One document in the design package is a predictive RF model generated in planning software before any hardware was installed; another is a post-installation walk-through report with measured signal readings from a handheld device. What distinguishes the second document from the first?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
A predictive survey is a forecast — software guessing what the RF weather will look like based on walls and floor plans before a single AP goes up. A post-installation walk-through is the actual weather report, measured with a device physically standing in the building after AP install. One's a plan, the other's proof.
Full Explanation
Predictive and post-installation site surveys serve different, complementary purposes in the site-survey and coverage-plan workflow. A predictive survey uses floor plans, wall materials, and modeled AP placements inside planning software to estimate coverage before any physical work happens, which is useful for early AP count and placement planning but remains an estimate. A post-installation walk-through, by contrast, uses a handheld device physically carried through the space to record actual RSSI, SNR, and other RF metrics after the APs are mounted and powered, giving ground-truth data rather than a model's guess. Saying the second document was also generated purely from floor plan software with no physical measurement misreads the scenario directly — that description matches the first document, not the second. Claiming it replaces the need for an AP placement plan gets the sequence backwards; placement planning happens up front, and the walk-through validates whether that plan actually worked once implemented. Limiting it to wired switch documentation ignores what the document is actually for; it is purely an RF/wireless artifact and says nothing about wired infrastructure. In practice, a technician should expect any meaningful gaps between the predictive model and the post-installation measurements to trigger a placement adjustment, additional AP, or power change — comparing the two documents is exactly how a design gets validated against reality rather than left as an untested assumption.