Also displayed are the number of ad-hoc and regular networks. The Statistics page shows the number of networks that are open (unsecured) and closed (secured). On the bottom of the Scan page you can conveniently search for a specific network, connect to a selected network, or stop/start the scanning. You can also add custom Collections, groups of networks, and Smart Collections to apply specific filtering settings based upon any of the network details. By default, there are Collections to show networks based upon their supported 802.11 standard, security status, and one to show ad-hoc networks. On the left side of the Scan page, you can select and manage the Collections, which are basically saved filtering settings. Right-clicking a network allows you to connect to it, save notes, add to favorites, assign a color label, or reset its stats. However, you can optionally have noise also shown on the graph alongside the signal. Selecting a network(s) from the list will show their signal graph above the list, again using only percentage values. The signal and noise levels are supposed to be available in both percentages and negative dBm values, but we could not get the dBm values to show, despite enabling the option in the Advanced tab of the Preferences. Supported data rates of the networks aren’t given either. The SNR values are not shown at all, but it’s on their list of features coming soon. The program has three main screens, which you navigate to by the buttons on the top of the application.The default screen is the Scan page showing the network list. Pricing is $99 for up to 10 Macs in a business, and $295 for corporate licenses covering unlimited Macs. It works with the internal AirPort adapter, or an external USB adapter if using Apple Airport hardware and drivers. The application runs on Mac OS X 10.7 and later. It provides a fully functional trial for 15 days. Here are the individual reviews:ĪirRadar 3 is a basic Wi-Fi stumbler sold by Koingo Software, which also develops other apps for Windows and Mac. On the other hand, it is the only one reviewed that’s supposed to fully support hidden SSIDs. The only one we’d caution against is KisMAC2 because it lacks some basic functionality and documentation. Each product in this review has pros and cons, depending on your particular needs. There’s no big winner or loser in this review, but we did like WiFi Explorer as a basic stumbler. Though we reviewed KisMAC2, we were only able to utilize the internal AirPort card of the MacBook, thus unable to test out the hidden SSID capability. This is why I’d caution against solely using a Mac-based stumbler when surveying, troubleshooting, and auditing Wi-Fi networks.įrom what we could gather, it appears some Wi-Fi tools that support non-AirPort drivers will recognize and even reveal hidden SSIDs, such as KisMAC2 and Kismet. However, this doesn’t help when you don’t know if they exist. By contrast, most Windows-based stumblers would typically list it with a blank/unknown SSID.īut there’s an exception some Mac-based stumblers will show the hidden SSID and its details after you connect to the SSID. This means a hidden SSID usually won’t appear on the network list at all. The Mac Edition of inSSIDer Office was still in beta, but it looks nearly identical to the Windows Edition, which we recently reviewed.ĭue to the current limitations of Apple’s CoreWLAN API, most Wi-Fi stumblers for Mac OS X don’t fully support hidden SSIDs. We also wanted to include AirGrab WiFi Radar, inSSIDer Office, and Kismet, but AirGrab and the popular open source Kismet program wouldn’t work on our MacBook Air (13-inch, early 2014) running OS X 10.10. Pricing ranges from free to $149, all at least require Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, and most require an internal AirPort Wi-Fi card. The six products we looked at are: AirRadar 3, iStumbler, KisMAC2, NetSpot, WiFi Explorer, and WiFi Scanner. Now, here’s our take on wireless stumblers that run on Mac OS X for all you Apple fans. Setup a scan frequency, and have new open or closed networks have their name spoken, play alerts, or display notifications.We recently reviewed low-cost Windows-based Wi-Fi stumblers. View detailed network information, graph network signal strength, and automatically join the best open network in range.| | Whether you are driving around looking for wireless networks, stuck in traffic, sitting on the beach, or if you are curious how strong your wireless signal is at home, AirRadar provides a more linear approach to network hunting.
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