The Different types of Wireless Site Surveys

There are several types of surveys on wireless sites and it is important to know which type you are looking for before purchasing the wrong type of service. Some wireless surveys can be performed remotely using floor plans and thermal mapping software, while other on-site surveys require an on-site presence and several hours to complete. There are studies on the site that will produce a bill of materials only for a WiFi distribution, while more advanced site studies will provide a series of cabling and installation works, as well as a level of commitment for ongoing management and maintenance.

Let's compare two of the most common types of surveys on wireless sites: predictive and active.

Predictive surveys on wireless sites

In a predictive survey on the site, a company will collect floor plans of your space. They should also ask you questions about how you plan to use your WiFi and what your general needs are. Using the information provided, the wireless site survey company will suggest an access point model. This model will be used to create a heat map of your location. The heatmap will include the recommended placement of equipment and a visual representation of how the wireless signal will spread in your environment.

A predictive Site Survey Cost is generally provided for free. It really is more of a sales tool than anything else. Many network equipment distributors will offer a free predictive survey to help you reach an agreement. It can help transform a simple transaction into a more personalized customer experience. Since a survey on the predictive site is generally free, some sacrifices are made in terms of quality and accuracy. In most cases, when deploying more than 3 wireless access points, predictive site detection is not enough. Elements such as positioning of the access point, coverage of the wireless signal and network performance are generally estimated and may require slight, even drastic changes, to better align with the environment and needs.

Surveys active on the wireless site

If accuracy is the goal, then an active survey on the site is the way to go. An active survey on the wireless site will require a visit to the site. Usually, it can take a few hours to a few days, depending on the size of the place. An active site survey can be performed in a new environment without wireless equipment installed. An investigation can also be carried out in a place where a WiFi system already exists but must be repaired or configured correctly. The final report will offer an extremely accurate plan for equipment placement, wireless signal coverage, network performance, cabling, and installation.

As in a predictive survey on the site, a floor plan must be shared and the general needs of WiFi must be discussed. Here the similarities end. A wireless engineer downloads the floor plans into his site survey software and places a single access point in space. The engineer then begins to traverse the space and measures the signal strength of the access point. The site detection software will also measure external Wi-Fi interference from nearby wireless networks to allow the wireless technician to provide recommendations for channel selection and other configurations.

The man-hours participating in an active survey on the site is not limited to the time spent on the site. Engineers spend several hours after the words draw the walls of other structures on the floor plans provided to provide an even more accurate representation of the propagation of the wireless signal in space. Stairs, elevator shafts, windows, and walls will all have a negative impact on the wireless signal. Wall building materials will also have its effect. For example, the drywall will not be as bad for wireless radio signals as concrete.

How much does a survey on the wireless site cost?

The value you get from a survey on a WiFi site is clear enough, but when it comes to presenting the need to your company's CFO, the technical requirements must translate into some sort of figure. A predictive survey on the site should always be offered for free. Since it is more of a sales tool than a personalized report, the wireless site survey company should provide it for free. If you are asked to pay for such a relationship, this should be a big red flag for the company you work with and you should start exploring other options.

How Much does a survey Cost is a little more difficult to determine. There are so many different variables that could affect prices. A good range of costs for a survey on a wireless site is between $ 2,000 and $ 10,000 per survey. However, here are some factors that will influence the cost of the survey on the wireless site:

• Square feet area of ​​the study area
• Support requirements for specific WiFi applications
• Ceiling height and lift requirements
• Plan creation requirements
• The physical location of the detection environment
• WiFi hardware requirements
• The time needed to participate in the survey on the site
• Report turnaround requirements
• Customer-specific requirements, such as the need to conduct the survey outside of business hours or to complete it quickly

What Network operations? & Best Practices

Network operations refer to activities carried out by internal network personnel or third parties on which companies and service providers rely on to monitor, manage and respond to alerts on the availability and performance of their network. Staff with primary responsibility for network operations are often referred to as network operations analysts or network operations engineers.

A Network Operations Center, often referred to as a NOC (pronounced "knock"), is typically a centralized location where network operations staff provide 24/7 surveillance, monitoring, and management, 7 days a week, 365 days a week. day, 365 days a year This infrastructure environment can be located on the site and / or with a cloud provider.

