The I.T Massive!

AP Grapher is a freeware program for OSX that detects and displays wireless networks. AP Grapher consists of two main windows, the first window called the Scanner Window (the top right in the pic below) which shows the networks AP Grapher has detected and the second which is called the Grapher Window (the bottom left in the pic below) which graphs the network you are currently connected to. These two windows are shown below.

The first window (see below) which contains the different networks that AP Grapher has detected. There are several columns, These are Name (this is where the names of the wireless access points are displayed), Security, Channel, Signal, Noise, Best (which is the best signal strength received), Availability, MAC and Last Contact.

There are a few of these columns that I find particularly handy, such as the Security, Channel and Last contact ones. Each row can fall in different colour coded categories, green is the one your connected too, black are active access points and gray means that the access point is inactive. the first is the channel column which can help if your having problems with your connection. Having your access point on or near a channel of another access point can cause interference. This column allows you to see which channel your on and adjust your access point to a free channel. I also like the Availability column too, you can see if the Access Point your connecting to is reliable or not.

The Grapher Window (see below) shows you a graph of different data from the access point your connected to. These data types are Comm Quaility, Signal, Noise, SNR and TX Rate. The graphs are clearly displayed and the colours can be customised which is nice.

The icon at the top right called drawer is cool. In here is where you customise the graph colours and what data you would like to have displayed. You can also access the preferences pane where there are some quite handy options. These include an options to speak comm quality, speak discovered names, change the refresh rate of the scanner and the grapher and many more.

To conclude I think that AP Grapher is clear and easy to use and has some great features. The only issue I have with it is that it crashes every now and then on my uni-body MacBook Pro, apart from that I would highly recommend it.

Price: Free (you can donate if you like the software)

System Requirements: Version 1.2 or above requires Any Mac (PPC or Intel) running Mac OS X 10.4, 10.5, or higher.

Where to get it: http://www.chimoosoft.com/products/apgrapher/