Wireless Consulting Services

Ekahau has developed an integrated suite of advanced software apps, compact scanning hardware, and collaboration services to enable organizations of any size to design, verify, tune, manage, and troubleshoot Wi-Fi deployments. Progent's certified Ekahau consultants can help your company to utilize Ekahau technology to perform any facet of Wi-Fi design and maintenance. Services available from by Progent's Wi-Fi consultants include:

• Establish the RF profile of your physical environment: (floor plan, materials, ceiling height, generators of radio frequency interference, etc.)
• Estimate your present and future needs for Wi-Fi coverage, workloads, and performance
• Generate a model deployment for Wi-Fi AP models, antenna alternatives, placement, heights, and configuration
• Propose a secondary coverage plan for roaming and high availability
• On-premises RF testing and verification of your actual Wi-Fi implementation
• Onsite identification of RF interference from sources that are not part of your Wi-Fi implementation
• Create a channel plan that reduces shared-channel competition and adjacent channel disruption
• Centrally manage single or multiple Wi-Fi sites
• Create actionable reports on Wi-Fi health analytics and problems
• Resolve current problems and take care of looming ones before they impair productivity
• Adapt your Wi-Fi solution cost effectively over time according to your evolving needs

Progent also provides on-premises support for carrying out Wi-Fi network surveys with the help of Ekahau's Sidekick spectrum analyzer to verify actual performance and to find dead spots, RF congestion, and other problems.

Ekahau's Product Family for Wi-Fi Network Design and Support
Ekahau Connect is a suite of applications, hardware, and services from Ekahau for planning and maintaining modern Wi-Fi networks. Used by most Fortune 500 businesses, Ekahau's Wi-Fi products are available by subscription as a comprehensive suite. Some components of Ekahau Connect are also available separately. Progent can utilize Ekahau technology to design, verify and tune your Wi-Fi deployment or assist your IT staff to use your own Ekahau products.

Major pieces of the Ekahau Connect product suite include:

Ekahau Pro
Ekahau Pro software enables you to plan, validate and debug Wi-Fi deployments. To build a predictive model, you draw a floor plan of your venue. You then draw walls or import them to Ekahau Pro from a CAD file. You include doors, cable conduits, stairwells, and elevators and list building materials. You then pick specific Wi-Fi access point products from Ekahau Pro's database, which includes coverage characteristics and antenna patterns associated with your selected APs. Ekahau Pro's 3-D planner lets you increase or take away APs to build a heat map depicting Wi-Fi coverage. You can adjust AP type, location, height and antenna selection so the predictive model shows the coverage you require.

Ekahau Sidekick
After your predictive plan is completed and your access points are installed and set up, you can verify your system by carrying out an onsite survey with the Ekahau Sidekick, a portable RF scanning device that works natively with Ekahau Pro software. This allows you to measure actual Wi-Fi coverage so you can tweak your access point deployment as necessary. Sidekick's integrated spectrum analyzer can detect locations experiencing RF noise from sources not part of your Wi-Fi network and Ekahau Pro can plot these problem spots on your screen map so you can resolve the conflicts.

Ekahau Sidekick 2
The Ekahau Sidekick 2 mobile scanning device includes the ability to test and measure the newer 6 GHz wireless networks (Wi-Fi 6E) as well as traditional 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz deployments. Speed and accuracy are boosted with four tri-band radios and a spectrum analyzer that scans at 50 sweeps/second. Compared to the previous Sidekick scanner, Sidekick 2 offers almost double the speed for dual-band Wi-Fi surveys and is 33% quicker at surveying tri-band networks. Nine integrated 3D antennas deliver omnidirectional measurement repeatability and virtually eliminate discrepancies between Sidekick 2 scanners. A fast-charge battery supports two working days on a typical site survey with just one charge.

Ekahau Analyzer
Ekahau Analyzer software integrates with the Sidekick scanner and shows the results of key health recordings of a Wi-Fi site. To assist businesses to troubleshoot RF interference sources, the Analyzer software tests against your specific standards and uses pass/fail indicators to show results. Whenever a problem is detected, you can run the Sidekick's spectrum analysis hardware to hone in on sources of RF interference or overcrowded channels. Features of Ekahau Analyzer software include Auto-Test, Signal Strength Analysis, Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) Analysis, Channel Quality Analysis, and Spectrum Measurements. Collected data can be displayed on a mobile Android or iOS phone or tablet connected to your compact Sidekick signal scanner, facilitating the collection of RF measurements.

Ekahau Insights
Ekahau Insights software provides unified visibility into Wi-Fi network quality across multiple Wi-Fi deployments worldwide. Insight allows businesses to find and organize predictive design and Wi-Fi site survey projects, rank projects based on site health, maintain an inventory of operating APs based on locality and age of technology, and monitor survey activity to ensure you validate your Wi-Fi sites at a reasonable rate. Automated analysis shows how your Wi-Fi deployments operate in comparison to your goals by site, floor, and area within a specific floor. A heatmap viewer provides visualizations for primary and secondary signal strength, channel interference, SNR, and additional Wi-Fi site health measurements. The ability to use tags streamlines file and workflow organization by permitting you to classify and search projects by client name, site type, workflow status, and other meaningful categories.

