Wireless Signal Strength + Performance

Question

We have two access points on the shop floor. One of the AP's is not performing correctly with erratic signal strength and connectivity. Are there any open source tools available to measure performance of a wireless access point or router?

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered May 05 '09 at 05:20

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KisMAC or Kismet, will allow you to monitor signal strengths fluctuations and/or interference causing problems for your access point(s), possibly helping you diagnose the issue. If you have the budget, you could invest in a Wi-Spy card.

answered May 05 '09 at 05:20

l0c0b0x

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score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 18 '10 at 22:20

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I'm fond of inSIDDer from metageek.

answered Feb 18 '10 at 22:20

Robert

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Netstumbler has indeed not been updated for a whole while and only has full support for ancient wireless cards. While inSSIDer is actively developed and has a much broader range of supported NICs, including recent ones. But inSSIDer will not have any noise data, just overlapping networks. – the-wabbit Sep 19 '13 at 19:54

score 2 · Answer 3 · edited Feb 21 '12 at 08:29

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NetStumbler is a good free tool for measuring the performance of wireless connections.

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edited Feb 21 '12 at 08:29

Bart De Vos

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answered May 05 '09 at 07:05

splattne

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+1 NetStumbler has helped me diagnose a few networks when windows wasn't reporting any problems. – Keith Bentrup Jun 11 '09 at 04:27

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered May 05 '09 at 05:13

I think kermit will tell you a range of stats about the wireless network itself that you might not normally see. netperf can be used to test the network performance.

Be aware the single strengh is only one measure, you care about the single/noise ratio, dropped packets, whether there are other SSID's transmitting on the same channel.

Wireless Signal Strength + Performance

4 Answers4

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