Some key activities in the functioning of the network are:

• Network monitoring
• Accident response
• Communication management (e-mail, voice and video)
• Performance, quality and optimization reports
• Software/firmware installation, troubleshooting, and updating of network elements
• Patch management
• Backup and archiving
• Firewall management
• Intrusion prevention system (IPS) and other tools and implementation and monitoring of security tools, in collaboration with Security Operations
• Threat analysis and explosion beam analysis in collaboration with security operations

Challenges Facing Network Operations

Due to the complexity of today's NOC Services, especially in light of the adoption of cloud-based infrastructure and SaaS applications, network operations personnel face many challenges not only related to a deep understanding of the technology itself, but maintains simplified access to communications between all parties involved.

Here are some of the main challenges related to the functioning of the network:

• Lack of collaboration / coordination between the teams
• The rapid pace of change in the cloud and the orchestration of dynamic resources means that the documentation is not generally updated to solve problems
• Troubleshooting takes time as it often correlates data between multiple devices and toolsets and requires manual processes to achieve reliable diagnoses
• Many different tools from different vendors used may require staff to work with different technologies, low-level utilities and command-line interfaces (CLI)
• Problems arise and then disappear when all the information is needed for troubleshooting
• Climbing leaders is often necessary to evaluate the root causes

Network Operation best Practices 

Well-managed network management teams adopt a variety of proven best practices. These include, but are not limited to:

• Continuously monitor a wide range of information and network systems including communication circuits, cloud resources, LAN / WAN systems, routers, switches, firewalls, and VoIP systems and application delivery.
• Provide a rapid response to all accidents, failures and performance problems.
• Classification of problems to be passed on to appropriate technical teams.
• Recognize, identify and prioritize incidents in accordance with customers' corporate requirements, organizational policies and operational impact.
• Collect and review performance reports for various systems and communicate performance trends to senior technical staff to help them predict future problems or outages.
• Document all actions in accordance with standard corporate policies and procedures.
• Notify customers and third-party service providers of problems, outages and repair status.
• Collaborate with internal and external technical and service teams to create and/or update knowledge base articles.
• Perform basic tests of systems and operating activities (installation of patches, network connectivity tests, execution of scripts, etc.).
• Support for several technical teams in 24/7 operating environments with high availability requirements. Various shift times can include daytime or evening hours.

In this list of best practices, the staff is more likely to focus on network performance today than application availability. But application availability and performance are essential to achieve the business objectives of companies and service providers. Moving applications to the cloud will be the main driver of network operations, spending more time on application availability and performance in the future. More specifically, network operations teams will need to ensure that internal and external networks and services do not prevent application availability, but rather speed up their delivery.

Network Intelligence technology faces many challenges associated with pursuing the best network operational practices. To ensure optimal network and application performance, network operations teams need detailed and accurate visibility of the network path, as well as routing and application layer data.

IoT Managed Services Role in the Enterprise IoT Evolution

  Managed IT Services is ready to help companies in various ways, from building and managing the entire network to helping them tackle specific projects, such as the move to 3G extinction.

IoT is no longer just the domain of the first users. It also means that multiple companies can undertake IoT implementations without fully understanding what lies ahead. Many are faced with decisions about how to integrate IoT architectures into their existing network environments, how to continue managing those architectures, the devices that connect to them and the applications that run them.

The IT staff of companies have faced many similar decisions in the past when implementing new technologies, deciding whether they want to be involved in creating or managing solutions or asking for help from managed service providers. who can do anything for them? MSPs can help you with everything related to planning, purchasing hardware and software, building architectures and managing your networks and services over the long term.

MSPs have been important business partners for decades, helping them through the evolution of connectivity, security and cloud computing technologies. The latest evolution that companies are looking for MSP support is the evolution of IoT.

"There has been a change in philosophy from the belief that IoT is as simple as getting a data plan and connecting hardware," said Chris Baird, CEO of OptConnect, a communications company. Kaysville, Utah, which provided managed services. for many years and officially launched an offer of IoT managed services at the recent IoT World Conference and Expo 2019 in Santa Clara, California. "If you think about how large the IoT is for businesses and everything they need to start, it can be difficult for many companies to bring together different parts of the entire IoT solution."

