On April 9th the world’s Wi-Fi Pros were invited to a webinar by one of our industry’s leader in software tools, Ekahau, for the launch of something that would forever change the face of our beloved ESS. Since a lot of us Wi-Fi geeks were involved in the beta of some of the new products, the anticipation was palpable.

The idea behind ESS Pro and Connect is to harness the power of the Sidekick, their awesome wireless data acquisition tool (it’s a sniffer, a scanner and a spectrum analyzer in one tool that’s smaller than your average purse). Many bloggers have raved about the possibilities that the new version of ESS, now called Ekahau Pro, was bringing to the table. In short, Ekahau Pro is Ekahau Site Survey, version 10. There are lots of nice enhancements, the greatest one being the complete rewrite to a more effective and less processor-intensive language so that Ekahau Pro is blazing fast. I strongly encourage you to watch my favorite Ekahau Geeks introduce their new version here: https://youtu.be/81dFV8o-FkE

But, what is Ekahau Connect then? Easy, it’s the complete package which includes Ekahau Pro, the Ekahau Cloud, Ekahau for Ipad (YES!!) and Ekahau Capture. The Cloud allows you to share your documents at your desk with the people in the field and easily transfer data back and forth and really quickly. Pair it with an Ipad and a Sidekick and your survey life will forever be changed. The only additional accessory that’s required is the right cable: if you have a Lightning to USB camera adapter and your Sidekick cable, you’re good to go! A laptop is necessary to use Capture, a nifty packet sniffer harnessing once again the strength of the Sidekick to be able to capture data over 2 channels (roaming tests, anyone?). The capture can then be opened in your favorite packet capture tool for further analysis.

As I’ve mentioned, a lot of bloggers and podcasters have posted thorough analyses of all the new features in ESS, but I’ve noticed a lot of the questions on Twitter are around the purchasing aspect of the new version and services. Let me try to make it clearer for you all….

Ekahau Pro is the latest version, and if you have a support contract with Ekahau, you are entitled to download the new version free of charge as long as your contract is up to date. So if you have not yet downloaded it, what are you waiting for? You’re going to love its blazing speed, myriad of AP, antennas and ease of use.

If you currently have a support contract and would like to get the Capture tool, the Ipad software and the Cloud service, you will need to pay a little more money to add these services to your current contract. Depending on where you stand, you can either buy a new support contract including the services (if you’re close to renewal) or a conversion to the new services. The cost of a conversion ranges from 300 to 900$ depending where you stand in your renewal process. Those prices are good up till the end of June 2019 so if you have not yet gotten approval, I would hurry to take this sweet offer and the even sweeter tools they will provide you with. It is money well invested. I strongly encourage you to contact either Ekahau Sales or your favorite reseller (in the US Wireless Lan Professionals comes to mind, as well as A-N-D in Canada) for more details. They may even have other bundles with packet sniffing software such as Omnipeek to suggest. (FYI I have no interest in naming them, I just happen to be a customer of both companies and they are the two names that came to mind)

Before I let you read up some other good posts from my peers about the new tools, I really want to stress one thing that makes a difference in my appreciation of Ekahau’s products: the genuine interest they take in learning about what Wi-Fi pros want and need out of their tools. The process of creating Ekahau Pro started with Ekahau Masters, an awesome occasion for several professionals to get together with Ekahau software engineers and technology staff to brainstorm and come up with the best tools possible. The Masters contribute with their personnal expertise, whether it is through working for a large VAR, a manufacturer, being a Packet Whisperer or an Airport Wi-Fi Engineer who provides the best Wi-Fi experience for millions of people every year. Then the process moved on a beta test which involved a long list of Wi-Fi Pros from all over the world and in all sorts of verticals. There were long discussions, tweaks, comments and several ahah moments through the 6+ months of the beta. The coolest thing (aside from being heard) was to discover new ways of working, different work processes and different uses of a tool I’ve used for so long. So really, Ekahau’s two great assets are its people and their commitment to making software that meets the need of the Wi-Fi Pro. It’s always a genuine pleasure to work with Mikko, his team, Joel and Jerry and their funny janitor Jussi because aside from being awesome people, they listen to all ideas, crazy or not and will seriously consider them. Well, aside from the really wacky ideas some of us may have had over one or ten whiskys…

Want to hear or read more about the cool features in Ekahau 10 or Connect? Here’s a few cool resources:

Keith Parsons interviews the team behind EKahau Connect/

Rowell and François about the new Ekahau Pro and Connect

Sam Clements and Blake Krone about Ekahau Pro and Connect

Lee Badman’s take on the new Ekahau Connect and Ekahau Pro

Don’t forget to check out my earlier posts for a cool coupon to save on your way to Wi-Fi Trek!