[kennedy]

I've searched this forum every way I can think of... maybe the lack of an answer is the answer... can't be done... but that seems unlikely, so I'll ask:


Is there any way to see what *speed* the wireless connection is at?


For example, I wish the four-level indicator in the menu bar was, instead of showing signal level, showing speed of connection level... such that each time it steps down the speed, it drops a line in the indicator.

Any such thing out there?

Thanks.

[ghporter]

The problem with the bar graph indicator of signal "quality" has been here before, but your question is an interesting take on the problem. I have not seen anything that acts like a speed indicator for use with any OS I'm familiar with. They may be out there, but I haven't chanced across them.

I thought for a minute that you could do a simple experiment to calibrate the bar graph; do a speed check with one of the well known sites (look at the Tools section of Broadband Reports' web site for some good ones) when your bar graph reads 4, then when it reads 3, and so on down to when it's empty but you still have a connection. Unfortunately, that won't work because the bar graph can go down because of interference or signal strength, rather than rate fallback.

Some PC applications/drivers for certain wireless products provide the current wireless connection speed; an example is the Cisco Aironet 350 wireless client driver and management application. While Cisco's application doesn't provide a toolbar speed indicator, it does tell you when the client has "fallen back" from 11Mbps to a lower speed. I haven't looked at their Mac driver, if there is one, to see if it shares this feature.

So let me join you to ask "Does anyone have a wireless speedometer for Macs?"

[superlarry]

Originally posted by GHPorter:
I have not seen anything that acts like a speed indicator for use with any OS I'm familiar with. They may be out there, but I haven't chanced across them.

all the wireless connectivity i've seen in the windows world gives this information in the system tray (win2k and xp) as a rollover menu to the network status.
the closest thing i can find in OSX is /Applications/Utilities/Network Utility.app, but it only reports the max speed and not dropped-down levels.

[ghporter]

Originally posted by superlarry:
all the wireless connectivity i've seen in the windows world gives this information in the system tray (win2k and xp) as a rollover menu to the network status.
the closest thing i can find in OSX is /Applications/Utilities/Network Utility.app, but it only reports the max speed and not dropped-down levels.

Superlarry's right; I guess I haven't been playing with XP's zero configuration wireless networking long enough to remember that the system tray icon will give you your speed. I spent a long time with an old card that wasn't supported by zero config, so I had to use the manufacturer's utility, which wasn't very smooth in XP. My new card, a Cisco Aironet 350 mini-PCI wireless b card rocks! And it has a really great admin utility that lets you adjust the card on the fly, and tells you all about it.

Why I'd go blank on something so cool (and so easy to use-on a Windows machine!) I just don't know...

[Diggory Laycock]

I tend to use MenuMeters