Making the Wi-Fi connection

Wi-Fi discovery and connection tools have existed since the early days of 802.11. But while many of these tools have their roots in hacker tools like AirCrack, WEPCrack, AirSnort, CoWPatty, and AirSnarf, which were all originally developed to exploit the fundamental weakness in Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP), these tools now legitimately embody the client-side user interface elements that help establish essentially every WLAN link.

Wi-Fi discovery and connection tools have existed since the early days of 802.11. But while many of these tools have their roots in hacker tools like AirCrack, WEPCrack, AirSnort, CoWPatty, and AirSnarf, which were all originally developed to exploit the fundamental weakness in Wired Equivalent Privacy, these tools now legitimately embody the client-side user interface elements that help establish essentially every wireless LAN link.

How we tested the WLAN products

Archive of Network World tests

Today’s commercial and open source discovery and connection tools – as shown in this Clear Choice test of nine software packages, the second in our series of tests homing in on the various layers of WLAN management wares — range in function from the very basic (take Microsoft’s Zero Configuration approach) to robust enough to enable diagnostic use in throughout the enterprise (such as PassMark‘s WirelessMon and Sandy Road‘s Wi-Fi Hopper, our Clear Choice winner and runner-up, respectively, in this test).

A good connection manager can complement the functionality of a centralized WLAN management console, providing a view of clients’ radio and network parameters not readily available from most enterprise-class WLAN management products today. A network operations person would actually tap into the client (possibly over a remote-control or similar connection) to apply the data gathered by the connection manager. A smaller organization lacking a centralized management console could use one of the more feature-rich tools in place of that console for many troubleshooting activities. (Compare WLAN management products in our Buyer’s Guide as well.)

The simple case

While many (if not most) Wi-Fi users rely on the Microsoft’s Wireless Zero Configuration (WZC) connection tool, along with the Wireless Auto-Configuration service in Microsoft’s servers and WLAN AutoConfig in Vista, these are inadequate for all but the most basic discovery and connection functions. (Read a related story about tools to find Wi-Fi hot spots.)

WZC, unfortunately, provides only very basic functionality, little more than a list of potential connections for a user to choose from, and the ability to enter and save security-key data. Because this capability is so limited, we usually suggest that most users at least opt for the connection manager included with the Wi-Fi adapter/driver combination shipped with their mobile computer. These tools (often touted as competitive differentiators by WLAN adapter vendors) provide both quicker connect times and often report more detailed information on available networks (often including connection performance statistics) than is available in WZC.

A good example of this class of product is the Intel ProSet/Wireless connection manager that comes with the Intel Pro/Wireless 2915ABG wireless adapter built into the Dell 710m notebook running XP SP2 we used for most of our testing (see How we did it). In addition to its simple user interface and its ability to list and enable client connections for networks within range, this tool reports a wealth of connection information, including detailed 802.11 protocol data and statistics (including bytes transferred by individual 802.11 connection rates), Received Signal Strength Indication (RSSI), roaming events, and even such low-level 802.11 protocol details as beacon frames seen, which are used to advertise the availability of a given WLAN.

The Intel tool also allows quick access to control-panel settings and related driver information for the adapter, includes a built-in troubleshooter and a detailed event log, and has the option of password-protected administrative (as opposed to user) control over Wi-Fi settings so that administrators can potentially lock down clients settings if that is desired. In short, this functionality in a discovery tool/connection manager is all most users (and enterprise network managers) would need to access Wi-Fi networks of any form (including hotspot and public-access networks), and troubleshoot any connection-related problems. We used the ProSet/Wireless tool as a general reference for accuracy and functionality in the subsequent testing of other products. It certainly held its own against other products as only WirelessMon and Wi-Fi Hopper topped it in our scoring table.

Getting deeper

But if you’re looking for more detail than typically supplied by a wireless adapter vendor, there are a number of third-party discovery and connection-manager products on the market that can help. For this report, we selected eight additional products beyond the Microsoft and Intel options already discussed, all of which are readily available on the Web, and put them through their paces, rating each on ease of installation, ease of use, range of function and documentation.

