How does Wi-Fi Sweetspots work, and is there a Windows equivalent?

[magreen]

Hello,

I'd like to use my windows laptop to measure and diagnose my Wi-Fi performance. I've been diagnosing my Wi-Fi network using Wi-Fi Sweetspots for iphone (description here: http://www.redmondpie.com/how-to-speed-test-your-local-wifi-router-performance-from-a-phone/).

It shows an instantaneous measure of Wi-Fi throughput, which is quite useful. But the iphone 5S WiFi chip is limited, and I'd like to do it from my windows laptop. I know I could do a file copy from a shared drive from one of my gigabit wired PCs, or do an iperf2. But those are so much more cludgy.

What is Sweetspots actually doing? It seems to be transmitting data, not just reporting the link rate, because when I compare its reported throughput to my internet connection speed measured using speedtest.net (in places of low wifi signal so my internet bandwidth isn't the limiting factor, i.e., Wi-Fi throughput is <= my max internet bandwidth), I usually get numbers that are pretty close.

Thanks.

 

[Lemieux66]

I just tested the app on my android phone. It appears to send UDP packets to your default gateway/router on port 9. No traffic is returned so really this app can only test transmit speeds leaving your device to the access point that it is connected to.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discard_Protocol

The speed reported on my device (LG G4) was erratic jumping from over 120Mbps down to 0.

Of course wifi performance will vary depending on the number of spatial streams the client supports. As you say, a real world test using a Windows share is clunky but far more conclusive.

 

[magreen]

Awesome info. Thanks!

Happen to know of a way to replicate sending on UDP port 9 on Windows, with a throughput measure? Or maybe a linux command for my ubuntu guest virtual machine?

I'm thinking maybe netcat / nc, but I'm not so familiar with it.