hotelwifi

I only have ever used the Orinoco Gold Classic card in my laptop to do site surveys. It's not all that expensive for all the information it gives. It will tell you information for the AP and the laptop (uplink and downlink), which is real important. Gives information like signal strength, signal to noise ratio (real important), packets sent and lost, etc.

So this Gold card is great...if it compatible with the AP that it's being used with. The reason I say that is not all APs have chipsets in them that will let the Orinoco Gold card do its magic. So the question then is.....

Are there other cost-effective wireless PC cards out there that will work with different APs, to do site surveys where those cards give signal information for the AP and laptop?

The reason I say "cost effective" is I only know of one other way to get all this information for a site survey. That is to buy Air Magnet...if you don't mind taking out a loan for more then $3000.

There has to be a much more cost effective way then to buy Air Magnet. For most of us, not enough WiFi jobs come along to pay for something like the Air Magnet, although it is a very good program.

So I'd love to hear what other people do, for site surveys...other then using Netstumbler or Air Magnet. Netstumbler is a great tool. I used it many times. But I also need to be able to get uplink (what the AP sees) site survey information also. Netstumbler gives downlink info (what the laptop sees), which is important too. I just don't know what other wireless PC card might have site survey software bundled with it, that will perform these tasks.

Thanks much,