Surveying Your Wi-Fi Home Network with Ekahau HeatMapper

[via Wi-Fi Net News] - Ekahau is an established company specializing in mapping and tracking Wi-Fi devices for enterprise networks. Their newest application, HeatMapper, is a free download designed for people to use in their homes. HeatMapper may share some underlying technology with Ekahau's other products (Site Survey and Real-Time Location System), but it is a separate application. This week I briefly tested this tool on one home network, with mixed results.

HeatMapper requires you to walk around a premises with a laptop or other mobile device with the application installed, and repeatedly click on its 2-D map to indicate your location. To build a map with any accuracy, you should load an accurate floorplan map of your residence into the tool and plan to spend at least 30 minutes walking around it to generate the data. Its unlikely you'll have such a map handy (especially when mapping away from home) so be prepared to invest additional time building that. I created the screenshot shown at right by quickly surveying the immediate area around one Wi-Fi router using the tool's basic grid (no floormap) view.

Unfortunately, HeatMapper only detects wireless access points; it does not map Wi-Fi clients. In my experiment, the application also seemed to incorrectly detect the configuration of the router, reporting it as running 802.11b when it was actually configured as 802.11g.

HeatMapper's primary value is in detecting wireless "dead spots" within a home. However, because the tool cannot continuously monitor points on the map for changes in signal strength, you may need to re-run your survey multiple types to pinpoint the extent of dead spot or wireless interference issues which tend to vary over time.

Ekahau HeatMapper Screenshot - Image: Bradley Mitchell / About.com