Wireless Consulting Services

Ekahau offers a comprehensive family of advanced software apps, portable scanning hardware, and cloud collaboration services that allow organizations of any size to design, verify, tune, monitor, and troubleshoot Wi-Fi deployments. Progent's certified Ekahau experts can assist you to utilize Ekahau products to perform any stage of Wi-Fi design and maintenance. Services offered by Progent's Wi-Fi consultants include:

• Establish the RF characteristics of your physical venue: (floor plan, materials, ceiling height, sources of radio frequency interference, etc.)
• Estimate your present and future requirements for Wi-Fi coverage, workloads, and throughput
• Generate a model deployment for Wi-Fi access point (AP) types, antenna options, locations, heights, and configuration
• Design a secondary coverage design for roaming and high availability
• On-premises RF measurement and validation of your actual Wi-Fi implementation
• On-premises detection of RF interference from sources independent of your Wi-Fi system
• Create a channel plan that minimizes co-channel contention and nearby channel interference
• Centrally monitor multiple Wi-Fi sites
• Provide actionable reports on Wi-Fi health analytics and problems
• Resolve existing problems and anticipate emerging ones before they impair productivity
• Improve your Wi-Fi solution intelligently over time to continue meeting your evolving needs

Progent also provides on-premises assistance for carrying out Wi-Fi site surveys using Ekahau's Sidekick RF analyzer to measure actual performance and to find dead spots, RF congestion, and other problems.

Ekahau's Product Line for Wi-Fi Network Design and Maintenance
Ekahau Connect is a suite of applications, hardware, and services from Ekahau for planning and managing modern Wi-Fi networks. Used by the majority of Fortune 500 businesses, Ekahau's Wi-Fi offerings are provided on a subscription basis as an integrated bundle. Some products included in Ekahau Connect are also offered individually. Progent can use the Ekahau stack to design, validate and troubleshoot your Wi-Fi network or assist your IT staff to use your own Ekahau products.

Key pieces of the Ekahau Connect suite include:

Ekahau Pro
Ekahau Pro software allows you to plan, validate and debug Wi-Fi networks. To build a predictive model, you draw a floor plan of your building. You then draw walls or import them to Ekahau Pro from a CAD program. You include doors, cable conduits, stairways, and elevator shafts and specify construction materials. You then pick various Wi-Fi access point models from Ekahau Pro's built-in database, which includes coverage characteristics and antenna patterns associated with your selected access points. Ekahau Pro's 3-D planner allows you to increase or take away access points to create a heat map of Wi-Fi coverage. You can modify access pints type, location, height and antenna selection until the predictive model displays the coverage you require.

Ekahau Sidekick
Once your predictive plan is done and your access points are installed and configured, you can test your system by performing an onsite survey with the Ekahau Sidekick, a compact RF scanning device that integrates with Ekahau Pro software. This lets you measure true Wi-Fi coverage so you can tweak your access point solution as necessary. Sidekick's integrated spectrum analyzer can detect locations subject to RF noise from sources not part of your Wi-Fi network and Ekahau Pro software can display these trouble spots on your screen map so you can correct the issues.

Ekahau Sidekick 2
The Ekahau Sidekick 2 portable scanning device introduces the ability to validate the latest 6 GHz Wi-Fi networks (Wi-Fi 6E) in addition to traditional 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz environments. Speed and accuracy are enhanced with four tri-band radios and a spectrum analyzer capable of scanning at 50 sweeps/second. In comparison to the earlier Sidekick device, Sidekick 2 offers nearly twice the speed for dual-band site surveys and is 33% quicker at surveying tri-band Wi-Fi networks. Nine built-in 3D antennas deliver omnidirectional measurement repeatability and virtually do away with variances between Sidekick 2 scanners. A fast-charge battery lasts two working days on an average site survey with just one charge.

Ekahau Analyzer
Ekahau Analyzer software communicates with the Sidekick scanner and displays the results of critical health recordings of a Wi-Fi network. To assist you to troubleshoot RF interference problems, the Analyzer software tests against your specific requirements and uses pass/fail indicators to show results. When an issue is flagged, you can run the Sidekick's portable spectrum analyzer to hone in on causes of RF interference or congested channels. Capabilities of 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 scanner, streamlining the acquisition of diagnostic data.

Ekahau Insights
Ekahau Insights software provides centralized monitoring of Wi-Fi network health throughput multiple Wi-Fi deployments around the globe. Insight allows businesses to search and sort predictive planning and Wi-Fi network survey projects, rank projects according to site health, maintain an inventory of active access points based on locality and technology generation, and monitor survey activity to make sure you validate your Wi-Fi venues regularly. Automated analysis reports how your Wi-Fi networks perform in comparison to your goals by network, floor, and area within a specific floor. A heatmap viewer provides graphic renditions for primary and secondary signal strength, channel interference, SNR, and additional Wi-Fi site health data. Support for tags simplifies file and workflow management by permitting you to classify and peruse Wi-Fi projects by client, site type, workflow status, and other meaningful groupings.