The IoT managed services the market is growing rapidly, according to Persistence Market Research. The market, which includes services such as infrastructure management, network management, device management, security management, and data management, by the way, will be worth over $ 94 billion by 2026, with a compound annual growth rate of over 20% between 2018 and 2026, an estimated PMR 2018 study.

Different Needs

Ultimately, there are many reasons why a company can choose a managed IoT service provider. The most obvious is that they lack the knowledge and experience to do the job effectively and profitably on their own.

Steve Garrett, OptConnect product manager said that with a growing interest in IoT, many companies are just starting to explore it "are completely ignorant and have no idea how to connect their equipment." These are the companies that are likely to need a fully managed service solution, covering everything from sensor hardware to connectivity, security, network monitoring and potentially more.

Other companies, said Garrett, "know the IoT and are trying to rebuild it. They could try to make the decision to create or buy and realize that there is simply too much choice. An MSP can help a company at this point. , managing parts of the IoT construction or managing aspects of the IoT architecture that the company decides not to manage on its own.

Garrett said companies that are very knowledgeable about IoT and advanced enough in their IoT travel, however, may find themselves forced to migrate a self-managed architecture to a third-party managed service. "We have customers who have distributed from 4,000 to 5,000 cell sites, who are overwhelmed and have learned that they can no longer grow their business. We have passed many of these portfolios and transferred them to our services."

For some companies, the need for managed IoT services may not be due to a lack of knowledge, but to more practical Managed Business Services, such as a lack of budget to distribute IoT equipment. These companies may find it more advantageous to pay the IoT as current operating expenses than to allocate a much larger budget for both the initial capital expenditures involved in the distribution of the IoT.

But not all companies may need a "nut soup" Managed Service Support, as Garrett described. Some companies may simply not have enough team members with specific skills to manage an aspect of IoT management, such as connectivity, security, data analysis or device management. In these cases, an MSP can manage this sore spot instead of everything. For example, OptConnect, which focuses largely on cellular technology for IoT connectivity can focus on managing a company's connections to different cellular providers without being more deeply involved in the company's internal IoT architecture if that's all that's needed,

Performing Wireless Site Surveys

On-Site Surveys are essential for optimal WLAN performance. Here's how it goes.

Pre-Deployment Wireless Site Survey 

Before deploying a new wireless network, a site survey must be conducted prior to deployment to begin developing a wireless network project based on requirements collected by corporate stakeholders. You can perform a pre-deployment site survey in two ways: AP-on-a-stick or predictive modeling.

AP-on-a-stick that consumes more time. This involves setting up a WLAN and WLAN access to associate with a laptop. The laptop is equipped with Wireless Site Survey software and is used to collect information such as signal strength, data rate, and overlapping channels. It's called AP-on-a-stick simply because an access point is mounted on a pole and raised to where the access point will be installed. The wireless engineer then analyzes the access point, collecting the data needed to determine cell size, signal propagation, and other information.

In the site survey software, the engineer freezes the access point on the floor plan so that he can move the access point to another location and inspect a new area. In this way, an engineer can find the edge of each cell and plan the appropriate cell overlay for roaming and secondary coverage and other requirements.

Although still used by wireless engineers, the AP-on-a-stick method isn't used very often today. It takes too long for an engineer to run, and for some companies, this cost is a high hourly rate. However, some scenarios, such as external distributions, lend themselves well to the method.

A faster and more efficient way to design a wireless network using site detection software is to create a predictive model. The result is a floor plan with strategically simulated access points positioned with an appropriate channel plan based on coverage and capacity requirements.

The site detection of the software performs all these calculations with special formulas based on the provider's access point and on the antenna chosen for the predictive model. The engineer imports a floor plan into the software and tracks the wall materials through the floor plan based on the expected dB loss.

To return to coverage requirements, the software will take into account the minimum configured requirements such as:

• Interference in the same channel or overlapping channels
• Signal strength
• Data rate
• Packet loss

The software can also take capacity needs into account by configuring the number of devices and their types expected on the wireless network. Devices are determined during the requirements collection phase and added to the site detection software.

As a reminder, this method is exactly what we call it: predictive. It is the process of predicting signal propagation, data rates, channels, access point transmission power and other mathematical and attenuation data.

