12 Best WiFi Analyzer Apps For Windows In 2022
Just honestly see yourself, how many times you check the wifi signals in your mobile phone whenever you move around in the home, office, shopping mall, airports, or even in the garden and hospitals. WiFi analyzer Windows pc tools can fix the best spot and may give you the best solution to deliver high-speed internet on your pc or mobile at its best performance by analyzing an ideal place in your home or office to install your wifi router. Actually, WiFi always attracts our attention or can say it’s the routine and a part of our daily life.
Sometimes the wifi signal frequency tends to be mysterious by blinking in and out and we have also seen the common error like ‘wifi connected but no internet‘. We’ve probably seen how quickly the signal indicator on your smartphone or laptop can go from full to empty and all this in and out attracts our alert to check wifi signals more frequently. Some weak signal spots turn your smartphone laptop dumb while in such circumstances. Honestly, I experienced that sitting on my couch at night in my bedroom gives me speedy downloads and smooth YouTube streaming, and soon after I moved downstairs to pick the newspaper and a while the signal lost! This applies to many of us around the globe, not alone me, isn’t it.
But now you could avoid this madness with the help of a WiFi analyzer for the Windows app. Our team found some of the best wifi analyzer apps for your pc that would perfectly help you to detect the right spot to get the best speed on your pc, laptop, or mobile phone.
Why Do You Need a Wifi Analyzer Windows App?
There has been a dramatic increase in the devices that connect to the Internet using Wi-Fi and in 2017 alone, more than $8.5 billion worth of Wi-Fi devices were shipped around the world and that figure is forecasted to double to about 16.2 billion U.S. dollars till 2025.
Let’s check a bit the technical side of the wifi signals that are capturing by your pc or mobile phone. Actually, The signal coming from your home WiFi router is delivered by interference, obstructions, the router’s speed and performance, and several other factors, which affect its range. Even though your router is advertised to have a certain range, you can’t expect the range to be the same in every direction.
So all you need to use a wifi analyzer windows tool to know where’s the best place to install your router if the signal distribution in your home or office isn’t uniform.
How A Windows Wifi Analyzer Tool Works?
Many WiFi analyzer apps detect all available WiFi networks in your area, providing you with detailed information about each of them. You can see which channels the networks operate on, how strong their signals are, which WiFi encryption methods they use, and so on.
Furthermore, Wi-Fi Analyzing software allows you to analyze wireless Access Points (APs) and channels working on the 2.4 and 5GHz (Wi-Fi bands), and give you the proper information to make adjustments to your AP and Extenders to help you get the best coverage, speed and security necessary.
Wi-Fi Analyzers can provide an easy way to find the right wireless channel accurate WiFi signal strength and also indicates areas of weak WiFi signal strength and dead spots in your building that helping you determine the best place for your WiFi router installation to avoid interference from neighboring APs, find hidden networks or rogue APs.
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The following list shows a baseline of what a Wi-Fi analyzer can do:
- AP Scanner:
Scan reachable Wi-Fi APs and get information like channel, DB signal strength, MAC address, vendor, etc. - Client Scanner:
Scan devices connected to your AP and block unauthorized users. - Visualize APs:
Show graphics for Signal Strength, Connected users, Signal-To-Noise ratio, etc. - Security Mechanisms:
Manage security for WEP, WPA, WPA2, and Enterprise. - Reporting:
Displays historical data and test results for easy troubleshooting
Best WiFi Analyzer Windows Apps
We strongly believe that the best WiFi analyzer app should be easy to use, come with all the features you need to optimize the performance of your WiFi, satisfy the needs of enterprise customers, and be actively developed by a team of experienced developers dedicated to creating the best WiFi analyzer tool possible.
1. NetSpot Wifi Analyzer App For Windows And macOS
NetSpot is one of the highly efficient and professional Windows WiFi analyzers that can be recommended to complete beginners and professional network administrators alike. Its modern user interface is inviting, self-explanatory, and beautiful.
This WiFi analyzer app runs on a MacBook (macOS 10.10+) or any laptop (Windows 7/8/10) with a standard 802.11a/b/g/n/ac wireless network adapter. Beneath its polished façade lie advanced WiFi analysis features and two fantastic WiFi scanning modes: Discover and Survey.
