tools to diagnose wirless interference?

[holty]

Hello,

I'm not having any "problems" but I suspect interference from neighbors could be slowing down my wireless network. I run one laptop on wireless N 2.4ghz and one on wireless g 2.4ghz, the router is a WNDR3700.

Is there a tool or utility i can use to see what settings i should use on my WNDR3700 to avoid interference from neighbors?

 

[stevech]

First, simply change channels on your WiFi router. Choose 1, 6 or 11.

The tools that list the detected SSIDs aren't useful.
The tools that show the utilization (busyness) versus time of each channel are useful.
Not sure if there are free ones that do so.

Professionally, I've used AirMagnet to do this.

 

[thiggins]

How To Fix Your Wireless Network - Part 2: Site Surveying

 

[sdeleeuw]

If you have a droid phone, the Wifi Analyzer app is free and it's nice.. gives you a graph of competing SSIDs with channel overlap. It also gives you a signal meter so you can walk around the house and see what affects your signal.

Network Stumbler is another program you can use with Windows just to see all the SSIDs in the area and what channel they are on.

 

[holty]

If you have a droid phone, the Wifi Analyzer app is free and it's nice.. gives you a graph of competing SSIDs with channel overlap. It also gives you a signal meter so you can walk around the house and see what affects your signal.

Network Stumbler is another program you can use with Windows just to see all the SSIDs in the area and what channel they are on.

hey thanks for the advice and links. I am reading them now. While i can't get the netstumbler to work i was able to get inssider to work. thanks!

 

[stevech]

The tools that list the detected SSIDs aren't useful.
The tools that show the utilization (busyness) versus time of each channel are useful.

 

[sdeleeuw]

Hey stevech, not useful being a subjective term. For free tools they can be useful when used correctly. Obviously if you pull up Network Stumbler and see SSIDs on channel 1, 3, and 6, you can choose channel 11 and at that point the tool is useful.

However, if you have 20 SSIDs that you can see and they are on every single channel, then yeah, Network Stumbler is going to be just a guess as to which channel is best and not very useful at that point.

Network Stumbler won't work on all laptops as the wireless adapter has to support a promiscuous mode to work.