This post is part of an ongoing series discussing MetaGeek’s new packet visualizer, Eye P.A.
See our previous post: Get ready to accelerate your .pcap skills with Visual Packet Analysis

Right now, packet analysis works like a search engine. You enter a search term and it returns several thousand packets that meet the query. This works great when you know exactly what you’re looking for.
If you don’t – get ready to spend some time with your old friend, Mr. Scrollwheel.

For those of you who have been-there-done-that, I’d like to introduce you to Eye P.A.… Read More

Have you ever opened a packet capture file in WireShark? The .pcap (short for Packet Capture) is the most ubiquitous file format for logging network traffic and can be used by almost any network analysis tool. It also displays huge amounts of data that you have to scroll through to find problems with your network.

Packet capture analysis is an essential piece of successful wireless networking. If you haven’t drilled down to the packet level to find a rogue AP, identify the top talkers, count retransmits or understand the % of network bandwidth traveling between bytes, packets or time – you’ll find that there are a lot of ways to export wireless data into a handy .pcap file.… Read More

When Wi-Fi was invented and subsequently adopted en-masse, it brought a wave of mobile computing (think laptops). Corporations, universities, hospitals, and everyone else started putting in APs like crazy. Wi-Fi use exploded in the residential space too. Then, Wi-Fi chipsets started showing up in smartphones, iPods, digital cameras and a multitude of other gadgets. This has magnified the usefulness of WLANs and got all of of us *seriously* addicted to Wi-Fi. In fact, it’s hard to remember what we did before we had this ubiquitous wireless connection.

Now, with the quickly emerging concept of “The Internet of Things”, we are likely to see another big leap forward in Wi-Fi usage – connecting “things” (such as HVAC systems and refrigerators) to 802.11.… Read More

February 2010: MetaGeek moved into a new office, twice the size of our previous space.  We had a large conference room for staff meetings, a small conference room for calls, a big reception area, and plenty of space for our employees. Plus, it had an extra garage/warehouse section that added an additional 1500 sq ft. We figured we’d be able to stay put for at least three years.

As the days passed, we had to move the large conference room from inside the office into the garage space, along with shipping and inventory, in order to make room for more employees.… Read More

Watch our recommendations for surviving the zombie apocalypse.

… Read More

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As part of the second annual Boise Bot Competition, the Idaho-based Discovery Center also hosted a Tech Fest which offers local companies an opportunity to talk about problems they are solving with technology and more importantly – how it works. Being the geeks we are, we jumped at the opportunity to participate. Saturday morning Chris, one of our software hackers, and I headed off to join in the fun.

The MetaGeek demonstration table was right inside the entrance to the Discovery Center. We had Chanalyzer running on a variety of different devices, including a MacBook Pro, Windows virtual machine,
a Windows 8 tablet PC, an Android tablet, and an iPad.… Read More

We live in a world where everything is going wireless. Having a solid, interference-free WLAN is essential for happy co-existence.  This is especially true in the automation and A/V world, where the newest, coolest wireless gear is only as good as the network it runs on.

Year after year, a few of our friends in automation and A/V encouraged us to exhibit at CEDIA (Custom Electronic Design and Installation Association). We decided to take their advice to get a booth at the 2011 Expo – and had a great experience!… Read More

Unleash the powers of your Wi-Spy and view smaller frequency ranges with excellent resolution in the latest version of Chanalyzer Lab. Chanalyzer Lab can transform a Wi-Spy to a lab-worthy spectrum analyzer that will impress your most RF-savvy friend. He or she can save her favorite hardware presets with the ultimate step size and resolution bandwidth combination for quick and easy access. Chanalyzer Lab gives the consistency many engineers need and deserve.

What’s New?

As a 20% project here at MetaGeek, Chris created a quick and easy tool to export the data window to a CSV file.… Read More

It took us two years but we finally gave the Mac version of Chanalyzer some love. Chanalyzer for Mac now supports the latest models of Wi-Spy 2.4x, DBx and 900x and boy, does it look beautiful on one of these slim silvery macbooks!

What’s New?

MetaGeek updated the color schemes to support Color by Density, Color by Amplitude and Color by Utilization. We really like the color by utilization and we think it will help you determine the best Wi-Fi channels for you ipad-ready WLAN.

We re-organized the menu to allow the user to quickly change the display options similar to Chanalyzer 4 or Chanalyzer Pro.… Read More

Chanalyzer Pro 1.1 is now available to all Pro users. We have significantly improved the automatic classification included in Chanalyzer Pro.

Here are a few of the additions into Chanalyzer Pro 1.1

• Multiple channels for signatures. This is ideal for patterns that appear in multiple ranges across the spectrum.
• Master Confidence Threshold. Now you can tweak how often the classifiers are drawn over the Density View
• Bluetooth Classification and others added to the signature library

To see some of the other changes please look at the Release Notes

Introducing Chanalyzer Pro 1.1

We invite anyone with a Wi-Spy to give Chanalyzer Pro another try.… Read More

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