Saturday May 12th 2007, 2:22 am 
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I do a lot of mobile computing, and my MacBook gets great wireless reception no matter where I go. Unfortunately, Apple’s wireless tools leave much to be desired. Even the new Airport Utility included with Apple’s newest Airport Extreme doesn’t make for an accessible airport signal and open network monitoring app. That’s because it’s a network setup tool, first and foremost, and while it does offer a client signal monitoring and a few other useful networking tools, they’re buried deep in the advanced settings.
Not to worry, as there exist in the wild a select group of Airport tools to find and connect to networks on the go, monitor, examine, and refine your home internet and wireless setup, and diagnose and resolve wireless issues.
Some may find that simply using the Airport icon in the menu bar is sufficient to connect to wireless networks. In my opinion, it’s lacking several important indicators which you’ll need to find the best open networks on the go, and help you diagnose and deal with wireless and internet connection and configuration difficulties.
To simply beef up the Airport icon in the menu-bar’s info, try tastyapps.com’s $8 WiFind. With it, you’ll have a few added features to the Airport menu which are so obviously important it’s a wonder Apple didn’t include them yet. With WiFind, clicking on the Airport icon to open the drop down will now show you networks within range complete with a red lock symbol if they’re protected networks, and a green unlocked icon if they’re open. It will also show miniature airport icons which reveal the signal strength for each network.
WiFind currently reports signal strength in reverse for the latest Core2Duo Macs, and after e-mailing tastyapps with a report log, they said they’d get to work updating it shortly. I did some testing prior to installing it and afterwards with speedtest.net, and got very similar results. This application will not interfere with your connection or bandwidth whatsoever, and has not caused any other anamoloies of any kind. Seems stable and useful to me.
If you’re the kind of purist that would rather not modify Apple’s Airport menu icon- checkout a widget from SpinTriplet called AirTrafficControl.
A staple Airport networking-finding tool for several years, AirTrafficControl has recently undergone an extreme N makeover and is now well-endowed with the ability to scan for A,B,G, and N wireless networks. An extremely versatile widget, ATC let’s you scan for closed networks, prevent unauthorized users from changing your network settings, use the Keychain to store, retrieve and update WPA or WEP passwords, and view current connection details including network speed, vendor and signal strength.
Lastly, the master tweak tool. At $60 IPNetMonitorX doesn’t come cheap, but if you are a network administrator, or need advanced control over every aspect of your network and internet environment, this application is comprehensive. IPNetMonitorX is based on the award-winning IPNetMonitor Classic, and has been re-written using Cocoa and BSD networking to bring its functions to Mac OS X.
The tools included are: Address Scan, AirPort Signal, Connection List, DHCP Lease, DHCP Test, Finger, Interface Info, Link Rate, Lookup, Monitor, Name Server Query, Ping, Port Scan, Server Scan, Subnet Calculator, TCP Dump (including TCP Flow), TCP Info, Trace Route, and Who Is. You can download a fully-functioning demo, before deciding whether it’s right for you.
Last but not least, iStumbler. Another Airport app which has been around for years, iStumbler is now Universal and works well with Intel Macs.
The skinny on this application: it’s an airport scanning tool which sets your Airport Extreme card into active scanning mode, detecting networks and showing your signal strength, channel, security info, and more.
The fat on it: It also will show you Bluetooth items, and Bonjour lists as well. The iStumbler includes a ‘Spectrum Widget’, which displays a virtual spectrum analyzer on your Dashboard, allowing you to visually detect network radio frequency overlap on wireless networks. Spectrum gets it’s information directly from iStumbler to provide you with the most accurate signal information available.
So, iStumbler is more of a ‘jack-of-all-trades’ wireless tool, and one which is perfectly suited to the process developing a home network, analyzing neighboring wireless connections before deciding how you’ll configure yours.
There are other apps and widgets out there which will perform similar functions, each having more or less of the features included in the ones I’ve highlighted above. I’ve chosen the above for their Intel-native stability and, in my assessment, higher overall form, function, and user control with simplicity.