infi.... Ok... so, it is about, um, what the description SAYS it's about then. So, the description TELLs you it's about wifi, you install it, then see it's about wifi, so you remove it. Well done, give the man a cigar, no, they're bad for you, take a Scooby Snack and a pat on the head. Who the fck download and installs anything without reading it first???? P.S. Something else THAN wifi BS not then wifi BS.

TK,
I installed it on a similar laptop (win 10 64bit 1903) and it behaved similar with what you described; but with the program running and displaying only the access point the laptop was connected to (also two identical entries), I double clicked on the Windows tray icon for the the wifi and as soon the rest of the access points were shown in Windows, dot11Expert also picked them up and displayed them; after a while they disappeared but repeating the above procedure they were picked again by the program.
I wonder why is the program showing twice the access point the laptop is connected to (but with slightly different strength of the signal); I also have an Android application (Wifi Analyzer) installed on my phone which also displays my access point doubled by a "shadow" access point with a slightly less strength of signal; is by any chance your laptop an HP 250 G6 or maybe is something else?

c_m, the duplicate entry of the connected access point is a bug that has existed for several versions of this program.

My win 10 laptop is a HP ProBook 470 G4 same CPU and SSD but with a 1T HD and 17" form factor and win10 business dedicated nvidia GPU and integrated Intel GPU. 16G DDR4 Wifi is Intel dual band wireless-AC 7265 but that is not the cause of this programs troubles as it exhibits same bugs on my other much older AMD based laptop with a broadcom based dual band wifi chipset and 32bit Vista home premium patched to run 8G RAM. but with a fried Nvidia GPU so accessed via RDP LOL

All other wifi analysing tools I have correctly report a single connected Access point on both laptops so I do not believe it is a fault with HP drivers or utilities.

there is a possibility that the android shadow access point might be the 5.2GHz SSID sharing the same SSID as the one on 2.4GHz (It's not for me as the AP I am connected to is only 2.4GHz so there is no extra 5.2GHz presence on that AP.)

I find the performance of dot11expert is completely inconsistent sometimes it shows all nearby AP's other times it only shows the connected one duplicated and then out of the blue it may wake up again .... no good for any serious investigations. xirus wifi inspector is a good tool too as well as the older free versions of Inssider tool. I have not tried the current Inssider lite since it requires creating an online account and I can't be bothered creating them just for that devleopers satisfaction.

c_m, I believe I may have solved the problem of the program ceasing to display the other access points it seems to be due to the adaptor not being prevented from dropping into power saving mode so it stops scanning the other channels or reporting other access points other than the currently conected one. It can be bumped awake again by tapping the wifi icon in the systray and making windows refresh the wifi access point lists OR it can be prevented by going into the wifi adaptors advanced settings and disabling whatever power reduction features are enabled. I would prefer the tool keep the wifi adaptor awake while running rather than passively hoping the adaptor does not go asleep... Not having studdied the wifi API I am unaware if there is a choice available to the end user application but since simply tapping the wifi icon in the systray to prompt the display of nearby wifi wakes the adaptor up it suggests there is an API to wake up the wifi adaptor and if there is then periodically polling that API should prevent the wifi adaptor from entering any low power reduced scanning modes.

spacecon,

"With my limited networking knowledge, networks are confusing and complicated to me, so I don't know how to utilize a lot of the given information."

It can get complicated if you're working with the network as a whole, but for just the WiFi portion(s), I think you nailed it when you said interference from other networks & signal strength. You want the strongest signal possible, ideally without strong signals from nearby WiFi networks using the same channel. And those conditions can vary quite a lot as you move about your home, which makes using similar apps on your cell phone or tablet tons more useful IMHO, because they're so easy to carry around your home. You might want/need to use a fairly inexpensive mesh extender for example, but where to put it? It needs to receive a signal that's strong enough so the extender can work well, but it also should be as close as possible to the dead or weak spot. With a cell phone or tablet you can easily map that sort of thing out.

