Razor512
Very Senior Member
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).
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).
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