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by anotherhue 4952 days ago
Really? That sort of thing actually is part of my research. Could you possibly forward a screenshot of what it looks like? Netstumbler or the OS's wifi control panel. If you could also describe the urban environment (apartments or houses, how many occupants, etc) that would be amazing. Thank you!
2 comments
rogerbinns 4952 days ago
Lots of networks is pretty common everywhere I look. In commercial buildings with lots of tenants it is even worse. I live in suburbia (detached houses) and can see between 5 and 10 networks depending on which corner of the house I am in. Only my own AP was on 5GHz, but discovered someone else has finally started using that range too. It also looks like several of my neighbours turn their wifi off when they are not at home!

If you want to collect this kind of data, then an easy way is to ask Android users to run "Wifi Analyzer" and use the Share menu to send you the results. It is a glob of XML but includes all the necessary details.

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rythie 4950 days ago
A lot of phones don't support 5Ghz though - so you would have to account for that in your results.
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rogerbinns 4950 days ago
It is surprising to me just how many devices shipped today do. Quite why they do it I don't understand since I never see it mentioned in feature lists.
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rythie 4950 days ago
All Apple's laptops have for quite a while, however with the iPhone they still didn't have 5 Ghz on the 4s and only added it on the 5 - not that Apple let you run a WiFi analyzer on it anyway.
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rogerbinns 4949 days ago
The Android Wifi Analyzer app shows what access points are detected and their signal strengths, channel usage, encryption etc. It is not a traffic sniffer - some screenshots at https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.farproc.wi... I couldn't find anything similar in the app store. I did find several apps that scan your local network (eg Fing).

No one mentions 5GHz in their specs. You can't tell from Google's Nexus pages which devices support it. Apple's older pages (eg Mac Mini) similarly don't say anything but newer pages (eg iPhone 5 and iPad) do. For any vendor about the only clue is they sometimes mention 802.11a support.

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rythie 4952 days ago
Ok, email me (it's in my profile) and I'll email you them back
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