Pro Tip: Use AP Grapher to Supercharge Your Wireless Network
With more and more people going wireless, the airwaves are becoming more and more cramped. Not only are wireless routers taking up precious space but even cordless phones can put your wireless connection down for the count. In this tip, I am going to show how a few minutes with AP Grapher can keep your wireless network running without a hitch and, even better, keep your frustration to a minimum.
Introduction
If you are one of the lucky people with an Airport Extreme Base Station and a Wireless N card, then you know the benefits of using the “N Only Mode” along with wide channels: wired-ethernet speeds over-the-air. If you know the benefits of that 5GHz spectrum then you know the downfalls such as random dropouts, poor connections, and overall lacking range. Luckily, there is an application named AP Grapher that can diagnose the issues you’ve been having with your wireless network.
Here are a few things that can interrupt wireless traffic:- Cordless phones…
- Some cordless phones operate in the 2.4 to 5 GHz range, interrupting both wireless G and N.
- Nearby wireless networks…
- Wireless networks typically default to channel 6 and, as you can imagine, if multiple networks use this single frequency, channel interference is bound to appear.
- Home appliances and other electronics…
- Believe it or not, even microwave ovens can have a dramatic effect on your network!
AP Grapher Screencast
In this screencast, I’m going to show you how you can use AP Grapher to diagnose interference on your network and, better yet, some of the steps you can take to clear that airspace up.
So, without further ado, here’s the screencast:
What AP Grapher Did For Me
The issue with my wireless consistently dropping out was due to interference by our blasted cordless phone, however, this guide may not resolve all problems with wireless N reliability. Taking a closer look at the graph you can see the noise (red) is somewhat close to my signal (green). Changing to a higher channel within my Airport Extreme moved the signal farther away from the noise, which I believe is coming from my cordless phone.
Here, you can see how my wireless signal was in the same path as another device’s signal—presumably, my cordless phone.
Notice how, in the second screenshot, none of the lines in the graph intersect. My uptime has improved dramatically thanks to this simple little application.
As you can imagine, AP Grapher is a tool that I’ve come to use frequently when troubleshooting wireless problems.
Hardware Network Analyzers
Of course, if you’re one of those people that just have to spend money on something to feel like they’re getting the best tool available, there are a few commercial utilities out there that do essentially the same thing that AP Grapher does. One such utility, Wi-Spy $399, gives you a lot more information1 about what’s floating around your airspace but, for the average power-user, AP Grapher will be a perfect fit for most jobs.
To be honest, when I first stumbled upon the application, I was surprised to find that it’s being offered as donationware! For the feature set AP Grapher offers, you’d expect it to be a commercial product with a hefty commercial fee. I gladly donated money to the developer and didn’t think twice.
I used AP Grapher to simply find an open spot in the wireless spectrum, however, in doing so, I was not able to fix all of the issues surrounding my stability. This was just a piece in the puzzle. I actually had to rollback the firmware on my Airport Extreme Base Station to 7.2.1 (7.3.1 is current as of writing this article) and update my Macbook to Leopard 10.5.3. After all was said and done, my Mac was finally able to successfully complete a Time Machine backup over 5GHz wireless N without dropping the signal.
You may get sticker shock from the Wi-Spy but it fits in a completely different category. If you are deploying wireless networks and troubleshooting them for a living then pick up a Wi-Spy, the price is much, much lower than alternative hardware solutions out there. If you are simply trying to troubleshoot your own wireless network, give AP Grapher a chance and, if it helps you fix your problem, then consider donating to keep the development of this excellent tool going strong.
Footnotes
1 To use the Wi-Spy device in OS X, you’ll need to use EaKiu.
—RP
Application Profile
- Application Name:
- AP Grapher
- Developer:
- Chimoosoft
- Version:
- 1.2.1
- License:
- Donationware
- Type:
- Network Diagnostic Tool
- Competitor(s):
- Wi-Spy
“Very interesting, I had the same problem I actually had an original airport, then it started dropping too often so i bought some dlink, that was good for a while, then same problem, let I buy an airport extreme and after a short time, same issue, just changing it to a set channel (from automatic) fixed it for me, but after running this app I still have some pretty crazy stuff going on. It's showing me connected at 270/270Mbit/sec but this thing looks more like an ekg http://images.jeremyhalvorsen.com/skitch/apgrapher-20080530-004258.jpg anyone have any idea's what I can do to fix whatever that means? :P Thanks for the screencast I have high hopes for machive”
“Those sudden drops are similar to what I experienced. You may want to double check the firmware on your Airport Extreme and roll it back to make sure it's not an OS issue. If that doesn't solve this issue maybe the newest version of Leopard will fix the issue like it did for me.”