Sooner or later, you will get involved with a wireless site survey.
The 2 scenarios that are the catalyst for this are troubleshooting and implementation.
The support scenario is straightforward; someone complains their Wi-Fi is dropping off or slow, so you go out there to test for yourself or to witness the issue firsthand.
I think the implementation reason is far more critical since this is when the WiFi system is deployed and you can document the baseline radio statistics as well as throughput, etc.
I have covered these topics in the past, but its been a while so I will review one basic concept. There are 2 basic types of surveys; Passive and Active.
Passive survey records whatever that radio can hear, no connection or access point authentication is required.
Active surveys require you to successfully authenticate, join or connect and then perform a task, like ping, iperf, etc.
In the video, I show you a simple Windows batch file you can use to perform both types of survey. Keep in mind that if all you need is a passive survey, disabling and enabling your Wifi adapter is not required. one of the benefits of using a real laptop is that you get a baseline based on that laptop's radio and antenna design.
You might consider running these commands manually or the script from the client's laptop to gather more troubleshooting data. Another approach is to run it as a scheduled task to determine if there is a pattern when the complaint happens.
Here is the batch script that I called wifi.bat
echo off
cls
rem to get a list of interfaces type
rem netsh interface show interface
set year=%date:~10,4%
set month=%date:~4,2%
set day=%date:~7,2%
set hr=%TIME:~0,2%
set min=%TIME:~3,2%
set sec=%TIME:~6,2%
echo This script requires you to run the cmd prompt as an administrator
echo ...............................
echo ... Site Survey ..
echo ...............................
set /p "id=Enter Location ID: "
set filename=%year%_%month%_%day%__%hr%_%min%_%sec%_
echo .
echo Disabling WiFi ..
netsh interface set interface "Wi-Fi" admin=disable
timeout /T 3
echo Enabling WiFi
netsh interface set interface "Wi-Fi" admin=enable
timeout /T 5
echo Pinging 8.8.8.8 and writing it to %id%_%filename%_ping.txt
ping 8.8.8.8 >> %id%_%filename%_ping.txt
echo Running iperf and writing it to %id%_%filename%_iperf.txt
iperf3\iperf3 -c home >>%id%_%filename%_iperf.txt
echo ...
echo gathering wifi info and writing it to %id%_%filename%_wifi.txt
netsh wlan show networks mode=bssid >> %id%_%filename%_wifi.txt
timeout /T 2
echo.
echo .. all done
pause.
