Ekahau says in this Blogpost (LINK) it is impossible to have AP-Names in beacons by Aruba Istant. This is no longer true with 8.4.x.x. I don’t know if there’s newer info by Ekahau – if so – please let me know.
AP-Name Tag in Instant beacons is a wonderful tool to identify AP’s by their name in Ekahau, as they show up named like you configured them in your virtual controller. Therefore you’re faster to change different radiosettings after control-surveys as you don’t get mixed up in ESS or your virtual controller (and vice versa).
It also helps if someone got mixed up during mounting or forgot those labels you ordered, especially when there’s no reflected ceiling plan for bigger scenarios but just basic dwg „drawings“ or pdf’s (in this quality I got for reports looking even worse) for those poor electricians. Here over people don’t understand how essential plans are for WiFi-surveys.
As you see here in Ekahau Pro’s german UI „Funkmodule“, all Instant-AP-Names show up (no I didn’t have my Sidekick with me this time). Keep in mind there’s a char limitation within some vendor-beacons – so keep it short (and not as long as in this example…).
In Instant 8.4.x.x there is no GUI-Option. You can use CLI for adding
advertise-ap-name
to your SSID-Profile or add this to your SSID-Profile in Airwave or by your //maintenance/backup/config – file. The result you get is beautiful and it helps a lot I can say.
You can find this in Aruba-CLI-Reference for 8.4 (Link).
You can find this also in many other tools, for example my so much loved WiFi-Explorer’s Beacon-XML under „Device Name“ plus you can add this item to your WiFi-Explorer-table to sort by.