Hi, I have had the old version of inSSIDer for years, I just tried to run it to check one of my networks that I use for CCTV and it only listed the network that is being used on my computer. I played with things for a while then went a-googling to find an answer and found the new version!
Downloaded, signed up. opened the app… still just the channel my computer is running.
I seem to be missing something, could you tell me how to get all the networks up please? Past experience tells me that there are at least 20 local networks.
…A few minutes later… it seems that my computer for some reason was only showing the network I was on rather than all the networks on the task bar… I got the others to appear on my computer and they appeared in inSSIDer.
Problem solved!
Hi rog8811, thanks for your post! I’m sorry about the delayed response, and I’m glad to hear that inSSIDer 5 is working as expected now. Just in case this problem comes back, or for anyone else who experiences it, I’ll provide a bit more info.
InSSIDer uses the operating system Wi-Fi API (application programming interface) to discover Wi-Fi networks, so inSSIDer will see whatever your operating system sees as available Wi-Fi networks. Typically, Wi-Fi networks broadcast their presence about 10 times a second by sending BEACON packets. So, if you aren’t seeing the networks you expect, that probably means that the operating system isn’t listening for beacons. That could be due to a power-saving configuration in the Wi-Fi adapter driver. The easiest way to wake the chip up, as you described, is just to click the taskbar icon, which tells the operating system you are interested in considering a different Wi-Fi network connection, so it had better start listening for BEACONs from available networks. If that doesn’t work, you can also try toggling the Wi-Fi off and on again, either by selecting Airplane Mode or disabling/re-enabling the adapter in Device Manager.
I should also mention that with MetaGeek Plus, inSSIDer 5 is also capable of using supported USB Wi-Fi adapters to capture raw packets. When using that feature, inSSIDer still relies on the OS Wi-Fi API to build the inventory of available networks, and uses the raw packet capture to determine additional information about the networks, such as connected clients, top talkers, typical data rates, error rates, etc.