Post-Deployment Wireless Site Survey

Post-distribution surveys are also often called validation surveys. The purpose of a validation survey is to ensure that the distributed wireless network meets the customer or customer's requirements. The validation survey must be compared with the predictive model previously performed. In some scenarios, a pre-deployment detection may not have been performed prior to installation. A post-distribution survey can be conducted at any time and is also part of the iterative process of a wireless distribution.

The process of conducting a validation survey begins with importing a floor plan. The next step is to measure a long wall, which is needed to crumble the numbers used to calculate the RF characteristics. One of the benefits of validation surveys is to skip the layout of the walls on the floor plan.

With the validation survey ready, it's time to take the laptop, start the survey, and walk slowly and steadily. It is important to walk slowly and steadily so that the external adapter passively collects wireless information from all the necessary channels. The adapter scans all frequencies in the 2.4 GHz spectrum and all channels in the 5 GHz spectrum. To maintain performance, you can select which channels to scan.

After exploring and collecting this data, it is time to analyze and validate. At a minimum, determine if the cell size of an access point is within specification. Identify if the transmit power level is configured correctly. Secondary coverage from other access points will be essential to validate compliance with roaming requirements, if necessary. This can be viewed with site survey software, such as Ekahau Site Survey. The secondary cover will display the overlapping cells.

Verify that the channel widths are appropriate. In most environments, the 20 MHz change width will provide maximum efficiency. Anything bigger will result in improper reuse of channels and could cause channels to overlap. If the validation survey indicates that 40 MHz channel widths are usable, do so. But I strongly advise against using channel widths of 80 MHz or 160 MHz.

Speaking of overlap, another fundamental measure is the overlap of channels. Although secondary coverage is crucial, channel overlap should be kept to a minimum. Having two or more access points operating on the same channel in the same area will create the capacity of an access point. Not only will the devices share the same conflicting domain, but the access points will also compete for the airtime.

Go through the validation survey and determine if optimization is needed. If so, revalidate the project with another survey and compare it to the customer or customer requirements. It is only when these requirements are met that distribution can be considered complete. Keep in mind that wireless environments and requirements are changing, which can trigger the entire Wireless Survey cycle again.

Wireless Site Survey Software

You may be wondering what software is available to conduct predictive and validation surveys. Fortunately, there are a few options available; the list below is not exhaustive. Do your due diligence and request a demo to find out which works best with your workflow.

• Investigation on the Ekahau website
• iBwave
• AirMagnet of Fluke Networks
• WiFi acrylic
• TamoGraph
• VisiWave

Role of IoT managed services in the evolution of corporate IoT

IOT Managed Services is ready to help companies in many ways, from building and managing the entire network to helping them tackle specific projects, such as moving to 3G extinction.

IoT is no longer just the domain of the first users. It also means that multiple companies can undertake IoT implementations without fully understanding what lies ahead. Many are faced with decisions about how to integrate IoT architectures into their existing network environments, how to continue managing those architectures, the devices that connect to them and the applications that run them.

IT staff in companies have faced many similar decisions in the past when implementing new technologies, deciding whether they want to be involved in creating or managing solutions or seeking help from managed service providers who can do everything there. MSP can help you with everything related to planning, purchasing hardware and software, building architectures and long-term management of their networks and services.

MSPs have been important business partners for decades, helping them through the evolution of connectivity, security and cloud computing technologies. The latest evolution that companies are looking for MSP support is the evolution of IoT.

"There has been a change in philosophy from the belief that IoT is as simple as getting a data plan and connecting hardware," said Chris Baird, CEO of OptConnect, a communications company. Kaysville, Utah, which provided managed services. for many years and officially launched an IOT Management Services offering at the recent IoT 2019 global conference and exhibition in Santa Clara, California. “If you think about how large the IoT is for businesses and everything they need to start, it can be complex for many companies to bring together different parts of the entire IoT solution. "

The IoT managed services the market is growing rapidly, according to Persistence Market Research. The market, which includes services such as infrastructure management, network management, device management, security management, and data management, by the way, will be worth over $ 94 billion by 2026, with a compound annual growth rate of over 20% between 2018 and 2026, an estimated PMR 2018 study.

