The Wi-Fi status indicator in the systray of Windows 7 (and most operating systems) gives a limited view into the strength of the wi-fi signal. The defacto free WAP (wireless access point) sniffer, NetStumbler has not yet been updated for Windows 7 (and 64bit), so another solution was needed.
Enter the netsh command line tool. After opening a command prompt window, you can type ‘netsh wlan show networks mode=bssid’. Sample results can be seen below and were obtained by using the command line redirect operator ‘>’ (the full command would be ‘netsh wlan show networks mode=bssid > results.txt’).
As you can see each SSID name is shown, along with the different access points available for the that SSID. This makes it alot easier to troubleshoot issues related to multiple access points, and with the MAC address also displayed, you can track down specific access points, which is very useful when dealing with 3rd party IT staff.
SSID 3 : SSID_NAME_SHOWS_HERE
Network type : Infrastructure
Authentication : WPA-Enterprise
Encryption : TKIP
BSSID 1 : 00:0b:0e:20:53:44
Signal : 65%
Radio type : 802.11g
Channel : 1
Basic rates (Mbps) : 1 2 5.5 11
Other rates (Mbps) : 6 9 12 18 24 36 48 54
BSSID 2 : 00:0b:0e:25:9a:c4
Signal : 60%
Radio type : 802.11g
Channel : 1
Basic rates (Mbps) : 1 2 5.5 11
Other rates (Mbps) : 6 9 12 18 24 36 48 54
BSSID 3 : 00:0b:0e:18:cd:c4
Signal : 20%
Radio type : 802.11g
Channel : 11
Basic rates (Mbps) : 1 2 5.5 11
Other rates (Mbps) : 6 9 12 18 24 36 48 54
BSSID 4 : 00:0b:0e:1f:63:c4
Signal : 29%
Radio type : 802.11g
Channel : 11
Basic rates (Mbps) : 1 2 5.5 11
Other rates (Mbps) : 6 9 12 18 24 36 48 54
SSID 4 : SSID_NAME_SHOWS HERE
Network type : Infrastructure
Authentication : WPA2-Personal
Encryption : CCMP
BSSID 1 : 00:0b:0e:20:53:46
Signal : 65%
Radio type : 802.11g
Channel : 1
Basic rates (Mbps) : 1 2 5.5 11
Other rates (Mbps) : 6 9 12 18 24 36 48 54
BSSID 2 : 00:0b:0e:18:cd:c6
Signal : 18%
Radio type : 802.11g
Channel : 11
Basic rates (Mbps) : 1 2 5.5 11
Other rates (Mbps) : 6 9 12 18 24 36 48 54