{"id":39400,"date":"2017-01-06T11:18:45","date_gmt":"2017-01-06T17:18:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eshop.macsales.com\/blog\/?p=39400"},"modified":"2017-01-09T11:13:44","modified_gmt":"2017-01-09T17:13:44","slug":"quick-tip-navigating-the-airport-utility-summary-screen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eshop.macsales.com\/blog\/39400-quick-tip-navigating-the-airport-utility-summary-screen\/","title":{"rendered":"Quick Tip: Navigating the AirPort Utility Summary Screen"},"content":{"rendered":"

When you’re troubleshooting a Wi-Fi network, it’s often helpful to know whether or not a particular device is “visible” from your Wi-Fi router, what the signal strength is at that device, and so on. The macOS AirPort Utility (found in the Applications > Utilities folder) has a way of displaying\u00a0wireless client information in a summary view that can be extremely useful while trying to hunt down those pesky network problems.<\/p>\n

\"AirPort
AirPort Utility Info Pop-Up<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To start with, it’s possible to get a quick overview of an AirPort router’s settings and clients just by clicking on the image of the AirPort that appears on the utility main screen (see image above). This is useful if you just need to know if a particular item like a printer or webcam is actually on the network. More information is visible if you hover your cursor over a wireless client in the list (see image below).<\/p>\n

\"airport-2\"<\/p>\n

But what if you want to go through the wireless clients one-by-one, checking signal strength, data rate, and other factors in more detail? There’s a summary screen that is accessible…if you know how to get to it. It’s actually quite simple. See the edit button in the lower right corner of the list of wireless clients in the top screenshot on this page?\u00a0Press and hold the Option key on your keyboard, then double-click the edit button<\/strong>. A summary screen with a scrolling list of wireless clients appears, and it’s possible to get details by clicking the disclosure triangle (that little gray triangle next to each device name) to expand the information (see image below).<\/p>\n

\"AirPort
AirPort Utility Summary<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For each client, there’s an indication of the connection quality (poor, fair, good, excellent), data rate in Mb\/s, the IPv4 address of the device, the hardware (MAC) address, RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indication) in dBm, and what Wi-Fi mode(s) the receiving device is operating in. One other important piece of information also appears on the summary screen — the channel on which your AirPort is operating for both 2.4GHz and 5GHz. That information can be useful if one or both of the channels is experiencing interference and you wish to manually switch to a different channel.<\/p>\n

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