Looking for more (very) local wireless info.

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Sun, Apr 12, 2009 at 11:36:07AM -0400, Colin McGregor wrote:
> 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.

So given the non overlapping channels are 1, 6 and 11, that's a lot of
networks per usable channel.  Sounds like a busy area you are in.
Unless you were willing to spend the money to go to 5ghz 802.11a or
802.11n (the 5ghz version), you probably won't be able to do much to
get good performance from wireless.

> 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)?

I have no idea, since I haven't looked for such tools ever.

> 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).

802.11n also runs on both 2.4 and 5ghz, and most cheap 802.11n equipement
only supports 2.4ghz, which is where all the existing networks are.
Only the highend 802.11n equipment does 5ghz and hence avoids the busy
channels.  To make things worse, 802.11n uses twice the channel space
in 2.4ghz than 802.11b and g.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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