WLAN Monitor & Linksys adapter

I need a better monitor than the standard WLAN software that comes
with the linksys products. The front page of the WLAN app reports
signal strength and signal quality. The site survey tab reports a
percentage, but doesn't say which it is. They have the numbers, but
seem to want to dumb them down (by using low-resolution bar graphs and
such).

The linksys is the only USB attached external adapter I have been able
to get working (and then only on Win98). The Microsoft and the Linksys
USB didn't work at all under XP.

Netstumbler doesn't support linksys. Most of the others seem to only
run under Linux.

This is for a kids science fair experiment, testing the effect of
different building materials on Wifi.

Any help or pointers are appreciated.

If you find any such tools for Windows, please post. I have badgered D-Link
support and a few mailing lists looking for useable tools, and I get no
response.

I can tell you that many good tools like Ethereal (a great freeware network
analyzer that runs on XP) do not work effectively with wifi because the XP
drivers either do not provide promiscuous mode, or do not have a standard
interface for enabling it. This affects a bunch of tools that use the
WinPcap packet capture library, and probably others.

I don't know if stumblers require promiscuous mode to work. NetStumbler will
sometimes run with my D-Link adapter, sometimes not. I have read in the
NetStumbler forum that for my adapter the S/N numbers are not trustworthy on
XP.

The commercial products I have found that claim to work are expensive, and
provide proprietary drivers for each wifi chipset.


"Barry Condrey" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed) om...
> I need a better monitor than the standard WLAN software that comes
> with the linksys products. The front page of the WLAN app reports
> signal strength and signal quality. The site survey tab reports a
> percentage, but doesn't say which it is. They have the numbers, but
> seem to want to dumb them down (by using low-resolution bar graphs and
> such).
>
> The linksys is the only USB attached external adapter I have been able
> to get working (and then only on Win98). The Microsoft and the Linksys
> USB didn't work at all under XP.
>
> Netstumbler doesn't support linksys. Most of the others seem to only
> run under Linux.
>
> This is for a kids science fair experiment, testing the effect of
> different building materials on Wifi.
>
> Any help or pointers are appreciated.

"Barry Condrey" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed) om...
> I need a better monitor than the standard WLAN software that comes
> with the linksys products. The front page of the WLAN app reports
> signal strength and signal quality. The site survey tab reports a
> percentage, but doesn't say which it is. They have the numbers, but
> seem to want to dumb them down (by using low-resolution bar graphs and
> such).
>
> The linksys is the only USB attached external adapter I have been able
> to get working (and then only on Win98). The Microsoft and the Linksys
> USB didn't work at all under XP.
>
> Netstumbler doesn't support linksys. Most of the others seem to only
> run under Linux.
>
> This is for a kids science fair experiment, testing the effect of
> different building materials on Wifi.
>
> Any help or pointers are appreciated.

You might try Boingo. It's a free download at www.boingo.com

You don't need to subscribe to their service to use the software.

I don't know if it will work on your USB Linksys, but it works quite well
with my WPC11 and a bunch of others.


Bob

"Bob" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message news:<(E-Mail Removed)>...
> "Barry Condrey" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:(E-Mail Removed) om...
> > I need a better monitor than the standard WLAN software that comes
> > with the linksys products. The front page of the WLAN app reports
> > signal strength and signal quality. The site survey tab reports a
> > percentage, but doesn't say which it is. They have the numbers, but
> > seem to want to dumb them down (by using low-resolution bar graphs and
> > such).
> >
> > The linksys is the only USB attached external adapter I have been able
> > to get working (and then only on Win98). The Microsoft and the Linksys
> > USB didn't work at all under XP.
> >
> > Netstumbler doesn't support linksys. Most of the others seem to only
> > run under Linux.
> >
> > This is for a kids science fair experiment, testing the effect of
> > different building materials on Wifi.
> >
> > Any help or pointers are appreciated.
>
> You might try Boingo. It's a free download at www.boingo.com
>
> You don't need to subscribe to their service to use the software.
>
> I don't know if it will work on your USB Linksys, but it works quite well
> with my WPC11 and a bunch of others.
>
>
> Bob

I talked to some of our network admin guys. They use WINC, which is
available at: http://www.cirond.com/site/products/...d_software.htm
It is a free download 30 day trial, and only costs $20 otherwise. It
is advertised as working with "all" cards, and I have myself seen it
work with the Linksys 54G PCMCIA card. Looks cools.
Barry