5. WLANs, WLANs everywhere and not a Byte to grab

The other activity I found myself engaging in was using AirMagnet to try to connect to one of the many networks that I'd find while traveling. I wanted to see if $3000 bought you any features that would make AirMagnet better than NetStumbler, Kismet, or even WinXP's Zero Config for Wardriving.

I'm not trying to suggest that AirMagnet should be compared to any of the many wardriving and/or WLAN exploit tools that are readily available at no cost. It's obviously in a different class entirely!

Since I didn't plan ahead properly, I didn't make all the screen shots for this review while I was around large WLANs. So please forgive the lack of continuity in some of the screen shots that follow.

Large, busy wireless LANs and AirMagnet were made for each other and where the power of the product really shines. I was amazed at how even Handheld kept up with the dozens of APs and STAs that it ran into at the trade shows I attended and constantly reorganized them into not just one, but many different views.

Figure 5: APs at CES2004

Figure 6: STAs at CES2004

Figure 7: SSIDs at CES2004

Figures 5 - 7 show three different views of a snapshot of the WLAN activity in the LVCC South Hall during CES 2004. There's a lot going on, but AirMagnet's use of heirarchical lists, icons and color coding makes it easy to quickly separate busy and idle APs and STAs. The level of activity in a WLAN is something you don't get when using WinXP's Zero Configuration utility, but can be determined (with more effort) with NetStumbler and Kismet. However, AirMagnet's selection of data views and sorting ability stands far above its no-cost competition.