Best WiFi Analyzer For Mac:Today, we all know that we can’t do anything without the internet and WiFi. While wired connections are very annoying and irritating things. In this guide, we are going to talk about how you can get the most out of your WiFi network by checking the performance of your network. We also improving it with this Wi-Fi analyzing tool for macOS.
macOS WiFi Analyzer
macOS itself comes with an amazing Wireless Diagnostics tool. You can use it to scan all available wireless networks and get a summary of all the channels. From the summary, we suggest the best 2.4 GHz or 5GHz channel or network suitable for you. It can also be used to monitor the network performance, get log information and even as a snout to capture WiFi traffic.
To access it, while holding the Option key click on the WiFi icon in the menu bar. Here you’ll see an option as “Open Wireless Diagnostics” which takes you to your built-in WiFi analyzer. Or simply you can also open Spotlight Search and type in “Wireless Diagnostics”.
Pros:
- Network Scanner
- Checking the performance of connected WiFi
- Log Info
- Channel Suggestions
- You can use Mac OS X’s built-in but rough signal strength information in the AirPort menu, or you can use Alf Watt’s iStumbler (donation requested), which works only in the 2.4 GHz band at.
- Download this app from Microsoft Store for Windows 10 Mobile, Windows Phone 8.1. See screenshots, read the latest customer reviews, and compare ratings for Signal Booster for free.
You can use the NETGEAR WiFi Analytics app to get advanced analytics that help you optimize your existing or newly extended WiFi network. Check your network status, WiFi signal strength, identify. That’s it; you are done! This is how you can check your WiFi signal strength in Android. Check WiFi Signal Strength on iPhone. To measure your WiFi Signal strength on iPhone, you need to use an app known as Fing – Network Scanner. It’s basically a network scanner app that lets you identify devices connected to your WiFi network.
Cons:
- Non-intuitive UI
- No graphical representations
Verdict:
You can also leave the Wireless Diagnostics tool if you need to troubleshoot some minor issues in your network. Although it is not very powerful, given it comes built-in and free, you can’t complain.
WiFi Signal_WiFi Analyzer
WiFi Signal is one of the simplest apps on this list. It provides all the information you need about your wireless network in an elegant card fashion. The app lives on your menu bar, the icon of which can be fully customized. Clicking on it gives you everything from the Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) to the max data rate and MCS index of your connection. There is a real-time graphical representation of the signal rate and noise rate and the app can also recommend the best channel.
Pros:
- Customizable menubar icon
- Support Notifications
- Channel recommendations
Cons:
- Info of only connected network
- No WiFi scanner
Verdict:
If you want to check the strength or quality of your current network from time to time, then it provides you all the info in a compact card fashion along with a customizable menu bar icon.
WiFi Explorer_WiFi Analyzer
WiFi Explorer is one of the highest-rated WiFi analyzer apps on the Mac App Store. The app doing a great job of monitoring, scanning, and troubleshooting wireless networks.
It provides various real-time graphs for network details, signal strength, and spectrum. Except for details, the graphs also display all the networks your device can connect to. An amazing feature of this app is that you can save all the results for a later review and even export all the network details as a CSV file.
Pros:
- Graphical representation of the WiFi environment
- Detailed descriptions of access points
- Exportable to CSV format
Cons:
- Pricey
- No menubar icon
Verdict:
Wi-Fi Explorer quickly identifying signal overlapping, channel conflicts or configuration problems. Maybe it affecting the connectivity and performance of your home, office or workplace.
Wifi Scanner_WiFi Analyzer
The next best app is WiFi Scanner which adds a number of nifty features to the standard WiFi analysis tool.
It comes with various color co-ordinated and real-time graphs of different available networks and provides details about them. WiFi Scanner provides a built-in WiFi speed testing feature that showcases the ping, download and upload speeds of your network to troubleshoot WiFi networks.
Pros:
- Real-time graphs and detailed network parameters
- Provides a Speed Testing tool
- IP Scanner
- Exportable to CSV format
Cons:
- No menubar icon or way to quickly glance at any info without opening up the app
Verdict:
I think WiFi Scanner seems the most bang for your buck and with all its features. It functions as an all-in-one from scanning available networks.
