Web Worker Daily

I’ve written before about optimizations for home and office Wi-Fi networks and how to keep public Wi-Fi sessions secure. Xirrus has long provided free tools for monitoring Wi-Fi performance, finding hotspots and more. Now, the company is out with Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspector, and after giving it a try, I recommend it, especially if you suspect you’re not getting ideal performance from your wireless networking.

Here’s what’s under the hood, and a tool you can use to complement Wi-Fi Inspector.

Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspector is basically a free, improved version of Xirrus’ long-standing Wi-Fi gadet application. It’s designed for managing and troubleshooting a laptop’s Wi-Fi connection in addition to scanning and monitoring the Wi-Fi environment. There is a complete inventory of its capabilities here. (PDF)

You can use Wi-Fi Inspector for searching for and locating Wi-Fi networks, such as hotspots; managing laptop Wi-Fi connections; troubleshooting connectivity issues; verifying the Wi-Fi range you’re getting; and locating rogue access points. I used its four-step process for IP address information that let me know I was communicating with my Wi-Fi network correctly, and ran a series of ping tests to see how my performance was faring. The results of the tests are displayed on a radar-like graphic (showing available Wi-Fi networks, for example) and in table format. You can get at your signal level, security level, and more.

It’s very easy to end up with less than ideal Wi-Fi performance. If Wi-Fi tests let you know that performance is sub-optimal, that’s a good time to experiment with the location and orientation of your router and your access points, among other things.

Wi-Fi Inspector also sends packets to an external Internet server and reports on the actual throughput you’re getting. For these types of tests, I also strongly recommend QCheck, a free, similar tool that tests network throughput and wireless performance from several angles.  To really keep your finger on the pulse of your Wi-Fi network, use both of these applications.