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(Customer Name Here)

WIRELESS SITE SURVEY RESULTS
(10-04)

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Participants:
Company
Wirelessguys

Name
Karen Panet

Telephone
(805) 378-8590 x131

Email
kpanet@wirelessguys.com

Overview:
(Customer) has had a wireless network installed at several of their facilities. The goal was
to provide wireless access for their inventory system and client communications for their
employees. The Access Points are Cisco 1200s. The antennas used are mostly an 8 dBi
outdoor omni or an 8.5 indoor/outdoor diversity patch. The clients use a Teklogix device
that is mounted to a forklift or hand held and they roam around the facilities quickly. Other
clients are internal Cisco cards in laptops. Coverage of the wireless network is spotty. In
lieu of available resources, (Customer) has contracted with WirelessGuys to perform a
survey of the existing network, troubleshoot, and make suggestions for improving wireless
coverage.
The main survey was performed at the (Site) and (Site) Facilities. The Site Survey was
performed on all floors and results of those readings are contained within this report. There
are also three other facilities that have the same issues, but we did not physically visit
them. The suggestions in this report could also be applied to the three other areas to
improve performance.

Survey Results
The coverage of the wireless network is not consistent or contiguous in quite a few places.
The main two reasons are:
1. The 8 dBi omni outdoor antennas are mounted upside down both inside the facility
and outdoors.

These antennas are meant to be mounted with the connecting end down and the nonconnected end up. Radiation for an Omni-directional antenna is shaped like a cone, it
radiates down from the top of the cone in a circle to the ground. When the antennas are
mounted this way, they are radiating into the air. There are ceiling mount versions of
these antennas that could be mounted this way, but these are not them.
2. The access points are configured for diversity on both antenna ports. This means
that both antennas are sending and receiving at the same time and that can cause
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clients to bounce between antennas. Cisco Access points are designed to use
diversity best when connected to Cisco diversity antennas. Since the antennas are
close together and they are not diversity optimized antennas (like the Cisco ones),
you should set one antenna to transmit and one to receive thereby making one cell
as opposed to two. There is a setting in the Cisco radios to set the Receive Antenna
and Transmit Antenna and you would want to set them to Left and Right
respectively. Diversity is a way of overcoming multipathing, but it can also hinder a
wireless network if not used correctly. Of course, the changes should be made and
tests performed on every AP to optimize the antennas.
Another thing that could be contributing to the spotty coverage is the choice of antennas
themselves. In our experience, Cisco APs work really well with Cisco antennas and not so
well with third-party antennas. This is probably why the higher gain antennas were used,
but we have found that even though you put a higher gain antenna on to try to push
through the areas, they still do not work as well as the Cisco antennas do.
The following are some readings from various sites in the (Site) Facility and (Site) Facilities
as well as suggestions for improvements at the particular locations.

(Site) Facility

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Test site was in the room in front of AP5. The RSSI should have been over 30 but was
actually around 23. Cisco RSSI values are from 0-100 and should not be lower than 30.
This is not an acceptable reading. Antennas on AP 5 are mounted upside down and antenna
ports are both set for diversity. Recommend turning antennas right side up and setting
transmit to left antenna and receive to the right antenna. Retest after these modifications
have been made. If there is still not a sufficient signal, you can up the power but there is a
very small signal from AP28 which is close to this one.

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From the wall, to the right of the office and left of AP 27, we can pick up 3 access points.
All of them have good signal to the client. Once the antennas are pointed in the proper
direction, it is possible that you would not need AP26 anymore. Of course testing should be
done to make sure.
A big problem is walking through the different areas and maintaining a signal. For example,
when standing between APs 20 and 21, there are two APs within range with low signals, so
the client will get poor signal quality because it will keep switching from one to another
depending on which one has the best signal. You want that client hand-off to be more
elegant. Once the antennas are turned right side up, there will be improvement. There are
also quite a few places where the forklifts have accidentally hit the antennas and they are
pointing in strange directions. These of course will have to be fixed, but relocating them
might also be a better solution. You can switch out the antennas for 180 degree antennas
that mount against a wall, or 90 degree antennas that mount in a corner. Different
antennas mounted in areas where the forklifts wont hit them will help with over all stability.
In a few areas there are 8.5 dBi 60 degree directional antennas. The horizontal beam width
on these is only 3 degrees which is good for a point to point link, but not necessarily an
application where client cards need to hand off to other APs in a timely manner. For
example, from the hallway where a client would walk, the signal was extremely low to the
AP and when we got closer the signal, of course, was stronger. Being up on a ladder at the
beginning of the hallway made the signal as good as when we were 10 feet away from the
AP. You can fix these issues by installing a different AP with a wider horizontal beam width,
or try lowering the antenna by 2 to 4 feet and see if your signal gets better. The antenna is
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mounted over 10 feet above where the clients would roam so getting it a little closer to
clients, but still higher, will improve signal.
The power on most of the radios is turned way down. This was done at the request of
(Customer) because of concerns that the APs would over power each other. Adjusting the
power settings in a dense environment is an effective way of preventing interference from
neighboring APs. However, sometimes you can hurt the performance by doing this. In a
couple of areas, where you know you can not contact any other APs that share the same
channel, it would be wise to turn up the power so that it would give clients plenty of signal.
Clients require a minimum signal of -85 dBm to connect to the APs and have good signal
quality which enables them to access applications. When the signal is turned down and
there are several clients trying to connect at the same time, non-connection issues can
occur. We would suggest testing all corners of each room and adjusting power as
necessary.

