Perhaps you travel frequently and see yourself as some kind of WiFi parasite hopping from hotspot to hotspot and those who live this life relay on opening up laptops and often connecting WiFi dongles to even see that a signal exists. A logical solution would be to have a WiFi adaptor that could also act as a WiFi Sniffer or finder, meaning you can have one device that both alerts you to a networks presence and then allows you to connect.

The ZyXEL unit is small, comparable to a largish USB memory stick, the USB interface itself is covered by a small cap which fits snugly and requires a good amount of force to remove it, so unlikely you'll knock it off by accident. Build quality seems first class and it doesn't feel like a cheapo import like most WiFi finders even those made by recognised brand names.

Finding a hotspot is simple stuff, just press the seek button and the AG-S55H goes into search mode looking for any useable access points (AP's) in the vicinity. We found that it took up to 30 seconds to find a full list of AP's and they are then shown in order of signal strength on the small but readable LCD screen. Using the second button you can tab though the AP's with each one showing its SSID, Signal Strength, speed (802.11a/b/g) and also the level of security applied. This feature alone sold us on the ZyXEL as a hotspot Sniffer which in this respect out performed many of the hotspot tools we've used in the past. Power comes form a small internal Lithium Ion battery which can easily be charged when hooked to the host PC via USB, that battery status is shown by a blue LED (for on) and also a bar graph on the LCD screen when in charging mode.

Testing in London we managed to detect many hotspots and often located ones that were wide open allowing us to open up the laptop and surf FOC. The unit can find up to 15 AP's in one search, this is the limit of the memory on the dongle. Perhaps one missing feature is the ability to see if a hotspot is a live internet connection, our Linksys router in the office can do this by using a ping to a pre determined site, this would be a great extra on a WiFi Sniffer. It would save those times that you find an open hotspot only to discover that there is no external IP to be used and its a closed network. For those of us looking for that free lunch you can set the scan mode to only show open AP's which can cut the list down in urban areas.

Once you have a WiFi signal identified its time to use the ZyXEL, you'll need to pre install the software supplied on CD and the dongles drivers prior to first use but the process is simple enough and there is no need to refer to the instructions which is just as well as they are very sparse! The WiFi client software is ok enough to use and shows the available AP's and their signal strength and other information, then you proceed as normal to connect. The ZyXEL unit seemed to be very tenacious with WiFi signals and easily outperformed a Dell PCi card and also our Sony Vaio's inbuilt antenna.

We were also pleased to note that working with secure networks is possible with this model including both WEP and the more recent WPA. We were quite taken by the ZyXEL AG-225H Wifi Sniffer and Adaptor, it made living off free WiFi just that bit easier and its extra signal strength meant that we ditched our laptops inbuilt capability. priced at around $74 or £50 it's not the cheapest of devices but the multitude of uses and overall build quality justify the price.

Published - 08/02/2006

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