We are looking for a way to pull the MAC address of the network…that way we will know if it is the same one. We don’t want to do that since you might want to see both when there really is two. Looks like other developers get around this by making sure only unique SSIDs show up on the list. Sometimes these are picked up by the windows subsystem as two distinct networks…or it could be a bug in the Windows API □ It could be that your Access point is broadcasting two different network types…B and N. One more thing…Subscribe to my newsletter and get 11 free network administrator tools, plus a 30 page user guide so you can get the most out of them. It is a free download for personal and commercial use. You can also export the list to a CSV file by clicking the export button: If you are in a crowded area, you can easily narrow down the network names shown by just typing in the filter box at the bottom: When you launch it, it will default to the first card it finds and show you a list of all the networks it sees: It is a single EXE that does not need an install. This week we polished it up and got it ready for you to put on your flash drive □ We actually have had our own tool to do this internally for a while. It would show where your weak areas and dead spots are, using whatever card is built into the PC. Just to be clear, the RSSI reflects the strength of the beacon as received by the STA – it is not an indication of performance.“Is there a tool available in Windows 7 to check and measure wireless signal strength. In addition, the discovery tool reports the RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indication) for each AP, which is roughly an indication of how close the AP is to your current location (i.e. The way this works is that roughly every 100 mSec an AP sends an “I’m here” beacon – and the discovery tool (running on your laptop and using its 802.11 wireless adapter, also known as a station or STA) picks-up that beacon and adds the SSID to its list of known wireless networks.
A discovery tool reports the Service Set Identifier (SSID) for each wireless network it detects, along with the channel used by the access point (AP) servicing that network. The best known in this category is NetStumbler.
NetSurveyor is a diagnostic tool that falls under the category of WiFi Scanners or 802.11 Network Discovery Tools.