In response to [ spacecon ],

dot11Expert 1.5.2 does not ensure nor assist in ensuring that no one else is interfering with our network signal channel and strength - or any attaches or connected devices!

dot11Expert 1.5.2 is not an identification or a troubleshooting tool, and has no "smarts" to know what is our network and whether or not someone, anyone, is using it unauthorized for access to our computers or access to the Internet.
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Peter Blaise, Not sure why you say it does not assist in ensuring that no one else is interfering. When I run it, it shows all detected networks in the area, and gives their names, signal strength, and channel. So you should be able to know which is yours by its name. And if there is someone else using the same or adjacent channel to you, it gives the strength of that potential interfering network as well. So I think that helps a lot to make sure you are on the "correct" channel to avoid interference. As far as unauthorized access to your network, no it can't possibly show that. If someone hacks your password, how could it possibly know? It is up to you to secure your network with a reasonable password and keep it private. But keep in mind that only people within a relatively close range can be able to get onto your wireless network, which limits potential hackers to local neighbors or drive-bys depending on where you live. Note that typically your router software allows you to see who all is connected to your network; that is, which devices, as it gives out the local ip addresses for each device.

mike, co channel access points is not usually a big problem with wifi since the protocol is designed to recognise other users ON the same channel and time share politely and cleanly. What does break wifi is overlapping near channels like using channel numbers other than 1, 6 and 11 in 2.4GHz band because the channels spread over a couple of channel numbers either side and the radios cannot recognise off channel interference as another wifi packet and time share nicely it sees such off channel bleedover as noise and invaribly it causes multiple resends and eventually timeouts and attempted reconnects and in the worst cases failure to even connect reliably right next to your own AP! Where I live we have a problem with a local postal workers vehicles access point on channel 4 smack between 1 and 6 interfering with both the standard prefered channels. So annoying that these companies IT technicians cannot configure them so they co-exist with 2.4GHz band channel use best practice! Of course no point complaining to posties as they have no access or control over what the equipment does.

spacecon, it could detect unathorised access to your wifi by scanning for unknown IP numbers and MAC numbers. Another useful facility that a 802.11* expert program would tell me is what amount of time the other access points are consuming of the current connected channels available time slices so one can then decide if the WLANs one is sharing this particular channel with are too heavy users of bandwidth.... or bit like CPU hogs on time shared multi-tasking operating systems... Those are the sort of stats I would expect from an Expert tool. And they would be stats that would be really useful in creating stable wifi infrastructure. In addition it could include details exposing non-802.11 protocol interference on specific channels from other devices like bluetooth and 2.4GHz drone or video or wireless keyboards or 5.*GHz radar interference.

In response to [ spacecon ],

Yo hit the nail on the head:

- "... it shows all detected networks in the area, and gives their names, signal strength, and channel. So you should be able to know which is yours by its name ..."

Yeah, YOU should be able to know.

But dot11Expert 1.5.2 SOFTWARE does not know.

That is why I wrote:

- "... dot11Expert 1.5.2 does not ensure nor assist in ensuring that no one else is interfering with our network signal channel and strength - or any attached or connected devices! dot11Expert 1.5.2 is not an identification or a troubleshooting tool, and has no "smarts" to know what is our network and whether or not someone, anyone, is using it unauthorized for access to our computers or access to the Internet ..."

dot11Expert 1.5.2 can't even tell you what network you are on, you have to know that yourself.

Even if you yourself go to your wireless router and turn it over and look at the sticker that says the OOB out of the box factory defaults, dot11Expert 1.5.2 software has no way of helping you know if you are connected to those settings, or if those settings have been changed, customized, compromised, or corrupted, or if you are connected to another wifi altogether.

You have to do all of that detective work investigation yourself.

You have to figure out the meaning of anything displayed in dot11Expert 1.5.2 software yourself.

dot11Expert 1.5.2 software has NO savvy, NO skills, NO troubleshooting capability, NO recording capability, NO reporting capability.

Do you have a neighbor who signs into your router at 2 am and signs out at 4 am?

Unless you are watching contemporaneously, dot11Expert 1.5.2 software will not record and display such incidents.

dot11Expert 1.5.2 software is a tool more akin to a screwdriver than a scope.

By the way, passwords are meaningless, and wifi cannot be made secure.

A savvy cracker/hacker just slips in spoofing an already connected device, no password needed since it's already provided by the already connected device.