(Site) Facility

At this facility the antennas are again mounted upside down as shown in the pictures at the
beginning of this document. Turning the antennas right side up will improve performance.
This facility has an indoor/outdoor deployment of mostly APs for the Teklogix application,
but also has a point to point bridge where the network is being extended to the facility from
a building across the street. We do not have the data on that link, but we would suggest
changing out the antennas to ones that are horizontally polarized and with a small beam
width. This will help cancel out any interference with the client network and make that link
more stable.
Since this is an outside facility, neighboring APs will be a source of interference. We found
many APs surrounding the complex and some are radiating at full power.
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The above is a small sampling of the surrounding APs. These APs also use the default
channels of 1,6, and 11. We would suggest turning up the power on (Customer) APs to
overcome any interference.
We were also asked to use the spectrum analyzer to see if there was any interference in the
5GHz band for the BSU/SU link at the main office. We ran some logs that are inherent in
the product and found that on the BSU log, the interference number was higher than is
recommended.

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This indicates that there is some other equipment in the area that is around the same
frequency. We scanned the band and found that the following frequencies are in use in the
surrounding area:
5485
5665
5725
5775
5825
The frequencies that the Proxim units can be set to are:
Channel
Channel
Plan
Frequency Plan
4A
5743
5A
4B
5764
5B
4C
5785
5C
4D
5806
5D
5E

Frequency
5740
5757
5774
5792
5809

Channel
Plan
6A
6B
6C
6D
6E
6F

Frequency
5740
5754
5768
5781
5795
5809

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We would suggest using a plan that will be at least 20MHz away from any used or known
channel. Plan 5B would probably work best. As always, testing after the change will need
to be done.
The last area of concern here was that the point to point bridges were not always working.
When this happens, the network gets cut off to the rest of the network. We would need to
get into the configuration of the Access Points to be sure, but AP5 has been indicated as a
repeater of the bridge on the Box loading shed and we do not see how his is possible. The
Box loading shed has a Yagi antenna pointed at another pre-existing bridge.

This Yagi is pointed away from AP5 which is a little to the left of this antenna.

We would need to communicate more to the internal IT associates in order to determine the
correct configuration, but it is our understanding that the omni antennas above are trying to
communicate with the Yagi. This is not a valid configuration for two reasons: APs cans be
repeaters and APs without having two radios in the unit and the Yagi antennas are meant
to communicate with another Yagi in a point to point configuration. If this is desired, then
we suggest you get another AP and Yagi and install it near the existing one with at least 6
feet of separation. Then you can connect them with a cross-over cable or into a switch.
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Network Testing
Testing the network was part of the diagnostic process. We tested the communication
while wired into the network and then from a client to the AP in the office (AP1). The
wired network performed well in general. We did not see any anomalies that would
make us believe that something in the network was causing problem with the wireless
network in general. With the AP 27, AP 28, AP5 triangle we did see some packet errors
and long response times for being wired which supports the problems we experienced
on the wireless side. AP15 also shows issues but this is an AP that has been
accidentally hit by a forklift and the antennas are out of alignment.

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The results below were from pinging the access points for a couple of minutes at a time.
The higher millisecond reading indicates that those APs might have connection issues:

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As you can see, when wired there are not many network related issues. The spikes
here and there are normal.
When wireless, there will always be some latency because it is inherent in the devices,
but the rule of thumb is to add 20-50 milliseconds to what your wired network is clocked
at. The following is a sample when connected to your wireless network:

As you can see the latency gets to be very high. This reading would indicate that there
are issues with the transmitting and receiving of data on the wireless network.
Antennas are the first thing we try to tweak when we see these kinds of issues.

Summary
Following the recommendations in the pages above will negate the issues that the
wireless network has been having. Start with re-mounting the antennas and configuring
them properly in the APs, then move to power settings, and finally possibly replacing
some antennas. Testing throughout this process will assure you of success.
If you would like Wirelessguys to perform the work, please call us and we can send you
a quote.
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