KWirelessMonitor

KWirelessMonitor is a small KDE application that docks into the system tray and monitors the wireless network interface. It supports both Linux (tested on several major distributions) and FreeBSD (tested on 5.2.1). The systray icon shows the signal quality and the bit rate using a "bar graph" and a "pie chart", respectively. In the configuration dialog, you can change the bit rate and power management settings of the wireless interface. It is also able to automatically enable power management when using battery power and/or automatically disable power management during data transfer. By default, KWirelessMonitor tries to automatically detect the wireless interface. You can also manually set the interface name if necessary. Starting with version 0.5.91, KWirelessMonitor can connect to a network specified by the user (experimental). For more information, please check out the homepage.

0.5.91:
# Experimental: Added support for connecting to a network specified by the user. User can enter the appropriate network name (ESSID) and click Ok/Apply to connect to the network. (Currently only supports unencrypted networks.)

Note: Tested on Fedora Core 2, Mandrake 10, and FreeBSD 5.2.1, which are supported by distribution-specific code. For other distributions, it falls back to generic code, which _theoretically_ should work. However, given the quirks I have encountered in the above three distributions, there are likely problems with other distributions as well. Please test this feature and report problems if it does not work.

0.5.4:
# After settings are enabled, the previously saved settings are now immediately applied.
# Added menu item for enabling settings.

0.5.2:
# Changed manual power management setting UI: ``Enable'' and ``Disable'' are now push buttons.

0.5.0:
# New user interface for power management settings: manual and automatic settings are now mutually exclusive.

0.4.8:
# Available bit rates are now automatically detected, so now 802.11g bit rates can be selected. (Linux only.)

0.4.6:
# Improved AC status detection with ACPI on Linux.
# Improved quality calculation heuristics on Linux. (Hopefully this will support driverloader/ndiswrapper users who previously encountered "No signal" or similar problems.)
# The status window is now sticky (i.e., appearing on all desktops) and without its own task bar entry.

0.4.4:
# Added timeout heuristic for "automatically disable PM" to improve performance.

0.4.2:
# FreeBSD support for "automatically disable power management during data transfer".

0.4.0:
# Automatically disable power management during data transfer (Linux only).

Pre-0.4.0 features (both Linux and FreeBSD):
# Automatically enable power management when using battery power. (Requires kernel ACPI or APM support on Linux; requires kernel APM support on FreeBSD.)
# Truly transparent systray icons.
# Allow changing bit rate and power management settings from the configuration dialog. kdesu is used to launch a helper process as root.
# Display network name, signal quality, bit rate, and current power management mode in tooltip and status window.
# Auto-detect the wireless interface.
# Display signal quality and bit rate graphically.