Ekahau Capture
Ekahau Capture software operates with the Ekahau Sidekick scanner to collect Wi-Fi packets to assist experts to fix challenging network issues. Capturing Wi-Fi packets may be necessary to solve problems in areas such as connectivity, roaming between APs, garbled audio, dropped phone calls, unbalanced channel use, faulty Wi-Fi software drivers, broken hardware, improperly configured access points, outdated devices, or cybersecurity threats such as unencrypted traffic or DoS attacks. You can also use Ekahau Capture to calculate Wi-Fi performance stats such as retry rates, average throughput, and frame class distribution. Ekahau Capture saves packet collections in the de facto standard libpcap (pcap) format so you can analyze them using familiar tools. Ekahau Capture can collect and save 802.11/a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi frames and perform captures on one channel or on multiple Wi-Fi channels.

Progent's Predictive Wi-Fi Planning Services
Progent's predictive Wi-Fi design services can be carried out offsite and make use of Ekahau's cutting-edge RF modeling and analysis tools to design a cost-effective wireless network. With predictive design, you send Progent's Wi-Fi experts your facility's floor plans and a description of your environment such as walls, doors, cabling, elevator shafts, and building materials. You also define your coverage, capacity, and throughput targets plus any constraints. Also, you project the kinds of devices your clients will connect, the applications they will use, and the maximum wireless traffic they will generate. Progent will utilize your information to build a digital simulation of your facility and develop a plan that includes the preferred vendors for your APs and controllers, the required number of APs, their ideal location and antenna type, their most effective configuration and their predicted throughput.

Progent's On-premises Wi-Fi Site Survey
Progent's on-premises Wi-Fi survey utilizes Ekahau's specialized RF signal measurement device and associated software tools to help you to validate, tune, and troubleshoot your current wireless deployment. This is typically undertaken immediately after a fresh installation or used as a tool to scale, optimize, or debug a mature Wi-Fi LAN. Available across the United States, Progent's on-premises wireless site survey services include walkthrough measuring for radio frequency coverage and interference, detection of access point overpopulation, RF propagation tracking, security assessment, and identification of optimum locations for client-requested Wi-Fi APs.

Progent can deliver remote and on-premises guidance for a broad array of Wi-Fi APs and offer support such as Cisco Aironet Wi-Fi AP integration, Meraki Wi-Fi access point cloud management, Cisco Small Business 100/300/500 wireless access point consulting, Cisco Catalyst Wi-Fi access point solution planning, Ubiquiti UniFi wireless AP configuration, and Apple AirPort wireless AP setup. Progent's on-premises survey features interviews with your IT management staff to define target functionality for the WLAN. Progent's BICSI RCDD and Ekahau certified Wi-Fi survey engineers can recommend affordable Wi-Fi network enhancements that incorporate the latest wireless products and deliver top ROI.

Progent can provide expertise for creating a state-of-the-art BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) wireless network by providing services such as iPhone and iPad integration, and Android phone and tablet consulting. Apple iPhones and iPads, Androids, Windows Phones, and other mobile devices can present user density challenges and may also cause transmit power mismatches that require careful setup for access points. Progent's Wi-Fi site survey services provide the information you need to understand these challenges and build an efficient and productive BYOD network.

Deliverables for Progent's predictive and on-premises wireless site surveys can include:

• RF Wi-Fi Spectrum Analysis including identification of RF issues related to your facility's arrangement, material structure, and other potential causes of interference so you can anticipate and mitigate problems during the WLAN design phase.
• Coverage Maps in the form of color RF contour images (heat maps) for the spots that need coverage to help you to determine the most efficient quantity and location of Wi-Fi APs and identify likely RF spillover areas and coverage gaps
• Capacity Plan for defining and delivering the bandwidth needed to accommodate all apps and users
• Cable Paths depicted as line diagrams you can supply to cabling installers
• Device Installation guidance on where and how to deploy wireless devices plus description of additional hardware that may be needed (NEMA enclosures, antennas, etc.)
• Infrastructure Requirements to specify all facility and networking resources necessary to service the wireless deployment such as available switch ports, POE, electrical power, and rack space

Advanced Network Infrastructure Expertise
Progent has one of the largest teams of certified Cisco CCIE IT infrastructure consultants of any independent IT services company in the country. and can assist you to integrate your LAN seamlessly into your corporate network. Progent can assist your company to configure and manage Cisco routers, switches, and security appliances as well as Cisco Mobility products including wireless APs and wireless LAN controllers. Progent also can provide advanced consulting for networking products from Juniper Networks, Apple, WatchGuard, and other leading vendors. To find out more about Progent's remote and onsite consulting expertise for Cisco Wi-Fi technology, refer to consulting and debugging support for Cisco Wi-Fi products.

To assist you with company-wide cybersecurity issues, Progent can provide the support of cybersecurity engineers who have earned advanced credentials from CISA, CISSP-ISSAP, CRISC and other major security organizations. Progent's security and compliance consultants can provide a broad range of remote and onsite services such as vulnerability assessments, penetration testing, disaster recovery planning, and endpoint active security monitoring and ransomware defense with SentinelOne technology.

Contact Progent for Ekahau Wi-Fi Solutions Consulting
To find out more about Progent's consulting expertise for remote Ekahau Wi-Fi predictive design and on-premises wireless site surveys, call 1-800-993-9400 or visit Contact Progent.