Brief

I found myself on a call with a colleague discussing the results from a post-deployment survey, we wanted to know the exact RSSI threshold at which Ekahau (iPad app in this specific case, but should be true for both iPad and desktop apps) will auto place a surveyed AP onto the map.

Main topic

During survey Ekahau (sidekick) receives beacon frames from all the APs in your environment, caches them and plots them onto your map in response to your location data entry. Every detected AP sits in the ‘No location’ state until a beacon with RSSI -55 dBm is detected! At this point Ekahau ‘auto-places’ the AP onto the relevant map. The precise location of the AP is calculated and updated as new survey data is collected into the project.

The threshold for an AP to appear on a map is -55 dBm

The precise location is updated within a map as survey data is collected

To my knowledge, Ekahau will not move an AP between floors automatically. This can result in an AP being auto-placed onto an incorrect floor and the location update mechanism will not shift that AP to a different map / floor. This can be resolved manually by:

• Right click on the target AP
• ‘Clear from map’ This returns the AP to the ‘No location’ state
• Change your map to the ‘correct’ one
• (left) Click drag the AP by the radio icon onto the desired map

Sources

This threshold data came from a member of the Ekahau development team.