2. SolarWinds WiFi Analyzer
SolarWinds is one of the leaders in IT infrastructure management software. The first release of popular SolarWinds’s Network Performance Monitor “NPM” was in 2001. During that time they have been improving and upgrading their software tremendously to keep up with the latest technologies to hit the market.
Solarwinds’ Wi-Fi monitor and Analyzer comes with full NPM and their software is very easy to use and install but limited to Windows systems only. With a Wi-Fi monitor, you can manage numerous types of networks from SMB to Enterprise-level Wi-Fi infrastructure.
NMP allows you to have control of every detail of your network anywhere you are. You can monitor your wireless network from virtually anywhere by accessing NPM through its customizable web console.
Within the console, you can periodically query APs (availability, number of clients, signal strength, security type, etc), controllers, and connected devices. You can see active alerts right on the main dashboard and configure the alert system to send you SMS or e-mail when a critical alert is active.
The software can also generate reports with granular details including IP address, device type, SSID, channels, number of clients connected, and even details on the connected client itself.
When you first install NPM, it will dynamically discover wireless APs and other network devices. When a new AP is added to your network, NPM will quickly prompt you for monitoring it.
With NPM v11.5 or later, you can create customizable network maps to display your Wi-Fi network environment in heat view mode. NPM creates the map by automatically polling the signal strength of each AP and displaying it on your map.
Wireless heat maps allow you to see the signal range of each AP and find dead zones between them. With detailed client information and heat maps, you can find the physical location of rogue APs or missing devices in your network.
3. InSSider – The Good Choice For Windows 10/8/7
All of these features are only available in the most expensive edition, inSSIDer Office + Wi-Spy DBx. These limitations aside, InSSIDer can quickly and accurately measure WiFi signal strength, help you pick the best channel for your home WiFi network, and track the strength of received signals in dBm over time, among other things.
PRTG is a monitoring tool built by Paessler, a leading network monitoring software developer.
The solution can be used by SMBs or large enterprises. PRTG calls itself “The Swiss Army Knife For Sys Admins” because it can adapt to specific requirements using its powerful API.
4. PRTG
PRTG Professional Wi-Fi Analyzer, a component of PRTG, can analyze APs, load, traffic, signal strength and availability in your wireless network.
The tool is easy to set up and can be configured in no time with relative ease – we’ve recently reviewed PRTG as well as set it up to monitor windows within minutes here. With the help of auto-discovery, your Wi-Fi network can be easily found and displayed in a matter of minutes. From there, you can set periodical queries to check the status of each device with SNMP system uptime and Ping sensors.
PRTG comes with built-in sensors that help monitor bandwidth load. It can also help you query signal strength by sending an SNMP advanced sensor.
PRTG sensors can quickly alter you when a Wi-Fi disruption occurs or a bandwidth limit is reached. You can get notified via email, SMS or Syslog. With this tool, you can also generate reports to analyze historical data in HTML, PDF, CSV and XML format.
PRTG is a well-balanced Wi-Fi monitoring tool for Windows systems only. But the tool is aimed at general network monitoring which makes it lack some pre-defined Wi-Fi features. Features like “number of connected clients” or “limiting a certain client” are missing unless you manually create them.
But the most amazing benefit of PRTG is its flexible pricing. You can download the free trial with unlimited sensor monitoring for 30 days or the freeware full functional version which allows you to monitor up to 100 sensors.
5. Wifi Analyzer App For Windows 10 Pc and Mobiles
This is a Windows 10 app available on Microsoft Store. This simple Windows WiFi analyzer tool is aimed solely at home users, and the basic version is ad-free. The Pro version adds live-tile support, beeper for signal strength, the ability to connect to WiFi networks directly from the app, filters, the ability to disable screen timeout and lock screen rotation, and the option to change signal strength borders.
The good news is that none of these features are essential, so most users can stick with the free version. The one thing WiFi analyzer does great is showing which channels the WiFi networks in your area operate on. If you see that your WiFi network overlaps with several other networks, it’s best to switch to a less busy channel to avoid interference.
6. Glasswire
GlassWire brings more to the table and in a beautiful layout. Apart from the usual networking tools like finding channels and optimizing networks to connect to, GlassWire will also show you who your Windows PC is talking to.
The data that is being transmitted and the apps that are behind it. There is a firewall in case you want to block an IP or an app for security reasons.
