Xirrus Wi-Fi Monitor Gadgets & Widgets

Xirrus has created a collection of easy-to-use tools to help you more effectively use and manage your Wi-Fi networks. The Xirrus Wi-Fi Monitor allows you to monitor the status of your Wi-Fi connection and the surrounding Wi-Fi environment - in real time and directly from your desktop.

The Xirrus Wi-Fi Monitor is useful for both IT managers and end users, and is available as a Yahoo! Widget for Windows XP and a Gadget for Windows Vista. A radar-like display graphically shows available Wi-Fi networks and their range. Detailed information is available about your current Wi-Fi connection in addition to surrounding Wi-Fi networks, including SSID, signal strength, IP address, MAC address, security level, vendor, and network type. A Terminology section helps you make sense of all the Wi-Fi terms. Nine different color skins are available to customize the Wi-Fi Monitor’s look for your desktop.

Yahoo! Widget for Apple Mac OS X (requires Yahoo! widget framework)
Download OS X Widget, v1.0
Download OS X Widget Guide v1.0 

Yahoo! Widget for Windows XP (requires Yahoo! widget framework)
Download XP Widget, v1.0
Download XP Widget Guide v1.0 

Gadget for Windows Vista
Download Vista Gadget, v1.01
Download Vista Gadget Guide v1.01 

Iperf

Iperf is an easy to use and very popular tool that every IT professional should have that measures maximum throughput. Iperf provides you the data to tune TCP and UDP characteristics. Iperf reports throughput, delay jitter, and datagram loss in easy to understand tables and graphs. You can run Iperf from and command line or a GUI interface.

Iperf is copyrighted by the University of Illinois, except for the gnu_getopt.c, gnu_getopt_long.c, gnu_getopt.h files, and inet_aton.c, which are under the GNU General Public License.

Iperf 2.0.2 installer for Windows - Provided by Ted Fines (fines@macalester.edu) at Macalester College, St. Paul, MN.

To download iPerf, click here:kperf_setup.exe

WireShark

WireShark® is a network protocol analyzer, and is the de facto standard across many industries and educational institutions. It is the continuation of a Ethereal that started in 1998.

For more on Wireshark or to download the software, follow these links:

http://www.wireshark.org/

PingTest Tool

Ping Test Tool is a handy, powerful, visual ping utility and IP Scanner for IT professionals to check network connections. Ping Test Tool is a graphical ping utility that lets you watch the states of the network and test the connection speeds of various locations. It can save IP addresses and host names and its intuitive interface shows the route, hosts, packet loss percentage, min/max/average response times, etc.

To download PingTest, click here:

http://www.tucows.com/get/501817_201691

Qcheck

Qcheck is a must have and handy tool for any IT professional. It does much more than the traditional “ping” command. As a comparison, here is a summary of the benefits of using Qcheck:

Qcheck vs. Ping	Qcheck	Ping
Tests the response time of traffic on IP networks.
Emulates real application flows across the network to test connectivity and performance.
Tests network throughput.
Tests whether a network can support multimedia traffic.
Tests a network link using the application flows generated by streaming multimedia applications.
Determines at what rate streaming traffic is received and how much packet loss occurs.
Tests the connectivity between your own computer and another computer.
Supports a variety of protocols and can test network performance using TCP, UDP, IPX, and SPX networks.
Shows a workstation's physical memory, operating system levels and CPU utilization.
Runs traceroute between any two workstations on your network, regardless of their locations.

To get Qcheck and use it:

Install Qcheck on the computer you'll use to run the Qcheck console. Qcheck runs on any computer running Windows 2000, NT or XP.

Install an Ixia Performance Endpoint (or Qcheck itself, which has the endpoint built in) on any other computers. (You can download Performance Endpoint software free from Ixia!)

Based on the parameters you select, the Qcheck console will instruct any two endpoints to run a test and return the results to you at the Qcheck console.

• For a response time test, Qcheck returns the minimum, maximum and average number of seconds it took to complete a transaction.
• For a throughput test, Qcheck returns the amount of data per second that was successfully sent between the two endpoints.
• For a streaming test, Qcheck returns the rate at which the streaming data was received by the second endpoint and the amount of packet loss that occurred.
• For a traceroute test, Qcheck returns the number of hops, average hop latency, and the address and names of the host at each hop.

OmniPeek

Use OmniPeek Personal to analyze traffic from a local network segment allowing you to not only view “top talkers”, but also drill down to see which nodes are communicating, which protocols and sub-protocols are being transmitted, and which traffic characteristics are affecting network performance.

For more information on OmniPeek, click here. 

TCPView

TCPView is a Windows program that will show you detailed listings of all TCP and UDP endpoints on your system, including the local and remote addresses and state of TCP connections. On Windows NT, 2000 and XP TCPView also reports the name of the process that owns the endpoint. TCPView provides a more informative and conveniently presented subset of the Netstat program that ships with Windows. The TCPView download includes Tcpvcon, a command-line version with the same functionality.

TCPView works on Windows NT/2000/XP and Windows 98/Me. You can use TCPView on Windows 95 if you get the Windows 95 Winsock 2 Update from Microsoft.

For more information on TCPView, click here.

BgInfo v4.0

BGInfo automatically displays relevant information about a Windows computer on the desktop's background, such as the computer name, IP address, service pack version, and more. You can edit any field as well as the font and background colors, and can place it in your startup folder so that it runs every boot, or even configure it to display as the background for the logon screen.

For more information on BgInfo v4.0, click here.