Download: WiFi Scanner
NetSpot_WiFi Analyzer
NetSpot offers the best visual heat maps so you can easily catch any dead spots and optimize access points locations. Besides others, It is the best WiFi analyzer tool.
Net Spot allows you to draw one using NetSpot’s map drawing tool or directly upload a map of your area. Once it completes you can select between several visualizations like noise level, signal level, and access points which show you everything throughout the whole map in the form of heat maps. You can then identify the areas with low signal strength or problems and troubleshoot them.
Pros:
- Surveys and full network analysis
- Support for map or area plan
- Heat map visualizations
- Suitable for commercial use
Cons:
- Very pricey for personal use
Verdict:
NetSpot feels like a well-polished complete WiFi analyzer app. It does feel a little inessential for personal use. But it should work great for commercial use or large office areas to detect dead zones and enhance the overall connectivity of the area.
Download: NetSpot (Freemium)
Honorable Mentions_WiFi Analyzer
WireShark is an open-source and very powerful network analyzer. It is used mainly by network admins and developers. It is one of the best packet analyzer apps available. WireShark is also capable of working in monitor mode. Letting you see what other devices are browsing/watching on your network.
JamWiFi is another free little tool that can not only analyze devices connected to your wireless network, but you can also disconnect them from using your WiFi. The disadvantage is it’ll also disconnect you and you’ve to reconnect again.
WiFi Signal Strength Exploreris a handy little utility which unlike the normal WiFi icon. It shows you the strength of connection via dots/percent in the menu bar and by clicking it. You can access some basic details about your current network.
Conclusion:
So these were (mention above) the best WiFi analyzer applications available for macOS. For normal use or not too deep analysis, the Wireless Diagnostics seems to work just fine. For commercial purposes or large organizations, nothing comes close to NetSpot. Do you’ve anything to share with us? Let us know in the comments section below!
Also Read: How Do I Know What DNS Server I am Using on My PC
Updated: January 10, 2020 Home » Freeware and Software Reviews » Wireless WiFi Optimization & Network
How to test internal LAN network speed? In order to test and troubleshoot networks we need tools that allow us to generate network traffic and analyze the network’s throughput performance. This is true for both wired and wireless networks. In order to properly troubleshoot a wireless (or wired) network we need a way to benchmark its performance, so as modifications are made we can determine whether or not they really make a difference in the network’s performance.
Alternative 2020 Article ➤ 4 Free P2P Intranet Software – Create Home Office File Sharing Network
This is where these LAN benchmarking tools fits in to test network speed between two computers. The concept is you install a new wireless network and it works perfectly. Run these tools and record the benchmark results for later reference. Sometime in the future when either you or others suspect performance has declined then run these tools again and compare the latest results with those you gathered when the network was first installed and working perfectly.
↓ 01 – LAN Speed Test Lite | Windows | macOS
LAN Speed Test was designed from the ground up to be a simple but powerful tool for measuring file transfer, hard drive, USB Drive, and Local Area Network (LAN) speeds (wired & wireless). First, you pick a folder to test to. This folder can be on a local drive or USB drive, etc. to test the drive speed, or a shared folder on your network to test your network speed.
Next, LAN Speed Test builds a file in memory, then transfers it both ways (without effects of Windows/Mac file caching) while keeping track of the time, and then does the calculations for you. For more advanced users, you can test to LAN Speed Test Server instead of a shared folder to take the slower hard drives out of the process as you are testing from one computer’s RAM to another computer’s RAM. Simple concept and easy to use. You’ll find that LAN Speed Test will quickly become one of your favorite network tools!
- Test the speed of your Local Network by testing to/from network shared folders
- Test the speed of your local drives (USB Drives, hard drives, etc.)
- Compatible with LST Server (v1.5 or later) for real network performance results without hard drive limitations – Even test your WAN (Internet) speed with LST Server
- Ability to choose Network Interface Card for computers with multiple NICs
↓ 02 – HELIOS LanTest | Windows | macOS
HELIOS LanTest is a very popular network performance and reliability testing solution for Mac and Windows clients. It is very easy to use within seconds and scales from single local disk testing, to testing performance of a network volume, as well as multi-user concurrent client testing against a single server volume.
