As a long-time Ekahau user (pretty sure I was one of the first few American customers way back when), I’ve gotten used to continuous improvement and evolution from Ekahau Site Survey (ESS) suite of tools. There have always been new features right around the corner, and the company has been perhaps the best I’ve ever seen at gathering and acting on user feedback. It’s been a great run. In the recent past, the hot-selling Sidekick provided a unique new dimension to the survey and spectrum analysis processes, and the Ekahau company was purchased by Ookla/Ziff-Davis. Both of those developments are pivotal to what comes next for Ekahau.
And what comes next is called Ekahau Connect.
There’s A LOT here to talk about, starting with ESS getting rebadged as Ekahau Pro, now compatible with both Windows and Mac operating systems. (If you are new to the world of WLAN support, trust me that Mac is a far-better tool platform than Windows- and I am unabashedly NOT an Apple lover.)
Then there is Sidekick’s expanded capabilities- including wireless packet capture leveraging Sidekick’s dual radios (yay!) and the ability to interface with the iPad as a survey platform. This is a pretty big deal, and the light physical weight of the iPad makes for easier, more comfortable surveys.
And… Ekahau does a little catch-up with it’s introduction of Ekahau Cloud. This is one extremely valuable capability that competitor iBwave has had for some time, as I wrote about here. Having used iBwave’s cloud tools, I can assure you that Ekahau’s customers who work in teams are going to love it and there is no doubt that the cloud expertise behind Ookla has some impact here.
And is if this all wasn’t enough for Ekahau Nation, feast your eyes on another new benefit- Ekahau Connect components working together to identify, classify, and locate interferers:
I have been fortunate in that I have been a beta tester for Ekahau’s latest. At the same time, a couple of serious “life happens” events have kept me from being a good beta tester. So for real-world first-hand perspective, I’ll hand you to two two of my favorite people on the No Strings Attached podcast.You’ll be in good hands with Sam and Blake.
wirednot 