Note that, over the years, there have quite literally been dozens of Wi-Fi discovery tools developed and posted on the Web. Most of these were designed to work with a limited range of client cards (with many being stuck at 802.11b), and are thus obsolete today. For purposes of our testing, then, we reviewed the status of products that we’ve examined over the years and ruled out those that have not been updated within the past year. Except for two (not surprisingly, the leaders) all of the tools we tested are free, and a few were even open source.

Third-party discovery tools

At the top of our list of products tested is PassMark’s WirelessMon, which while not free – is inexpensive and a great value regardless. The standard version we tested is $24 (a 30-day evaluation copy is free), and the Professional version, which includes GPS tracking (obtained via an external third-party adapter) and the ability to create a signal-strength map that uses these, is $49.

WirelessMon is loaded. A summary tab provides information typical of other connection managers with respect to available SSIDs. But also included are a detailed statistical analysis by frame type, real-time signal-strength and throughput graphs, IP statistics, and everything that might be required for performance analysis and troubleshooting. Overall, the standard version should provide most of what enterprise users need, and it’s worth the small investment for those seeking detailed status and diagnostic information. This tool might be overkill for users who can get by with a simpler connection manager, but those chartered with support functions will want to take a look at this excellent product.

Also near the top of our list is Wi-Fi Hopper from a Canadian firm called Sandy Road. This is a robust application that actively scans for Wi-Fi networks. It allows filtering of networks by type of 802.11PHY, operational mode (infrastructure or ad-hoc), security mode, and channel. It has a useful signal-strength graph that shows a snapshot over time, and a very complete list of device details, IP information, traffic counters, and support for an external GPS adapter, although only on a serial port. A broad range of configuration and customization options is included, as is a useful manual in HTML format. The product requires registration and payment beyond ($35 per user, dropped down to $18 for academic users) an initial 15-day trial period.

Xirrus Tools is free and is implemented as a Yahoo Widget. The Yahoo Widget support application required is also available as a free download, and Microsoft .Net 2.0 must also be installed to effectively operate it. When running, the Xirrus Tools Widget shows relative signal strength on a polar-coordinates scale that depicts apparent distance between access points; this feature is potentially useful in physically locating an access point, whether the client is connected to it or not. The documentation – yes, there is some, in the form of a .pdf, and a glossary – is concise enough to adequately explain operation.

This application might be a little cute for some users, but is regardless much better that WZC. Its implementation as a Widget, unique among products tested here, will appeal to many not to mention the added plus of availability on Macs (also as a Yahoo Widget) and some Linux distributions as well.

InSSIDer from Metageek, the company that builds the Wi-Spy spectrum analyzer that we’ll review in an upcoming article, is free and open source. Functionality is limited to detecting access points within range, listing the usual information (channel, RSSI, security, connection speed) plus first-seen and last-seen timestamps and then producing running graph of RSSI by SSID, using colored traces corresponding to an individual access point. InSSIDer is simple and potentially quite useful in evaluating signal quality for roaming clients.

If you have a Mac

The Macintosh is often shortchanged (OK, ignored) by Wi-Fi developers today, as all Macs have integral Wi-Fi support and only the Mac Mini lacks an 802.11n adapter. The Mac’s own simple discovery/connection applet shows available networks and signal strength, and enables making connections, but it offers even less information than WZC. There are, however, a few open source discovery tools available for the Mac, and we tried three of them on a 2.8GHz. iMac running OS 10.4 and Apple’s standard Wi-Fi adapter, which is based on a Broadcom a/b/g/n chipset.

First up was KisMac, a fairly simple discovery tool that supports both active (probe-based) and passive scanning, and will examine multiple channels (via hopping) if the driver in use supports this function. The latest version (0.21a) runs only on MacOS 10.5.1 or later, so we had to use this version of the operating system for this test but on the same hardware. In addition to the usual channel, SSID, BSSID, security (encryption), network type and vendor, KisMac can also show signal-to-noise ratio information, and packet and data counts when in passive mode. Filtering is allowed by a variety of the above fields, and activity dumps can be written to PCAP files. Overall, this is a much better tool than Apple’s default functionality, but still reflects its hacker heritage.

