Onsite Surveys

Patonuslabs.com

Onsite Surveys (including CIP-014 R4 and R5) are a paid service Patronus Laboratories provides it customers on request.  Onsite Survey services are typically engaged after an initial proposal with estimate has been provided and approved based on a complementary Offsite Survey.

The ability to accurately engineering any product or solution is a function of having all the required information recorded and available to the engineers.  Onsite Surveys must be performed by a qualified personnel to ensure all relevant and required information is collected and recorded.  Any data not available during the engineering phases requires the engineer to make assumptions which may not be accurate.  All assumptions made increase the risk of some sort of problem occurring during implementation.

Patronus Laboratories can rely on data gathered by third parties, but prefers to carry out the onsite surveys themselves to ensure all required information is gathered accurately to eliminate any assumptions during the engineering phase.  Third party Onsite Surveys force Patronus Laboratories engineers to trust the data gathered by the third party is accurate and if it is not, the risk of problems occurring during implementation shall be borne by the third party or end client.

Patronus Laboratories can provide the following types of Onsite Surveys: 

Security Survey

Onsite Security Surveys are completed to gather all relevant facility measurements to enable accurate solution engineering.  Across the dozens and dozens of different technologies that can be implemented in a security solution there are hundreds if not thousands of factors that contribute to the end design its engineering.
It is impossible to transfer the knowledge required to complete a full Security Survey via phone, email, training documents. Only staff with years of experience can recognize all of the factors that would impact a security solution design and engineering process.  
Surveys are about gathering data, therefore the more time that is spent gathering data, the more accurate the engineering can be due to less assumptions being made.

Solar Survey

Many factors affect the design and operation of solar systems.  An Onsite Survey by qualified personnel will ensure all factors are taken into consideration and recorded to enable an accurate solar system engineering.  The Onsite Surveyor will record, measure, and analyze the following information for the engineers:
  • Building mounted
    • Roof design, shingle age and condition
    • Orientation, height, and pitch of roof(s)
    • Available roof space for solar panels, roof vent locations, skylights, etc
    • Electric service panel suitability, including extra space for a new dedicated breaker
    • Existing hot water set-up, including tank
  • Ground Mounted
    • Soil type and condition if the system is to be ground mounted
    • Obstructions above and below ground
    • Pole/Tower height as it relates to local winds and wind loading laws
  • General details
    • Exact latitude and longitude
    • Minimum and maximum air temperatures
    • Tree shading and other factors that will affect system production
    • Any other factors impacting system price and performance

Wireless Survey

There are three types of wireless surveys: Passive, Active, and Predictive.

Passive Survey

Passive surveys are surveys that are performed with a listen-only mode. The survey client never associates to the access point (AP). Such surveys can be helpful when you look for rogue devices or you want a good gauge of RF coverage from the infrastructure devices.

These can be accomplished with a passive survey:

  • Identify rogues
  • Locate RF trouble zones quickly
  • Validate final RF setting
  • Perform initial surveys

The most significant loss of information with passive surveys is uplink information, Physical rate boundaries and retransmission. Physical rates are generally based on RF signal and noise levels. A passive survey only reports signal propagation for beacons measured by particular clients. Physical rates can only be measured by actual data that is sent to and from an AP.

Active Survey

Active surveys are performed with the survey client associated to the APs used throughout the survey. When a client is associated, it performs all the tasks a typical 802.11 client performs, which includes rate shifting data rates as the RF condition changes and performs retransmissions. Active surveys are commonly used for new WLAN deployments because they provide the most details upon which to base a design.

There are two main methods used in active surveys:

  1. Basic Service Set Identifier (BSSID) Method: This method locks a client into an AP's radio MAC address and prevents the client from roaming.
  2. Service Set Identifier (SSID) Method: This is more commonly used for post-deployment scenarios and used to survey multiple APs. It enables the survey client to associate to an SSID where the client roams between multiple APs.

Predictive Surveys

Predictive surveys are performed with a software program. The program uses the information about the coverage area to perform AP placements based on RF algorithms. These surveys are typically void of any type of field measurements.

The best times to incorporate a predictive survey include:

  • When the deployment environment has not yet been built.
  • In order to obtain a budgetary environment for WLAN-related hardware.
  • When roaming requirements are less stringent

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