Leopard includes more information about Wi-Fi networks in the vicinity of your computer than meets the eye. The revised Mac OS X updates the AirPort menu in the system menubar after you select, which is a neat feature and provides more accurate results. It also shows a lock icon next to networks protected by some form of encryption. But there’s more information you can extract by holding down the Option key while selecting the menu.
In Tiger, the Option addition would sort networks by signal strength. That feature no longer works – networks are always sorted alphabetically. Instead, Leopard reveals connection information about whatever network you’re hooked up to, showing four details: the MAC (Media Access Control) address of the base station’s AirPort interface; the channel used; the receive signal strength indication (RSSI), a measure of how much energy is hitting your antenna from the base station; and the current transmission rate.
The MAC address is useful because it can tell you which base station you’re attached to if you’re using a network that has multiple base stations all with the same network name, which is useful for seamless roaming across a large home or an office. The channel information helps if you’re trying to figure out an interference problem.
RSSI can be useful if you’re trying to tune the location of a base station or computer in relation to each other. Finally, the tranmission rate lets you know if you’re getting optimum performance. Wi-Fi has drop-down speeds where if the highest possible rate shared between the base station and an adapter can’t be achieved, the two devices keep dropping down to slower and slower rates until an accommodation can be made. With 802.11b, g, or n, if the base station is in its default mode, that could be as slow as 1 Mbps – which is fine if you really need a connection, but not so great if you need the speed.
Astute TidBITS reader Gary (no last names, please!) wrote in after I posted this item, and noted that you can also obtain information about other networks you haven’t connected to through a tooltip that appears when you hover over another network for a moment. The tooltip tells you just the security method and RSSI, both of which could be useful to connect.
Copyright © 2007 Glenn Fleishman. TidBITS is copyright © 2007 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you’re reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.
TidBITS Exclusives from Small Dog for Nov 19 – Dec 3:AppleCare Deals including a TidBITS Exclusive for iMac
AppleCare. Save up to $50 off Apple’s prices. Learn
more and order today at <http://www.smalldog.com/tb/>
…
Recent Comments