VisiWave Site Survey v6.0

A new, major release of VisiWave Site Survey is available right now to assist you in building and maintaining your wireless networks. VisiWave has always been a powerful, yet simple, WiFi site survey tool. Now it's even more powerful, but still straightforward to use.

Organize Several Radios Under One Access Point

VisiWave has always referred to the radios heard during a site survey as "access points" or "APs". Version 6.0 now more accurately refers to these simply as "radios". And allows you to organize several radios under a single access point. This mirrors the real world were most APs contain multiple radios.

In the AP List and AP Filter, you can now view all the radios seen grouped in three different ways: SSID, AP, or radios. The different groupings allow you to prioritize how you want to work with the list of radios. Grouping by SSID allows you to easily see all the radios in a particular network. They are further grouped by AP name (a custom name you use to identify the access point). Grouping by AP name allows you to easily work with all the radios in a particular access point. And grouping by radios lets you see the complete list of radios discovered.

Watch the video below to get a glimpse of the new way VisiWave organizes radios, access points, and SSIDs. Focus your attention on the AP List on the right side of the program's window.

Searching for Radios in AP List or AP Filter

Both the AP List and AP Filter now allow you to easily find any item in the lists by providing a filter string. Enter any identifying substring in the "Filter" field and only radios/SSIDS/APs that match that substring will appear in the list.

Find Specific Radios Using AP List Filter

Select Radios by Band in AP List

When creating a heatmap or coverage graph, you can easily include a set of radios based on which band they use (2.4GHz or 5GHz). In the AP List or AP Filter, right click on any SSID or AP and use the "Select" menu to pick which band you want included. Or select many items in the list and choose the same "Select" menu.

Select Radios by Frequency Band

Predictive Survey Performance Increase (Pro only)

The simulation engine has been improved to significantly decrease the time it takes to perform a simulation and decrease the amount of computer memory needed. The engine in this release usually more than doubles the speed and requires only a fraction of the memory for each simulation. This means you are able to get results faster and are able to create more complex and realistic survey area environments.

Improved Predictive Survey Accuracy (Pro only)

The accuracy of predictive surveys has also been improved. Several small improvements on how radio wave propagation is model has caused many noticeable improvements in the predicted results. In particular, thick barriers and barriers made of metal and concrete better reflect real world signal propagation.

Secondary Coverage Graph

You can now create a heatmap that shows the signal strength of the second best AP at each location rather than the strongest. This can be useful by showing what the coverage would be if any single AP selected in the AP Filter was to fail. This is available on the Heatmap Report page by setting the new Secondary Coverage report property to "Yes".

Marking AP Readings as Invalid

Each data point can have many readings representing the radios heard at that location. Sometimes a wireless adapter reports a radio reading that is clearly wrong. Now you can mark these readings as invalid. You do this in the Wi-Fi Details view that is just below the survey map. Right click on the AP reading and select "Mark as Invalid." Then these invalid readings won't be used when generating heatmaps and coverage graphs.

Mark AP Readings as Invalid

Support for Minimum Signal in Coverage Graphs

Coverage graphs (AP Coverage, Channel Map, and Data Rate Map), have always supported a minimum SNR, but now they also support minimum signal strength too. A coverage graph now has a property named "Minimum Signal." If this value is positive, then the collected SNR values are used to create the coverage graph (like before). If this value is negative, then the collected signal strength values are used.

Snap to Grid Support for Predictive Surveys (Pro only)

When adding walls and barriers to describe the survey area in a predictive survey, you can now enable a "snap-to-grid" option. This causes all new barriers and radios to be located on grid boundaries. The grid sizes can be configured using the pop-up menu when you right- click on the survey map.

Snap to Grid Options

Heatmap Contour Lines

Heatmaps can now optionally contain lines outlining each colored contour region. These can be turned on/off either by right clicking on the background image or by setting a report item property.

Heatmap Contour Lines (With and Without)

Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) Support

VisiWave now supports Wi-Fi 6 or 802.11ax networks. You will, of course, need to have a wireless adapter that supports Wi-Fi 6 in order to see these abilities in the software.

Better Default Filename when Creating Reports

When generating a report in the Report View, the suggested name is now the same as the survey filename with the proper extension added. And it defaults to using the same folder as the survey file.

Predictive Report Images Now Include Color Legend (Pro only)

When adding a predictive heatmap to the report, the report page's description now includes the total dBm range and the signal range of each color region of the contour heatmap.

VisiWave v6.0

Download Free Evaluation

If you aren't currently using VisiWave, it's time to take a second look. The full-featured evaluation version is a simple download and install. Download the evaluation version now.

Upgrade to Version 6.0

If you already own VisiWave, upgrade to the latest version. It's a low-cost upgrade and more than worth it.

About VisiWave

VisiWave has been on the market for over 21 years, is used by over a dozen Fortune 100 companies, and has customers in over 80 countries and almost every US State.