GlassWire is free to use however there are upgrades available too. Starting at $39, you get additional features like lockdown mode, 6-month history of logs and data, but sadly, license for only a single computer. If you want more, there are other plans.
7. WireShark for Windows, Linux, OS X, Solaris, FreeBSD, NetBSD
Wireshark is a free and open-source packet analyzer intended for troubleshooting and analysis of a variety of different communications protocols, including WiFi. Its main strengths are the scope of its features and the thriving open source community.
But unless you’re a seasoned IT expert, don’t expect to know how to use it to analyze your home WiFi right out of the box; there are entire training courses dedicated to helping pros use Wireshark.
8. NirSoft
NirSoft provides a useful collection of lightweight free utilities for Windows. Among Nirsoft collection you can find the legendary utility, WiFiInfoView.
This tool is very lightweight and portable but limited for Windows systems only. It can scan nearby wireless APs and give out complete information such as SSID, MAC, PHY Type, Signal Quality, RSSI, channel, vendor, security, maximum speed, station count, etc.
This discovery process can also allow you to see the date that a network was first and last found. For advanced wireless engineers, the tool shows extended information in Hexadecimal format.
Unfortunately, some Anti-virus software manufacturers have detected Nirsoft’s software as Potentially Unwanted Software. Even though the site and software are %100 safe, this still causes reputation issues.
9. Vistumber
Vistumber stands apart from many other WiFi analyzers windows tools, thanks to its support for GPS and live Google Earth tracking. When Vistumber finds a WiFi network, it plots it on a map, showing its exact location as well as other information, such as encryption, strength, name, and so on.
It’s intended for wardriving, the act of searching for WiFi wireless networks by a person in a moving vehicle, using a laptop or smartphone. Of course, you can also use to identify the WiFi network in your home or neighborhood. Unfortunately, the outdated user interface makes the application quite difficult to use.
10. Acrylic Wi-Fi Home
Acrylic Wi-Fi Home, developed by Tarlogic Security, claims to be “the most advanced WLAN scanner” in the market. The software is free and intended for non-commercial use only. But with a paid upgrade it can be used for SMBs and Enterprises.
Acrylic Wi-Fi Home is a WLAN scanner limited to work as wifi analyzer Windows systems only. It can analyze Wi-Fi traffic, visualize APs and clients at any range.
The software scans local APs, connected clients, and displays a table with information such as SSID, MAC address, vendor, PHY type, RSSI, signal strength, channel, client details, type of security and when it was seen first and last.
The software can also take signal strength over time and generate graphs to allow easier troubleshooting. The software also supports GPS, to see the geo-location of the Wi-Fi network on services like Google Maps.
Acrylic Home Wi-Fi doesn’t have any reporting or exporting capabilities except for a screenshot button that allows you to post in Twitter. But if you upgrade to paid version, Acrylic Wi-Fi Professional can create reports and has other cool features.
Acrylic Wi-Fi Professional includes a built-in connectivity module that allows password strength testing. The module runs a brute-force password test using a built-in dictionary of potential passwords, something not common in Wireless analyzers.
11. WiFi Commander
WiFi commander has a beautiful UI with 3D graphing capabilities that make the whole WiFi and network analyzing process fun and engaging. If you have a touch-screen laptop, you can interact with the 3D visual representation of the channel distribution.
WiFi Commander was built with Windows 10 in mind and hence is not available for Windows 7 or 8. Most WiFi analyzers will check signal strength and display it but this app will show it in real-time. This will help you join the best network based on the most accurate and recent data.
12. NetCut
Netcut is a solid network debugging and investigating tool that was originally built to be a backend solution. It not only works in Windows but also iOS and Android. Unlike WiFi Analyzer above which can be used by beginners and pros alike, Netcut is more suitable for professionals and office use.
Scan and analyze all the IP addresses on your network. Advanced features include ARP protocol using which you can manage user bandwidth and stop network abuse. The best thing about Netcut is that it let you kick people off your WiFi network without requiring any access to your router.
Sometimes, nearby networks can interfere as we previously discussed. Netcut can help prevent this interference and boost the connectivity range and performance of your router.
Conclusion
All the above tools mentioned here work with their best efficiency. The only difference lies in their ability to solve problems on different levels, and they are compatible with different versions of Windows. Depending on whether you need a WiFi analyzer for your home or office, you can use one of the above apps.
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