wifi router: see channels in use?

[VJ]

Hello,

I recently purchased a Linksys wifi router (WRT54GC, firmware 1.03.0). It works nicely, but every once in a while, my laptop disconnects its wifi connection, and connects again. The laptop has an 802.11a/b/g adapter; it is said that activating bluetooth at the same time might decrease performance of the both wifi/bluetooth, but it also occurs when bluetooth is deactivated.

There is 1 other wifi network I can see in the list, but it would suprise me if we were the only two in the building (40 or so appartements, mostly young people in the center of Ghent). I suspected it could occur if others were using the same wifi channel (my router used channel 4 by default), so I've changed it to 11. And it seems to occur much less frequently.

Now the question:
Is there a way to see which wifi channels are in use in you vicinity (including for the networks that don't transmit their SSID)?
It would allow me to select a channel that isn't already used...

Thanks!



Jörg

[gt40]

My Toshiba laptop comes with a utility called configfree which does all this.
It shows all the available channels, and their relative strengths, as well as the encryption used if any.
It looks like it only available for use on their laptops , unfortunetly

[ayoub_ibrahim]

have you tried using netstumbler?

[Taz]

have you tried using netstumbler?

Just what I was going to say

http://www.netstumbler.com/downloads/

[VJ]

Cool, I'll give it a go!
Thanks!


Jörg

[VJ]

Yep, it does exactly what I was looking for (and more).

Thanks!


Jörg