Wifi Scanner & Net Discovery

Explore your Wi-Fi environment with WifiExplorer's graphical charts.

WifiExplorer is an 802.11 network discovery tool -- also known as a Wi-Fi scanner. Using your device's built-in 802.11 radio, it collects information about nearby wireless access points and displays the data in useful ways. The diagnostic views are helpful when installing and troubleshooting Wi-Fi networks.

Features:

WifiExplorer uses 5 diagnostic views that collectively provide an overview of your current Wi-Fi environment. In 'normal' mode all APs are displayed, while in 'Monitor Mode' only the APs of interest are displayed. The following list briefly describes some of the features available in the current version of WifiExplorer.

✔ Support for both 2.4x GHz and 5.x GHz scanning on devices with dual-band Wi-Fi radios.

✔ Site Survey View -- displays each AP's beacon signal strength and channel. When monitoring the 2.4 GHz ISM band, this view also emphasizes how Wi-Fi channels overlap with one another.

✔ Occupied Channel View -- displays each AP's channel and relative beacon signal strength, emphasizing how the APs in your current Wi-Fi environment are distributed across different channels.

✔ Channel Occupancy View -- displays how the APs in your current Wi-Fi environment are distributed across different channels. When monitoring the 2.4 GHz ISM band, typically you'll see most APs on channels 1, 6, 11 and few (if any) on the other channels.

✔ AP Timecourses View -- displays each AP's beacon signal strength as a function of time. This view is most useful when monitoring a particular AP and you are moving around to different locations.

✔ List of wireless routers -- lists all the wireless APs in your current Wi-Fi environment, along with their SSID, BSSID (MAC address), channel, frequency, security configuration and beacon signal strength (RSSI).

✔ Select Which AP(s) To Monitor -- this feature makes it easy to selectively monitor one or more APs.

✔ Capture, save and email screenshots of the different diagnostic views.

WifiExplorer is the ultimate mobile tool for wifi site surveys. Its graphical charts make it easy to use for both professionals and amateurs alike. A variety of 802.11 network discovery tools are available for the android platform -- they are known by various names including -- wifi scanner, wifi finder, wifi locator, wifi analyzer, wifi detector, wifi monitor, site survey. WifiExplorer falls in this category of wifi test apps. These diagnostic tools have the common goal of detecting the intermittent beacons that are transmitted by every wireless router. Each wireless router with a unique SSID represents a different wifi network. Wireless routers with the same SSID serve the same wifi network.

When preparing a site for installing a wifi network or troubleshooting one that performs poorly one typically uses several diagnostic tools to measure coverage, congestion, RF interference and throughput performance. Coverage takes into account the signal strength of the Wi-Fi network in all areas where Wi-Fi is desired. The signal strengths that are measured by wifi scanning tools are those of the beacons transmitted by wireless routers and do NOT reflect network performance -- a common misconception. Wifi scanners, wifi finders, wifi locators, wifi analyzers, wifi detectors, wifi monitors, site survey and network discovery tools -- whatever you like to call them -- can only be used to measure coverage since they only detect beacons. They can not measure throughput performance, which would require detecting and monitoring wifi data packets.

The best wifi apps will present the data they collect in such a way to make your job of interpreting it as simple as possible. WifiExplorer uses multiple graphical charts so the results really stand out. Using these results allows you to make the best choices in configuring your wifi network for the best channel and determining whether all areas have sufficient wifi coverage.