Different needs

Ultimately, there are many reasons why a company can choose a managed IoT service provider. The most obvious is that they lack the knowledge and experience to do the job effectively and profitably on their own.

Steve Garrett, OptConnect product manager said that with a growing interest in IoT, many companies are just starting to explore it "they are not fully educated and have no idea how to connect their equipment." These are the companies that are likely to need a fully managed service solution that includes everything from sensor hardware to connectivity, security, network monitoring and potentially more.

Other companies, said Garrett, "know the IoT and are trying to rebuild it. They could try to make the decision to create or buy and realize that there is simply too much choice. An MSP can help a company at this point. , managing parts of the IoT construction or managing aspects of the IoT architecture that the company decides not to manage alone.

Garrett said companies that are very knowledgeable about IoT and advanced enough in their IoT travel, however, may find themselves forced to migrate a self-managed architecture to a third-party managed service. "We have customers who have implemented 4,000 to 5,000 sites on mobile phones, who are overwhelmed and have learned that they can no longer grow their business. We have passed many of these portfolios and transferred them to our services."

For some companies, the need for managed Internet of Things Services may not be due to a lack of knowledge, but to more practical business management problems, such as a lack of budgets to distribute IoT equipment. These companies may find it more advantageous to pay the IoT as an ongoing operating expense than to allocate a much larger budget for both the initial investment expenses associated with the implementation of the IoT.

But not all companies may need a "nut soup" managed service solution, as Garrett described. Some companies may not have enough team members with specific skills to manage an aspect of IoT management, such as connectivity, security, data analysis or device management. In these cases, an MSP can manage this sore spot instead of everything. For example, OptConnect, which is largely focused on cellular technology for IoT connectivity, can focus on managing a company's connections with several cellular providers without being more involved in the company's internal IoT architecture if that's all serves, he said.

"Sunset" management

Sometimes the need for managed services becomes clear from the first day that a company starts developing its IoT strategy, but in other cases, the need may be motivated by an event that is not necessarily under the control of that company. An example of this specific type of problem is the so-called "3G sunset", which refers to the plans of several major cell phone operators to ultimately eliminate 3G connectivity as 4G becomes more dominant and 5G begins. to distribute. Many mobile service providers will turn 3G off by the end of the year and 2020, but different operators are likely to do so at different times, making the transition potentially confusing.

Add to that the idea that preparing corporate IoT networks for this transition is not as simple as simply replacing a 3G module with a 4G module. 4G has features, including increased bandwidth, that improve 3G and could provide companies with a reason to rethink their applications and the way they use their IoT connections. 3G modules on industrial equipment may also require more time and planning for disconnection and the regulatory rules governing the certification of these devices may differ from generation to generation. These problems are proving to be a determining factor for companies seeking help from MSP and have inspired some IoT device vendors to start offering device management as a managed service.

"Overall, this is a long-term strategy," said Dennis Kelley, executive vice president of sales for Telit, via email. “With the disappearance of 3G networks, companies that implement IoT must ensure that whatever decision they make, it will last for the duration of their implementation cycle. For example, in the utility sector, they expect the meter to remain off in a customer or industrial site for 10-15 years. "

He added: "When moving from 3G to 4G, this is a technological change, so there are different features and different ways of operating the network. Companies have to take this into account. So there are regulatory considerations." It's not just about removing a form and inserting a new one will suddenly be automatically certified, "said Kelley." In general, regulatory rules have changed since the last time a customer certified. Customers need to be aware of these changes and therefore be prepared to comply with these regulatory rules to implement this next-generation device. "

As IoT becomes more essential to a company's success, more of them can maintain responsibility for certain IoT processes and functions internally, particularly those with the most commercial sensitivity or value. competitive. In these cases, companies are simply trying to protect their "secret sauce" and MSPs need to work with them to supply the parts they need, Kelley said.

"Their concern is security: whether or not someone has access to their request," he said. "So they run it on a CPU and on the motherboard memory, and it works the same way, whether it's a service or a platform. We have customers who want us to manage everything, as far as And we have other customers who just want us to we are a data channel or simply want to add a courier service or be the data platform, so it just depends on the customer and how to run his application. 

What is a router?

