3 Basic Steps to Monitor Your Wireless Network

The easiest way to monitor your home or office’s wireless network is to use the tools built into the operating system. The cool thing about the tools built into Windows XP is that you don’t have to do anything. Just turn on your PC and the operating system and wireless networking subsystem do the work for you, searching out new networks and determining some basic facts about them for you.

Windows XP uses a system called Wireless Zero Configuration to find, evaluate, and associate with wireless networks. Anytime wireless networks are within range and can be seen by the wireless card(s) in your PC, Windows knows it - and you can see these available networks with just a few simple steps.

3 Simple Steps Using Windows XP

To pull up a listing of available networks, simply right-click on the Wireless Network Connection icon in your Windows taskbar and select View Available Wireless Networks.

The Choose a Wireless Network dialog box lists all of the networks that Windows has detected in your area, and also provides some details about each of these networks, including:

Network name (ESSID)

Cymax and 2WIRE887 are the ESSIDs has assigned to two of the access points. Networks that have ESSID broadcast turned off do not show up on this list. Also, if you’ve previously associated with an access point and have added it to your preferred network listing, it shows up here even if the broadcast is turned off.

Security status

If a network has a Wi-Fi security (encryption) system turned on, this is noted in the network’s entry in the list of available networks. For example, you can see that both has WEP encryption turned on. You’ll note that there’s no indication of which type of WPA encryption (Enterprise or Personal) is being used, or whether it’s WPA or WPA 2. All you’ll see in this dialog box is that a network is WPA (Security-enabled wireless network (WPA), WEP (Security-enabled wireless network), or unsecured.

Signal strength

Windows also provides a nice graphical representation of signal strength, using those five vertical bars. The more green, the better. If all five bars are green, you have an excellent signal. These bars don’t really tell you all that much info by themselves.

If you mouse over the signal strength display and hover your pointer, Windows tells you in words how your signal strength is. Excellent is best, poor is worst, and the rest are pretty much somewhere in between.

Below is Translating Windows Signal Strength Indicators