John Navas <spamfilter0@navasgroup.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 16 Nov 2006 01:16:35 +0000 (UTC), dold@XReXXOmniX.usenet.us.com
> >normal laptop card, which gets "excellent" signal according to WinXP.

> That's not terribly meaningful unless the wireless adapter is under
> heavy load -- it's common for a wireless adapter to report
> good-excellent signal until it actually tries to transfer data,
> whereupon the signal level is downgraded to match reality.

I find a good indicator to be "Current Bandwidth" in perfmon.msc.
Just now, my WG511 shows "excellent". That's a little hard to monitor,
because I only see the popup balloon. Open the status monitor and I have 5
bars, and a speed of 54Mbps.

start-run-perfmon.msc
+ Performance Object = Network
Numbers agree with dslreports.
+ Performance Object = TCP "current bandwidth"

ftp upload at 36KBpS, the current bandwidth stays at 54, ballon pops up as
excellent. ftp download at 300KBpS, same.

Walking around, network idle, I see a momentary drop to 48, then 36. At
that point, the balloon says "very good", then back to excellent, and the
bandwidth is back to 54.

I would say that the balloon is a good quick indicator, your experience
noted. Perfmon is better, and available to almost any user.

I also posted some NetStumbler observations a while ago.
http://www.rahul.net/dold/clarence/w...fer-dining.JPG
In this graph, the effect of the reflector is apparent.

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Clarence A Dold - Hidden Valley Lake, CA, USA GPS: 38.8,-122.5