MetaGeek inSSIDer Wi-Fi Helper Reviewed

[Razor512]

Link to article: http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...32461-metageek-inssider-wi-fi-helper-reviewed


My opinion:

Seems overpriced for what it does, it essentially automated the shortest steps of finding the best wifi channel (while leaving the user to manually perform the longest steps), but an a largely ineffective way.
I have not used it yet but I can't find any info on it allows for automated testing between a wireless and wired endpoint in order to test each channel.

It seems to rely heavily on WAN performance which for much of the US at least, is far below the speed of most modern wifi networks, thus it will not be helpful for the user that wants to find the best channel to handle the streaming of raw bluray rips from a NAS or transfer lots of data or backup a wireless client to a NAS. At most it seems to only be able to tell you which channel will allow you to get the most out of your available WAN throughput.

It seems that a user would be better off with getting another system on the network and create a shared folder and then just copy over a large file for each wifi channel and see which one has the fastest copy time.




=-=-=-=-=-What it should do to be useful=-==-=-=-=-=-

Since they are charging a license fee that expires, they should really offer more. This product at least needs to have support for the UI's of most modern wifi routers where the user can simply enter in their user name and password in addition to either an auto scan or manual enter of the LAN IP of a wired system running the endpoint software. The wired system used to test the channels should then take control of the router and then automatically try all channels and automatically benchmark each channel by running a throughput test between the wireless client and wired endpoint.

(Since they want a license fee, that can fund regular updates to ensure compatibility with new routers so that the application can automatically log in and change settings).

 

[IAAI]

Thanks for sharing your opinion .
What are the alternatives for inSSIDer ?

 

[Razor512]

I have not really seen any good alternatives. Inssider 2.0 is still free and works well.

As for finding the best channels, I do throughput tests on each channel.

for example when reporting an issue with the WNR3500L V2 (the router has a firmware issue (that spills over to the 3rd party firmware since they use lots of code taken directly from stock stuff and port it over unchanged

imgur album with screenshot of results for each channel: http://imgur.com/a/nx7sa

And because of that, in my area where there are now 160+ access points in range, it freaks out on some of the channels.

That test is the same that I do for all of my routers when determining the best channel to use for each location.

This entire process would be easier if the people who make the wifi radios would fully unlock them so that we may use them as a software defined radio, that way we can essentially have a good look at all of the noise in the frequency range and more visually select the best channel.

But for now, we need to benchmark them, and for even a low end 802.11n single band router, the wifi performance is higher than what is available on the average users internet connection.

The inssider wifi helper can do some of this, but only to the extent of the users internet connection speed. if the user has a 20mbit internet connection and a number of the channels are capable of running at more than 20mbit/s, then what ever channel it settles on may not be the optimal channel. The only way to be sure you are on the best channel is to have the wifi as the only bottleneck.