How I spent my day with WiFi Analyzer
WiFi Analyzer by farproc is a free application that will tell you what access points are nearby, what channels they’re on, and can help you optimize your network in WiFi busy areas by picking the least-used channel to place your access point on.
My goal yesterday was to determine why the WiFi in our building had degraded from ~130mBit to 1.2Mbit, which involved taking an access point to one side of the building where there were no people, testing it and the port, usually getting the max speed, and then taking it to where it was needed, and getting 1/50th the speed we should.
I went through three different brands of WiFi routers (five in all,) two ports, three cables, and a complete charge on my phone as I got to spend about six hours doing site surveys, moving broadcast channels, and otherwise banging my head against a wall trying to get a router to function at even a third of the speed it should get.
One of the things WiFi Analyzer did allow me to do was see that there were in the neighborhood of 70 APs visible, 20 or so broadcasting full signal into the area I was working on which appears to be the problem.
While WiFi Analyzer didn’t fix my problem, it did at least give me a huge leg up on the problem of why my formerly great network now runs slower on one side of the building than simply being connected to a cell tower.
I went to purchase the item last night as it’s a useful tool, but there’s evidently no way to do that. Sad, because I’d much rather give the author some money than get Clash of Clans advertising.
Anyway, in case you were wondering why there were no updates, it’s because I was chasing WiFi signal degradation using a free tool, and a complete battery charge.
Download: Google Play