Ekahau Capture
Ekahau Capture software operates with the Ekahau Sidekick signal scanner to capture Wi-Fi packets in order to assist experts to resolve complex network issues. Packet capture may be required to troubleshoot problems in areas such as connectivity, roaming between access points, unintelligible audio, dropped calls, uneven channel utilization, faulty Wi-Fi drivers, broken hardware, misconfigured APs, outdated devices, or cybersecurity risks like unencrypted Wi-Fi traffic or denial of Service (DoS) attacks. You can also utilize Ekahau Capture software to determine Wi-Fi performance statistics such as retry frequency, average throughput, and frame type distribution. Ekahau Capture stores packet captures in the de facto standard PCAP file format so you can analyze them using familiar packet analyzers. Ekahau Capture can collect and store 802.11/a/b/g/n/ac frames and perform captures on one channel or on multiple channels.

Progent's Predictive Wi-Fi Design Services
Progent's predictive Wi-Fi planning services can be carried out remotely and make use of Ekahau's advanced RF modeling and analysis tools to plan an efficient Wi-Fi network. With predictive design, you send Progent's wireless professionals your facility's floor plans and a description of your environment including walls, doors, cable access, stairways, and fabrication materials. You also define your coverage, capacity, and throughput targets as well as your constraints. Also, you estimate the types of endpoints your clients will connect, the apps they will run, and the maximum traffic they will produce. Progent will use your information to build a mathematical simulation of your environment and devise a design that includes the most appropriate manufacturers for your APs and controllers, the required number of APs, their ideal placement and antenna selection, their most effective configuration and their predicted performance.

Progent's On-premises Wi-Fi Site Survey
Progent's onsite wireless survey utilizes Ekahau's specialized RF signal measurement instrument and associated software to help you to validate, optimize, and troubleshoot your current Wi-Fi infrastructure. This is typically performed shortly after a recent installation or used as a tool to scale, tune, or debug a mature Wi-Fi network. Offered throughout the United States, Progent's on-premises wireless site survey services include walkthrough measuring for RF coverage and interference, detection of AP overpopulation, RF propagation tracking, security auditing, and identification of optimum locations for client-requested Wi-Fi APs.

Progent's consultants can deliver online and onsite guidance for a broad range of Wi-Fi APs and offer services such as Aironet wireless access point set up, Meraki wireless AP cloud management, Cisco Small Business 100/300/500 Wi-Fi access point consulting, Cisco Catalyst wireless AP deployment design, Ubiquiti UniFi WiFi access point integration, and Apple AirPort Wi-Fi AP installation. Progent's onsite survey includes consultation with your network management to determine target functionality for the Wi-Fi network. Progent's BICSI RCDD and Ekahau certified Wi-Fi survey professionals can recommend affordable Wi-Fi LAN enhancements that utilize the latest Wi-Fi products and provide maximum ROI.

Progent offers help for creating a state-of-the-art BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) Wi-Fi environment by providing services like iPhone and iPad integration, and Android phone and tablet consulting. iPhones and tablets, Androids, Windows Phones, and other mobile endpoints can present client density challenges and can also create transmit power mismatches that call for careful configuration of APs. Progent's wireless site survey services provide the information necessary to address these issues and design an affordable and productive BYOD ecosystem.

Deliverables for Progent's predictive and onsite wireless site surveys can include:

• Radio Wi-Fi Spectrum Analysis including detection of RF issues related to your environment's layout, material structure, and other potential sources of interference so you can foresee and resolve issues during the WLAN planning process.
• Coverage Maps that show color RF contour images (heat maps) for the spots that need coverage to help you to select the optimal number and position of Wi-Fi APs and indicate potential RF leakage zones and coverage gaps
• Capacity Plan for specifying and providing the bandwidth required to support all apps and users
• Cable Paths depicted as red line diagrams you can supply to cabling installers
• Device Installation advice on where and how to deploy wireless devices plus identification of special hardware that may be needed (NEMA enclosures, radio antennas, etc.)
• Infrastructure Requirements to specify all facility and networking resources needed to support the wireless deployment such as available switch interfaces, Power over Ethernet (POE), electrical power, and rack capacity

Advanced Network Infrastructure Expertise
Progent maintains one of the largest teams of certified Cisco CCIE network infrastructure experts of any independent IT support firm in the country. and can help you to integrate your wireless LAN seamlessly into your corporate network. Progent can assist your company to install and maintain Cisco ISR routers, switches, and security appliances as well as Cisco Mobility products including Wi-Fi APs and Wi-Fi LAN controllers. Progent also can provide advanced consulting for networking products from Juniper, Apple, Ubiquiti, and other top providers. To learn more about Progent's remote and on-premises consulting services for Cisco wireless technology, refer to consulting and debugging support for Cisco wireless products.

To help you with enterprise-wide cybersecurity issues, Progent offers the services of cybersecurity engineers who have been awarded advanced certifications from CISM, CISSP-ISSAP, GIAC and other prominent security authorities. Progent's security and compliance specialists offer a wide range of remote and onsite services such as security audits, stealth penetration testing, disaster recovery preparedness, and endpoint remote security monitoring and ransomware defense with SentinelOne technology.

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