MetaGeek and Ekahau: Wi-Fi Analysis To Go

May 12, 2011 By Stephen 1 Comment

Ekahau Mobile Survey — Ekahau and MetaGeek are working together to bring Wi-Fi site surveying and spectrum analysis to the masses in a portable format

The most interesting products and companies at Interop Las Vegas 2011 were found around the edges of the show floor. Companies like NEC, Synology, Ciphertex, and Endace may have gone unnoticed in the shadows of towering booths of the industry titans but deserve attention. One such pairing was two Wi-Fi analysis companies, MetaGeek and Ekahau. Both work together to enable spectrum analysis and site surveying on portable devices – smart phones and tablets.

MetaGeek Makes Spectrum Accessible

One of my personal favorite presentations at Wireless Field Day in March was the awesome startup tale told by Ryan Woodings, founder of MetaGeek. While working on a wireless mouse dongle, Ryan and company noticed RF interference and turned lemons into lemonade: They repurposed the USB dongle as a spectrum analyzer and started a company to make this formerly esoteric technology accessible.

Although MetaGeek’s Wi-Spy is nowhere near as full-featured as the big guys, it’s far more accessible at 1/10 the cost. It’s cheap enough that a home hobbyist could pick one up as a way to learn about Wi-Fi and 2.4 and 5 GHz wireless spectrum. And the Windows software is easy enough that even a storage guy like me could figure out that my home Wi-Fi router was on the wrong channel.

At Tech Field Day, Ryan wowed the crowd with an early peek at an iPad app to interact with Wi-Spy captures. I ran into Ryan at Interop, and he showed me a more-polished version of that app, promising it would hit the App Store soon. He also hinted that an iPhone version would follow, and showed off email and Dropbox integration.

Ekahau Site Survey: Laptop to Android

MetaGeek had a guest in their booth from another company I’d heard of from my Wi-Fi engineer friends: Ekahau makes site survey products for laptops and was talking about an Android version as well. Ekahau’s Mobile Survey supports a variety of Android devices, including the popular Samsung Galaxy Tab and Motorola Droid.

Stephen’s Stance

Wireless Field Day exposed me to a whole new world of enterprise IT. The wireless engineers there spend days roaming through corporate facilities doing site surveys, planning Wi-Fi access point installations, and troubleshooting connectivity and interference. Most use Windows laptops, but it’s exciting to think that Apple iPhones and iPads and Android phones and tablets may also be used in the future. These devices are much more portable, with great battery life and interactive screens. And it looks like MetaGeek and Ekahau are leading the way. I can’t wait to get an update from these companies at Wireless Field Day 2 in early 2012!

You might also want to read these other posts...

GPS Time Rollover Failures Keep Happening (But They’re Almost Done)

This is week “1111111111” in the GPS system. Tomorrow morning it will roll over to week “0000000000”. How well will various systems handle this change? Not well, judging by what we’ve seen so far!

Ranting and Raving About the 2018 iPad Pro

I remain enthusiastic about the iPad Pro, despite getting a scratched screen and my concerns about durability. It’s a worthy successor to the original and offers enough improvements that I’d recommend the upgrade for just about anyone who uses their iPad for serious work. It’s still not yet a laptop replacement, but this is due more to a lack of desktop-class software for iOS than anything in Apple’s control.

Follow the Yellow Brick Road to the Software-Defined Future

November 29, 2012

The Software-Defined Datacenter is a great concept, but it just won’t work. The big enterprise companies will never allow VMware (and daddy EMC) to commoditize them out of existence, so useful implementations will be rarer than ruby slippers. The best we can hope for is point enhancements to enable greater virtual machine mobility through SDN and improved storage integration.

From LAN Manager and SMB to CIFS: The Evolution of Prehistoric PC Network Protocols

March 22, 2012

Computers aren’t much good on their own. This simple fact was evident even at the dawn of the microcomputing age, and has never been more true today in the “post-PC” world. If the standard microcomputer is the “Wintel” box (Microsoft’s Windows, Intel’s CPUs, and all that implies) then the standard network services protocol is SMB. So let’s take a nice deep dive into SMB, past, present, and future!

Defining Failure: What Is MTTR, MTTF, and MTBF?

July 6, 2011

Most computer industry vendors use the term â€œMTBFâ€ rather indiscriminately. But IT pros know that systems do not magically repair themselves, at least not yet, so MTTR and MTTF are just as important!

Why You Should Never Again Utter The Word, “CIFS”

February 16, 2012

CIFS is not the network storage protocol used by Microsoft Windows, and many other clients. The protocol used to share files over a LAN by the majority of personal computers is called SMB. I wish everyone in the industry would get that through their heads.

The Prime Directive of Storage: Do Not Lose Data

December 12, 2014

People call on storage devices and systems to do lots of things, from accelerating I/O to copying and sharing data. But at the heart of it all, storage arrays really have just one job: Do not lose data!

Virtual Machine Mobility: Of What, and to Where and in What State?

January 16, 2012

Moving cold virtual machine images from system to system, or even across great distances, is one of the main selling points of server virtualization. But it becomes much more difficult to manage movement of virtual machines that are still running, especially outside cluster or across WAN links. When talking about virtual machine mobility, it is important to consider what is being moved, the state it is in, and where it is going.

Microsoft’s Overlooked Innovation

February 15, 2010

It’s fun to bash Microsoft. It’s easy, too, with Apple solidly conquering the high end of the PC and mobile markets and Google’s command of the Internet. But how fair are these articles skewering Microsoft, such as “Microsoft’s chronic lack of innovation” published today at Techworld? I suggest that Microsoft innovates as well as, if not better than, any other massive company. But no one innovates like an outsider.

Cisco’s Trojan Horse

September 15, 2014

Industry watchers like me have long wondered when Cisco will transform itself into a full-line IT infrastructure vendor. This strategy was tipped in 2009 as Cisco barged into the server market with UCS. But one leg of the stool is still missing: Storage remains the province of Cisco partners like EMC and NetApp.

MetaGeek Makes Spectrum Accessible

Ekahau Site Survey: Laptop to Android

Stephen’s Stance

You might also want to read these other posts...

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply