Tiger Bits: Airport Indicator

I am able to get a signal in areas of my house that I couldn't before installing 10.4 so I wonder if any other tweaking was done.

With my PB Ti 550MHz the signal got a really improvement and now i've got just a few losts of connections. With MacOS 10.3.9, in the exactly same location, it was almost impossible to be on-line for a long period.

"This is a really poor decision on apples part. I could care less what my throughput is, as I can use other programs (and now even dashboard widgets) to check it." But what good is "signal strength" if your throughput stinks? My impression is that throughput is all most people really care about. After all, if you've got good throughput, you've got a good signal -- the inverse isn't necessarily true.

I was wondering how my signal could be so poor when I'm just 5 feet from the wireless router. Thanks for the info!

You can have a "strong" signal (microvolt field strength) but a noisy radio frequency enviroment that results in packet loss and slows the actual data rate. It's actually a good change IMO.

There's also the issue of noise. I've had top-notch signal strength but almost no throughput when there's lots of interference. Yes a little change like this can be annoying, but what good is a signal if you can't get any data?

This is a really poor decision on apples part. I could care less what my throughput is, as I can use other programs (and now even dashboard widgets) to check it. I want the airport status to show how strong my signal is, not something counterintuitive like throughput. Oh well, guess its time to keep iStumbler running 24/7.

As the signal gets worse, WiFi will ramp down speeds (e.g. from 54 to 11 to 5 to 2 to 1mbps) to try to keep a connection.

This is a really poor decision on apples part. I could care less what my throughput is, as I can use other programs (and now even dashboard widgets) to check it. I want the airport status to show how strong my signal is, not something counterintuitive like throughput. Oh well, guess its time to keep iStumbler running 24/7.

I would guess its more to do with the function of download speed/reliability to signal strength. i.e. 75% signal strength might be just as fast as 100% signal strength. when things drop to 30% you might get degraded performance. It's probably not a straight line if you graph the two figures. Just a guess.