2. Features and Internals, Continued

I liked how the client popped up a window requesting a choice of XP Zero Config or the client when it first loaded, then took care of disabling Zero Config. Other apps do this, but ASUS' client actually stops the Zero Config service (WZCSVC) which removes the Wireless Networks tab from the wireless connection properties.

This means that if you want to go back to using Zero Config, you'll need to preferably bring up the selection box again by clicking on the System Notification (Tray) icon and choosing Wireless Option or restart the service yourself using Windows' Service manager.

Figure 4: Mobile Manager
(click on the image for a full-sized view)

Figure 4 shows the Mobile Manger, which lets you set up and manage multiple network profiles. As you can see in the screen shot, the Manager displays not only network profiles used by the 100g, but also profiles for all other network adapters that it finds in the Registry. As you can imagine, my test notebook sees a lot of adapters and now I have a simple way of clearing them completely out of my system instead of having to go futzing with the Registry!

Figures 5 and 6 show the Site Monitor application. The Search feature (Figure 5) refreshes every 7 seconds or so, displaying the information shown (plus WEP status). You can show the RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indication) of each AP in dBm, mW or %, but you can't resize the window to see all the Search data or change or disable the refresh. (The mW readings are in scientific notation (base + exponent) by the way, so they're a little difficult to interpret quickly.)

Figure 5: Site Monitor Search
(click on the image for a full-sized view)

Selecting an AP from the Search list and starting the Monitor application brings up the window shown in Figure 6. Once you hit the Start button, a plot of RSSI over time is generated and entering a valid IP address into the Destination IP Address box generates a Throughput plot.

Although this is pretty nifty, I found the throughput numbers to be much lower than those I obtained via my Chariot testing. I also don't know where the dropouts shown in Figure 6's Throughput plot came from since both test machines were otherwise idle.

I'd like to see numerical display of each reading, but the ability to save a text report or BMP image of both plots, or directly print them is definitely a plus.

Figure 6: Site Monitor
(click on the image for a full-sized view)