Sniff the Air Around You - WiFi Explorer helps tremendously with understanding interference from adjacent networks by providing both comprehensive details and graphical insight. Once you have a completed map, print it out to use as a guide, so you can consider improvements while you use WiFi Explorer to measure and analyze both the signals in the air and the radio choices you and your neighbors have made. These prices are reasonable if you’re maintaining multiple large networks, and you get a lot more features to boot.
#WIFI EXPLORER MAC OS PRO#
In addition, the free version is intended for non-commercial use with personal computers.įor offices, Netspot Pro costs $149 for a single-user license, and the 10-user Netspot Enterprise license is $499. I have three routers, two of which are simultaneous dual-band models, and thus I was able to see my whole network within the five-unit limit. The free version lets you visualize only up to five access points at a time, which includes each radio on a multi-band router. You can also use a pop-up menu to toggle what’s overlaid on the map as a whole.
This provides a lot of granularity at a glance, but just remember green, yellow, and red are good, better, best. As noted in my 2011 review, the spectrum of colors ranges from blue (terrible) through cyan to green (good) through yellow to red (best). The interactive map lets you select and deselect base stations in a list, so you can see in isolation and together what your best coverage is. The downstairs units, sampled through the floor, were only a few inches further off. The upstairs base station was placed within several inches. At the other end of the house, in a guest room, I have an 802.11n AirPort Express. In my case, I have an 802.11ac AirPort Extreme on our main floor, and then a single-band-at-a-time 802.11n AirPort Extreme in the basement near my desk. One of the absolute neatest features of NetSpot, and one reason I was immediately impressed with it originally, is that it can accurately calculate where your access points are located. Once you’ve finished sampling, you have an interactive map. You can mark just a handful of sampling points, but I like to use many for greater insight. Then you wander around your premises with a laptop, clicking to measure at various points. You measure the distance between two points you mark on the map and it uses that to scale the rest of the map. You can import a house or office plan, sketch one, use a sample map, or start with an empty page. Paint a Wi-Fi Picture - Netspot starts with a map. It’s a great way to get a two-dimensional lay of the land. Let’s start with Netspot, even though we’ll only use a fraction of its power.
#WIFI EXPLORER MAC OS PROFESSIONAL#
NetSpot has matured since then, and does its job even better now, while also adding some serious (and expensive) professional options above the free, non-commercial level. WiFi Explorer pairs beautifully with NetSpot, an OS X Wi-Fi signal-mapping program I reviewed way back in 2011 for Macworld. With a combination of graphic visualizations, lists of information, and the capability to drill down into super-technical details, WiFi Explorer has become my top recommendation for anyone trying to sort out a local Wi-Fi environment. It was first released in 2012, but didn’t appear on my radar until the 2.0 release in May 2015. That’s why I was excited to stumble across the $15 WiFi Explorer. But while IT professionals may find those useful, they’re overkill for home users and small business: they’re just too expensive. In the past, companies have loaned me spectrum analyzers, which examine all the radio signals on ranges of frequencies.
#WIFI EXPLORER MAC OS TV#
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