AirCheck® G3 Pro tester and associated Link-Liveâ„¢ Cloud platform is in a class by itself, says Wi-Fi veteran and managing director of Wireless LAN Professionals, Keith Parsons.
How do you troubleshoot Wi-Fi networks? Well – you can execute all kinds of tests, capture packets, and start running your own analyses on a PC-based tool like Wireshark. Or you can click a few times on a NetAlly handheld tester and it will do all of that for you, pretty much instantly. Handheld testers are underrated as efficient and fast Wi-Fi troubleshooting tools, says Keith Parsons, Managing Director of Wireless LAN Pros and Wi-Fi industry veteran.
“For Wi-Fi troubleshooting I can give an Aircheck to someone without any Wi-Fi knowledge, and for example ask them to perform a survey according to a pre-loaded floor plan. It will run a string of tests and log all the data in seconds, then upload to the Cloud for analysis. It’s that simple. This is powerful and saves a lot of time,” Keith Parson says.
He also says AirCheck is excellent for companies where Wi-Fi experts a few and far between, which is often the case even in large organisations. Testing and uploading of data can be performed by nearly anyone remotely while the analysis and troubleshooting can then be done by the resident expert based on test results uploaded to the Cloud. This obviously adds efficiency when it comes to troubleshooting and managing enterprise Wi-Fi networks, he says.
NetAlly has dubbed their Cloud application Link-Liveâ„¢ and it includes the ability for supervisors to centrally manage multiple AirCheck devices including pushing out test profiles and managing workflows. NetAlly says its philosophy is to use the handheld as ‘the collector’ and the Cloud for visibility, collaboration, and analysis. And – as the name implies – a supervisor or Wi-Fi expert can view the screen of the AirCheck live via the Cloud application, as if being there in person. And Link-Live is free.
AirCheck G3 Pro (today operating on Android) features a series of ready-made analysis apps for troubleshooting that are the result of years of development and field experience focused specifically on resolving Wi-Fi networking issues. “There are unlimited ways of testing Wi-Fi networks but getting to the exact tests and parameters that matter most for resolving network issues fast is not trivial. AirCheck does exactly that,” Keith Parsons says.
NetAlly AirCheck G3 Pro includes the AirMapper heat mapping site survey function that allows a user to upload a floor plan and proceed to navigate through an area and conduct tests at various points. AirCheck even comes with a dongle to enable spectrum analyser features and an external antenna… . Also see the excellent quick introduction to NetAlly AirCheck G3 Pro below by NCTI’s Wired Wisdom.
“Another big benefit today is that NetAlly has made AirCheck testers and software easy to share because they don’t limit the licensed use of the system to just one person, as is the case with certain other vendors. You can basically share the Aircheck with anyone you want once you’ve purchased it,” he says.
/Claus.
Above: Excellent introduction to NetAlly AirCheck G3 Pro by NCTI’s WIRED WISDOM channel.