HELIOS LanTest can be downloaded via HELIOS WebShare at Server: http://webshare.helios.de, User name and password are – tools
↓ 03 – TamoSoft Throughput Test | Windows | macOS
TamoSoft Throughput Test is a utility for testing the performance of a wireless or wired network. This utility continuously sends TCP and UDP data streams across your network and computes important metrics, such as upstream and downstream throughput values, packet loss, and round-trip time, and displays the results in both numeric and chart formats. TamoSoft Throughput Test supports both IPv4 and IPv6 connections and allows the user to evaluate network performance depending on the Quality of Service (QoS) settings.
Microsoft Windows: Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2. Mac OS X: Yosemite (10.10), El Capitan (10.11), Sierra (10.12), High Sierra (10.13), Mojave (10.14). Android (client only): Android 4.1 and newer. iOS (client only): iOS 8.0 and newer.
↓ 04 – LANBench | Windows
LANBench is a simple LAN / TCP Network benchmark utility. It is designed for testing network performance between two computers and is based on Winsock 2.2. LANBench tests TCP performance only and is designed for minimal CPU usage so that the pure performance of your network could be fully tested.
- Multiple simultaneous connections – up to 20 (for load simulation)
- Low CPU overhead for pure network performance test
- Multithreaded utilizing Windows I/O completion port
- Configurable packet size, test duration and transfer mode
↓ 05 – NetIO-GUI | Windows
NetIO-GUI is a Windows frontend for the multiplatform commandline utility ‘netio’. It measures ICMP respond times and network transfer rates for different packet sizes and protocols. All results are stored in a SQLite database file and can easily be compared. NetIO-GUI is preferred to rate the quality of peer-to-peer connections like VPN.
↓ 06 – NetStress | Windows
NetStress allows you to generate network traffic and analyze the network’s throughput performance. The results of that comparison with previous benchmark will indicate whether or not there really is a problem and dictate which steps to take next (if any). Regardless of your technical expertise or how expensive your diagnostic tools, if you are modifying a wireless network or making decisions to modify it and you are not testing throughput then you risk wasting time and resources going down the wrong path.
- Single instance of the application (i.e. each instance can be used as server or server plus client)
- Supports both TCP and UDP data transfers
- Supports multiple data streams
- Variable TCP / UDP segment size
- Rate of packet transmission (Packets Per Second)
- Variable Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU)
- Uplink and downlink modes
- Auto node discovery
- Choice of display units (KBps, Kbps, MBps, Mbps)
- Support for multiple network adapters
↓ 07 – iperf | macOS | Linux
iperf is a tool for active measurements of the maximum achievable bandwidth on IP networks. It supports tuning of various parameters related to timing, protocols, and buffers. For each test it reports the bandwidth, loss, and other parameters. The current version, sometimes referred to as iperf3, is a redesign of an original version developed at NLANR/DAST.
iperf3 is a new implementation from scratch, with the goal of a smaller, simpler code base, and a library version of the functionality that can be used in other programs. iperf3 also a number of features found in other tools such as nuttcp and netperf, but were missing from the original iperf. These include, for example, a zero-copy mode and optional JSON output. Note that iperf3 is not backwards compatible with the original iperf.
↓ 08 – PassMark Advanced Network Test | Free Trial | Windows
The network benchmark test will work with any type of TCP/IP connection. Including ethernet, dial up modems, ADSL, cable modems, local area networks (LAN), Wide area networks (WAN) and wireless networking (WiFi). The software has been optimized to use a minimum amount of CPU time, allowing even high speed gigabit ethernet connections to be benchmarked. Users have the ability to change the following test parameters.
- The IP address of the machine acting as the server and the port number used for the test to help with firewall issues.
- The size of the data block used for each send request. It is also possible to select variable sized blocks to measure performance deltas as block size increases or decreases.
- The duration of the test.
- The protocol, either TCP or UDP. The TCP protocol is when data integrity is important (Errors are corrected using data re-transmission). UDP is used with applications that are tolerant to data loss such as video streaming.