WiFiFoFum - Review by Paul Zazzarino

Tired of having to void your PDA warranty and flash Linux on a Windows CE/Mobile device. Well someone has developed a CE/Mobile based utility to scan wireless networks and good news, it is free!

For those of you with CE/Mobile devices running Pocket PC 2000, PPC 2002, PPC 2003 or CE.NET 4.1 and higher you can run this utility to sense wireless networks*. Note you must obtain the .NET Compact Framework runtime as a separate download (which is free from Microsoft). .NET CF is a subset of the full blown Visual Studio Framework. .NET CF programs typically are written in Visual Basic or C#. .NET CF is Microsoft's implementation of a virtual machine utilizing JIT (just in time compilation) to run programs on any platform, anywhere, anytime. (Similar but different from Sun's Java Virtual Machine)

The scanner captures the following information: WEP (On/Off), MAC Address, SSID, RSSI, Channel, and Time FirstSeen/LastSeen. As devices are discovered each one is added as an entry to the list box display. The scanner also provides a nice graphical view of the proximity of the devices sensed (Note this does not figure the location of the devices). Log file support is configurable as well. Finally a scanner which runs on something other than the penguin!

WiFiFoFum.org Download Site

Download .NET Compact Framework Runtime

The Open .NET Compact Framework User Group

* Note: the scanner was written for PPC 2003, .NET CF runs on PPC 2000 on up.

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Paul Zazzarino began programming on Altairs and other microprocessor based devices in the early 80's. This was followed by over a dozen years of tool development and mobile handheld applications in the nineties long before the term "wireless" "802.11" and "mobile computing" were part of the common lexicon. Focusing primarily on CE.NET solutions, Paul develops and evaluates mobile and wireless solutions in a variety of models. Paul extols the virtues of "Fat Clients" with the ability to operate stand-alone and independently buffering and storing data, adjusting connectivity and data delivery based on network availability and access. Paul works as an independent consultant in a B2B format and can be contacted at paulzazzarino@3zwireless.com .

3Z Wireless Ltd