By comparison, iStumbler is more user-friendly than KisMac. IStumbler fires right up with no driver selection, and begins probing for networks right away. It also displays signal strength for a selected SSID, signal and noise levels (as percentages), and channel as a frequency. For our 802.11a (5GHz.) access point, however, the frequency was reported as -1, with a corresponding channel of 0. It was also unable to identify the vendors of two of our four test access points, and called infrastructure access points “managed”, a little confusing. This application was the best of the open source Mac bunch, but still isn’t ready for prime time.

Finally, we found AirGrab Wi-Fi Radar to be a fairly basic application that displays both signal and noise levels (in dBm), but is otherwise not that interesting to enterprise managers. It displayed a “can’t flush file descriptor” error on a regular basis and reported incorrect security levels. The Web page notes the availability of Version 0.8, but what you get is in the download is Version 0.7. Conclusion: it still needs work.

Our advice is to stick with the Mac version of Xirrus Tools, which has an identical feature set to the Xirrus Tools we tested on Windows.

Linux tools

Increasingly, many Linux distributions are being shipped with Wi-Fi discovery clients that are easy to use, albeit modest in function. The Xandros-based Asus Eee 701, for example, which we regularly use but did not formally test, for example, has a connection manager that shows available networks, details on the connected network, and even properties of the wireless adapter installed.

We didn’t test any third-party Wi-Fi discovery tools and connection managers for Linux, as we couldn’t find any pre-compiled tools for the platforms we have in our lab.

There are, though, a number of open-source packages available, including WiFiZoo (written in Python but requiring scapy), PrismStumbler, Kismet (which we’ll review on Windows XP in an upcoming article on Wi-Fi traffic analyzers), and NetworkManager. Most of these come from the hacker domain, so expect features that scan for “interesting” data, like passwords. But if you want to build your own tool, these might be a good place to start.

And the winner is…

If the point of tying these types of tools into your WLAN management scheme is to gain more information about your existing and future wireless client connections, then Passmark’s WirelessMon is the clear winner. It’s not free, but the functionality, quality and usability of the product really shows. We have in fact added one copy of this product to our arsenal here at Farpoint Group, to be used for debugging and analysis of connectivity problems. 

Wi-Fi Hopper might be a good runner-up if the outfit behind it continues to keep it current. The other PC tools tested are fine for basic discovery and connectivity, but may add less value than the console that comes with your computer’s Wi-Fi adapter (which, again, is the place to start), and, likely not be of much interest to enterprise network mangers. We were uniformly disappointed in the quality of the Mac tools, apart from the cross-platform Xirrus Tools, but will continue to monitor these for improvements should such become available.

Regardless, none of these tools are complete in and of themselves for enterprise network management. It would be great to see some infrastructure-side functionality integrated into these mobility tools, to examine, for example, signal strength or import location-and-tracking and other statistics. Cisco’s proprietary Cisco Compatibility Extensions (CCX) move somewhat in this direction, but they are neither discovery tools nor connection managers.

We do expect that the availability of products incorporating functionality specified in the recently-issued 802.11k Radio Resource Measurement and the still-under-development 802.11v Wireless Network Management standards will also help in both the stability and the overall functionality and flexibility of future network discovery tools. We’ve got some functional and useful discovery and connection applications today, but the world of client-side tools remains an area that’s ripe for innovation.

Mathias is a principal with Farpoint Group, an advisory firm specializing in wireless networking and mobile communications. He is an internationally known consultant, author, and analyst, and serves on the advisory boards of three industry events. He is also a regular columnist for two publications, including Computerworld, and his blog, Nearpoints, resides at Network World. He can be reached at craig@farpointgroup.com.

Mathias is also a member of the Network World Lab Alliance, a cooperative of the premier reviewers in the network industry each bringing to bear years of practical experience on every review. For more Lab Alliance information, including what it takes to become a member, go to www.networkworld.com/alliance.