Although techno-snobs may flinch at the thought that there are still people on the planet who don't know what a router is, I will still provide a brief description. I know many bright and educated people who use the Internet at home or small businesses via a router for many years without ever needing to know what it is or how it works. Some of these people are now shocked to learn that not only is their router a computer, but it is a computer that criminals can try to exploit in many ways.

The term router derives from the fact that these devices direct traffic between networks: they literally direct data from one digital device to another. For example, when you use your laptop at home to read your emails, messages usually arrive at your laptop through the equipment that came with your Internet service or that you purchased when you configured the Internet service.

Although there are many possible equipment configurations, most include the following functions: modem, router, Wi-Fi (wireless) access point. As this diagram shows, these functions can be performed from separate devices or can be combined in a single box:

The modem takes the signal from your ISP (Internet Service Provider) and converts it into standard network traffic (Ethernet). When the incoming email reaches the router, it decides where to send it. In the past, before Wi-Fi, there was an Ethernet cable that ran from your router (or modem/router) to your laptop. Today many homes and small offices use wireless connections. In this case, traffic, like this email that arrives on your laptop, tablet or smartphone, is routed through the wireless access point.

(Most small home and office Internet connection equipment now support wireless and wired connections, so there may be a wire between the router and printer or network storage (NAS).); many smart TVs use a wired connection to route video from the Internet.)

Of course, your Router Management is doing a lot of work - managing traffic from email to web browsing, printing, streaming of music and videos and enabling online games. A router is also the way most Internet of Things (IoT) devices connect to the Internet, such as smart thermostats, alarm systems, and security cameras.

To do all this work, computing power is needed. This is the reason why routers have evolved into fully-fledged specialized IT systems; Which brings us to the FBI's advice to restart the routers.

Managed router services offer simplicity for Reliable and secure network connectivity

 Whether you need dedicated broadband Internet access, point-to-point connectivity or a network anywhere for multiple sites, Communications has a managed router service to meet your needs. Our managed Services Router provide companies, government offices, and educational institutions with reliable and highly available data network solutions with 24/7 proactive monitoring, fault tickets, and responsive customer support.

Choose the Managed Router Service that best suits your needs:

Dedicated Ethernet Managed Internet Access (E-DIA) - Designed for organizations that require a dedicated and highly secure connection between their local area network (LAN) and the public Internet.

Managed Ethernet Line (E-Line): provides dedicated point-to-point connectivity on the network instead of on the public Internet to improve quality and safety. There are two types of E-Line solutions.

Ethernet Private Line (EPL) - Provides point-to-point connectivity for each circuit.

Ethernet Virtual Private Line (EVPL) - Provides dedicated transport over the network. By using service multiplexing, EVPL reduces the need for CPE ports.

Managed Ethernet Local Area Network (E-LAN) - Ideal for multi-site organizations, this solution extends your native Ethernet environment to multiple locations on our private network. The managed E-LAN is available in two versions:

Ethernet Local Local Network (EPLAN) - Provides connectivity everywhere and allows traffic to flow directly to its destination for fault-tolerant business continuity.

Ethernet Virtual Local Area Network (EVPLAN) - Provides an additional level of control by using virtual LAN IDs which determine which locations can communicate directly with each other.

MPLS VPN - Designed specifically for companies with multi-service and multi-site applications, the MPLS-VPN WAN offers a variety of methods and access speeds, as well as different classes of service. Take advantage of the ubiquitous IP network to offer flexibility, scalability, and ease of use. All client traffic is protected through separate instances and routing tunnels, equivalent to level 2 technologies. CCI manages the routing of all traffic between client sites.

Advantages of managed router services:

Reliability: High availability, supported by guarantees of the service level and proactive monitoring of the network 24/7.

Dedicated Connections: Get dedicated connections on the largest fiber-optic network in Northern New England.

Symmetrical speeds: service offers the same high speeds for downloads and downloads.

Easy to manage: we eliminate the complexity of managing services with proactive troubleshooting tools and dashboards that allow you to track performance and usage. We also deal with the Router management and maintenance of routers.

Highly scalable: with bandwidth options ranging from 1 Mbps to 10 Gbps, we are able to meet your data needs today and tomorrow.

Transparent integration: are you thinking about managed Wi-Fi or VoIP? Managed router services can be combined with other advanced voice and data solutions.

Support: fast response times.