Is there an app to determine wifi strength or speed?

[mikeslr]

Hi All and anyone,

Based on the thought that there must be a good reason for developing new kernels, I make it a practice to explore most of the pup derivatives as they develop even though the applications I use on a daily basis are almost always the same (albeit when possible the version compiled or compatible with the kernel of the pup I'm exploring. But as I installed all such apps into Lupu 5.28, it remains my "fall back" OS.
I have about six computers (don't ask). But the two I use almost every day are my desktop, a ZTSystems 4x AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 945 Processor, 3375MB RAM, ATI Radeon 3100 Graphics supporting 1600x900 pixels, RaLink RT2561/RT61 802.11g PCI and a Thinkpad T42 with 1.5 Gb RAM. Both access the internet via wifi. The Thinkpad is one floor below my router, the desktop two floors. I have a strong feeling that recent pups --precise, slacko, but especially raring-- although they enable an internet connection via wifi, do not work as efficiently as Lupu. The problem isn't really noticeable on the Thinkpad but the ZTSystem (one floor below) running Lupu I rarely have to wait more than a couple of second for a webpage to display (it usually happens almost instantaneous) while with newer pups the same page can take up to 15 seconds, or sometimes will time out before displaying.
The problem is that these experiences are subjective; at best, counting "one-Mississippi, two Mississippi..." and trying to remember what results I had from under other pups.
So I wondered if anyone knew of an application which runs under Puppy (preferably 'no-arch' so that it could be employed on many pups) which would provide a reading of either the wifi's strength or transmission rate. I'm certain there should be one: when using PPM the transfer rate per second is shown. But PPM isn't ideally suited for making such determinations: repos may transmit at different rates, "broadcast" at different strengths, and who want to download a bunch of unwanted pets anyway.
Perhaps I've been brain-washed by watching too many Geicho commercials. But it seems to me that as a general rule 'faster is better'. [The Admen apparently didn't take aging into their account]. In which case, a new kernel under which webpages render slower isn't better. It's been my experience that new ideas are almost always better on the drawing board. But whether they deserve to be publically awarded that accolade should be subject to some type of empirical testing.

Thanks,

mikesLr

[darkcity]

That is an interesting question. Ntop can measure internet usage and I guess speed, by some accounts its available in the PPM.

How to install Ntop and dependencies?
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=87388

this webpage looks like it could help.
http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/howto/bwmon

at the bottom it lists tools
bmon a portable bandwidth monitor and rate estimator
collectd collectd is a daemon which collects system performance statistics periodically
ntop ntop is a network traffic probe that shows the network usage
darkstat Captures network traffic, calculates statistics about usage, and serves reports over HTTP
MRTG Tobi Oetiker's MRTG - The Multi Router Traffic Grapher
bwm-ng small and simple console-based live network and disk io bandwidth monitor
iftop iftop does for network usage what top(1) does for CPU usage.
IPTraf IPTraf is a console-based network statistics utility for Linux
bandwidthd builds html files with graphs and charts are built by individual IPs,
vnstat vnStat is a console-based network traffic monitor
wrtbwmon Per-user bandwidth monitoring tool for linux-based routers

---

Also if your using Frisbee, going into setup show the Wifi strength

[mikeb]

patriot made a cute little wifi signal strength indicator that runs in the taskbar.... it was part of a thread I cannot recall but I will put you a copy here.

patriot does some smart work...puppy should use more of his stuff

mike

[mikeslr]

Hi mikeb,

Thanks for the wifitray.tar.gz. Please excuse my ignorance. I figured that since it was a ".gz" decompressing it would give me a hint as to where to put it. But trying to do so suggests it is empty. Is it? or is it supposed to be copied 'as is' to some directory?

mikesLr

[mikeb]

Hi

sorry i just quickly grabbed a copy from the system i was on... normally it would live in /usr/bin or similar in the usual PATH.
I suppose you could even drop it in /root/Startup...its self contained including the icons.


One thing to note .. like battery monitors there does not seem to be one hard fast location/rule for monitoring functions...I had to make a specially hacked vattery for one persons laptop for example.... so this may or may not work for you.

mike

[broomdodger]

patriot made a cute little wifi signal strength indicator that runs in the taskbar...

Precise 5.7.1retro and Wary 5.5
There is a spot in the tray but has no icon or status. When mouse over it does give a percentage in text.

Do you see a graph or icon?
Bill

[mikeb]

Ah definitely my bad.... the icons are not built in...I forgot I added them many moons ago ...

here they are...you can extract to '/' and they will go to the right place..

mike

[broomdodger]

here they are...you can extract to '/' and they will go to the right place.

Thank you, Mike
That is much better.
Bill

[mikeb]

Is this icon worship?

glad its behaving for you...a neat little app..

mike

[Wognath]

Hello,
mikeb, thanks for wifitray. I came across this:
http://www.skifactz.com/wifi/Linux_Antenna_Tuning.htm
Not fancy, but it works great for optimizing antenna placement, etc. Hope someone finds it useful.

[mikeb]

I thought it said hifi strength...

Got 300watts RMS in the living room that has to lie dormant most of the time.

mike

[01micko]

patriot made a cute little wifi signal strength indicator that runs in the taskbar.... it was part of a thread I cannot recall but I will put you a copy here.

Damn... source would be nice.. been looking but kinda like a needle in haystack around here.

patriot does some smart work...puppy should use more of his stuff

mike

a lame*.. +1 (many of his enhancements to JWM were included by Joe)

Got 300watts RMS in the living room that has to lie dormant most of the time.

Double Damn!

[mikeb]

Instant karma...

not sure if I changed anything...perhaps moved the icons from silly puppy locations

I gave up on mut2 sources and turned out were on here all the time..I was looking for mut.

mike

[01micko]

Instant karma..

Thanks!!!

[mikeb]

Got 300watts RMS in the living room that has to lie dormant most of the time.

Double Damn!

England is a land of quiet repression

[mikeslr]

Hi mikeb,

I forgot about this thread. Been experimenting with video, so wasn't looking for things in general to read.

Thank you and patriot for the app.

In the basement, two floors below the router, I get "56%" in Slacko 5.6 and raring 3.9.9.2 both with frisbee. I'll add comparisons as I switch to other pups.

I take it the the "%" should be read watts RMS?

mikesLr

[mikeb]

patriot is yer man.... Just call me 'Friendly Fire' associate member of the sidekicks union.

mike

[greengeek]

I have a strong feeling that recent pups --precise, slacko, but especially raring-- although they enable an internet connection via wifi, do not work as efficiently as Lupu.

Hi Mike, I have experienced variable wifi connection strengths between different puppies, and wonder if it is something to do with the firmware, or the way the wifi interface is initialized.

I tried to explain my results recently in another thread:
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 488#751488
Interested to know if you see the same effect I do...

[peebee]

Changed the right click action to call defaultconnect - recompiled - made a pet to put it into /root/Startup instead of /usr/bin so it starts automatically.

Seems to work OK on Slacko5.6.5.2 (actually LxPup derivative)....mainly shows the yellow medium strength for me although I have seen it turn red but not yet green

Cheers
peebee

[mikeb]

Yes handy little app..

Something that always seemed to be absent in linux land.

mike