That's why I have all my lawyer and medical customers on wired networks only, no wireless on the premises - no one can sit in a car outside their window and crack/hack into their networks.

dot11Expert 1.5.2 allows YOU to see stuff.

But dot11Expert 1.5.2 has no idea the meaning of anything it shows you, and itself tells you nothing, absolutely nothing.

I hope KCSoftwares has some development energies to make v2 more sophisticated.
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To [ TK ],

No, dot11expert does none of those things you list - you know this, correct?
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Peter Blaise, another important thing it does not do is expose spoof access points pretending to be yours but on a different radio trying to get you to connect to it instead of your home access point. Or someone setting up a clone honeypot open access point on a town open wifi to try and intercept your non-encrypted traffic for live capture of data or encrypted data for offline attack in a man in the middle attack.

To [ TK ],

Yup, Dot11Expert is just like a dashboard gauge, we the driver and maintainer and even mechanic of our own vehicle have to figure out the meaning of what it shows and what it does not show - it's just a tool, and a pretty base one at that.

I've been using TamoSoft. com [ Essential NetTools ] since DOS days ( well, Win3, they now have [ CommView for WiFi ] $500 ! ), and I'm playing with AiroWizard front end for AirCrack-ng. org, and there are other great suggestions in this thread ( thanks ) and easily findable on the web, especially NirSoft [ http :// www. nirsoft. net/utils/index. html#network_utils ].

Perhaps KCSoftwares is presenting dot11expert here to gather ideas of what to do with it next, and we've certainly dumped a lot of feedback to chew on, and suggested alternatives.

One would think the NSA dump empowered everyone to up their game.

- - - - - - - - - -

( PS - thanks for not going "is it even legal" on us! )

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Peter Blaise, asolutely, I was just giving examples of how software *could* do the things suggested if the developer so chose to make the software an expert on 802.11 based network infrastructure.

rich tarno, nope it does nothing useful like flagging overlapping channels or flagging access points vomiting 40MHz N channels alongside 20MHz N and G channels and also does not flag up any common troubles that if corrected could improve wireless stabiity or throughput. The program is not an expert system on 802.11 but a program an expert user *could* make sense of and read beyond the bugs but would prefer better designed and more stable utillities that show more useful information and are more reliable and don't try to push dodgey other programs mascerading as program feature buttons.

Alexander Priest, please use the name as provided in the readme file, not your personal name

In response to [ Shadrov ],

dot11expert-2 is just a dashboard gauge, not a smart troubleshooting tool.

If you could get it working, you would have to see it frequently enough to become familiar with your networks "normal" working, so that you would be able to recognize something new or different on the display, then take independent action to address the surprise.

This software does none of that for you.
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Shadrov,
This website uses English for comments
In the upper right corner you can choose 11 other languages,
among them Russian

It can't be the meaning thousands of people reading comments
shall spoil their time using Google Translate or other means of
translating hundreds of languages used on this Earth

Tobiasson

Vertaling uit het Russisch

Shadrov, Allereerst lanceerde ik de geïnstalleerde versie 2 jaar geleden (ik heb het niet eerder gebruikt). Het programma heeft GEEN adapter, netwerk of adres gezien. Ik stuurde het naar een site waar een soortgelijke fout al ongeveer 5 jaar geleden werd geanalyseerd. Specialisten kwamen tot de conclusie dat: 1) de service "Wireless Zero Configuration (WZC) niet actief is; 2) dat een dergelijke service niet langer op Windows 8 stond (hernoemd tot WlanOpenHandle). Dit betekent dat dit programma hopeloos verouderd is en niet is gecorrigeerd, in de hoop dat de consument eruit komt. Maar heb ik het nodig als ik andere programma's heb die zijn aangepast voor Windows 10. Ik ben het eens met de opmerking dat KC niet om de client geeft. Ik heb het verwijderd. Bovendien heb ik lang niet het probleem ondervonden om verbinding te maken met netwerken voor een computer, laptop, smartphone. Alles gebeurt bijna automatisch. Waarom moet ik de verbindingsdetails weten?

Malcolm, Does the same for me -dead.

Malcolm, do you have a wifi adapter ?