Looking for more (very) local wireless info.

[Colin McGregor]

I am looking to tweak settings of my wireless network and to do that I
want more information about the nearby wireless networks.

My network at present is a 802.11g hub down in the basement, my laptop
which gets shifted around the house (and as the weather gets better
may make visits to the back yard). In addition there are occasional
visitors to the network, like my brother's laptop. I have some 802.11g
PCI desktop PC cards that I may bring into play. But as most of my
work is done on a conventional (wired) desktop machine the wireless
network is lightly used. Still, I would like things to perform as well
as possible, without spending any additional money.

Even early on a Sunday morning a run of "Scan for Networks" under
KWiFiManager will turn up 17 networks in my area, and I have seen over
50 networks in my area. Given that 802.11g has 11 channels available
to it, 50+ networks means everyone's slice of those channels will be
limited.

KWiFiManager tells me four things about the local networks, their
name, what mode do they use, the signal strength and is WEP encryption
turned on. This is all useful information but not enough for my
tweeking purposes.

So, to start with, I want to find software that will tell me:

- Which channels are most heavily used (if say 90% of all the networks
are on channel 1, I will happily set my network to  channel 11 :-) )?
- What is the volume of traffic going over each channel (again I want
to avoid the high traffic channels)?
- How much 802.11b vs. 802.11g traffic is on a channel (802.11b and
802.11g can coexist on a channel, at the expense of 802.11g
performance)?

In other words I want the tools that will let me make smart picks
regarding how to get the best performance I can out of what I have.

Before anyone says something like "Why not just go to the new 802.11n
stuff?", my answer is, I can not cost justify that (I would need to
buy a new hub and network cards), given that my funds are very tight,
and the wireless network is lightly used. Further, these same sorts of
issues will no doubt show up in the 802.11n world sooner or later
(802.11n has a larger number frequencies, few users (at least for now)
and higher performance to start with).

Thanks.

Colin.
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