Site Survey

[jim_ambrose_dmt]

A customer wants a site survey that compares Aruba and Ruckus access points. Normally I would just do a passive survey with each brand of AP. Which is OK for APs that use an omni directional antennas, but I plan on using a R510 which uses BeamFlex+ technology. If I only do a passive survey, does that negate the BeamFlex+ advantages? Will doing an active survey (just connecting to the survey's SSID) be enough to activate the advantages of BeamFlex+? Do I need to do an active survey and produce traffic, like a constant ping to activate beamforming and polarity diversity?
Any tips or input as to how to make the Aruba/Ruckus comparison meaningful would be appreciated.

[ayoub_chabrouk]

hello, 
About site survey in general, if you're using Omni AP with downtil antenna, i strangely recommend to an "AP on a Stick" to mount your AP correctly just like the final position, then perform the survey.
for the site survey, try to perform a passive survey first this will give you an idea about RSSI/SNR, 
then move to Active survey and here i recommend to use iPERF or similar  (survey PC as a Client & another PC as a server) generate TCP/UDP traffic 

[jim_ambrose_dmt]

Thank you for the reply. Specifically what I am looking for is, what kind of interaction between the access point and the client device does it take to activate beamflex and diversity polarization?
In a standard passive survey the AP has no idea a client is present. I am guessing that if the AP doesn't know there is a client, then Beamflex and DP are not active, so the passive survey will not show the advantages of these technologies. 
The customer simply wants to compare heat maps from two different vendors, and make his purchase choice from that. 
Bottom line is I want to do a passive survey, but be able to demonstrate the superiority of BeamFlex+ technology in the way of a heatmap. 
Is associating to the AP enough to activate BeamFlex+, or do I need to move data like a constant ping or run iPerf?
Thanks,

[TonyGHz]

Hi Jim,

Did you ever get a solution to this? I'm currently in the same situation as I'm doing a survey and there's some coverage gaps that are noticeably affected by BeamFlex.

[michael_stellma]

I recommend doing an active/hybrid survey with constantly pinging the AP. For Ruckus you will see some differences in the heatmaps compared to a passive survey.Try to figure out which static tx-power settings are comparable between the two vendors for accurate results. In addition use static channels and channel widths.

Br,
Michael