Socket Communication's Wi-Fi Companion

ADDITIONAL FEATURES:

Once you have connected and you have the screen with the lightning bolt between your iPAQ and the Router/Tower, some additional features come into play.

Specifically, please note the appearance of the following additions to the screen that weren’t there before:

• Text next to your iPAQ icon.
• Encryption status (“PSK enabled”) and the Key Status (or red x) icon.
• Globe icon
• Blue box with Data Rate Designation
• Text next to your Router icon.
• Channel number in dark circle.

The “IP Addresses” screen:

This screen is accessible by using the “press & hold” action on the iPAQ symbol in the upper left-hand corner. It will provide you with the most relevant IP information you’ll need to properly troubleshoot the most common network problems:

• IP Address
• Gateway
• DNS Server
• Subnet Mask
• WINS Server
• DHCP Server
• Domain Name
• MAC Address
• Device Name

The “Manage Certificates” screen:

From the Encryption Status KEY icon, you can click to be taken to your “Manage Certificates” screen. The screen let’s you manage the Personal Certificate Enrollments that you have already installed on the device. Personal (or “Client”) Certificates identify your device to others on the network as being trusted. For access to large corporate networks, you can also utilize root (or “Server”) certificates.

The “Personal” tab allows you to manage your own Personal Certificates.

The “Root” tab allows you to manage the Root Certificates already loaded on your device.

The Globe Icon (a major launch platform)

Clicking on the Globe icon will produce a sub-menu window that offers these choices:

• Browse the Web simply brings-up your default Internet Browser.
• Check Email simply brings-up your default E-mail package.
• Ping brings-up a simple PING utility that allows you to test connections between two devices (your iPAQ and the far-end server in most cases). A good connectivity test that measures the “Round Trip Time” (RTT). Most systems measure the “Time to Live” (TTL) aspect, a measurement in TCP/IP that specificies how many more “hops” a packet can travel before becoming discarded or returned as “obsolete” data. Using the Tools submenu on this screen, you can modify these PING options:

----- Target Address. You can choose which end-system you would like to verify continuity or good connectivity to.

----- Packet Size. You can choose the size of each packet transmitted to the far-end device. Choices are multiples of 32 up to 65550). Best to leave this at default 32.

----- Packet Content (All-0’s, All-F’s [hex], or Random [aka quasi-random]). Basically, if you suspect that you are experiencing certain types of higher-function issues with your Ethernet connection (e.g. the inability to pass maximum density zero packets on a T1 circuit), you could select Packet Size=256 and Packet Content=All-0’s to confirm whether or not these type of packets make it from A to Z.

----- Repeat value (5, 10, 100, 1000, or continuous). Simply controls the number of times the test is run sequentially.

----- Verify Data (Yes/No). Instead of doing a one-way PING, the machine on the far-end can be asked to acknowledge the PING, making the process a two-way transaction. Good for making sure both directions are good.

• Trace Route brings up another simple, yet fully packed Trace Route utility that will allow you to further verify the specific route that your packets are traveling in order to get from your Device to the Far-End machine. Each “hop” shows you the Hop number, the delay measured from the previous machine to the current Hop, the name of the current connection machine, and it’s IP address.

----- Target Address allows you to choose which destination machine you are Tracing.
----- Max Hops is the maximum number of Hops that you will allow before giving up.
----- Resolve IP is whether or not you want to Resolve the IP Address from the domain name (requires DNS service).

Data Rate icon

This icon shows you your current connection speed. Clicking on icon will take you to the Rates screen, where Signal Strength and your current Data Rate are shown. Available data rates for a Wireless “B” connection are 1mb, 2mb, 5.5mb, and 11mb. The bar graphs show what portion of Signal strength and Data Rate you are actually able to utilize. Also shown (at the bottom) are your ESSID (Enhanced Service Set Identifier; or the text name of your Router/AP Wireless network), BSSID (Basic Service Set Identifier; the MAC Address of your Router/AP), as well as the connection Duration and Roam, which both measure the time you have consistently been connected to this network.

Tower/Router/Access Point Icon Text

Next to the Tower/Router/Access Point (AP) icon, you will now see the duration of your current connection to the Router, the Signal Quality, and the MAC Address of the Tower/Router/Access Point (AP).

Channel Number being utilized

This simple icon is a black circle with the current Channel assignment being used.