260+ Free Tools, Easier to Find, and a New Way to Teach Wi-Fi
Update your Toolbox. Version 1.11.0 is out.
If you don’t have it yet, get your own copy at toolbox.wlanpros.com. It is still free. No account, no login, and it collects no personal data. It runs on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Android, Chromebook (through the Android app), Windows and the web. It even runs on a WLAN Pi, if you have one: one command installs it (toolbox.wlanpros.com/wlanpi/).
What Changed
Version 1.10.0 had 185 tools. Version 1.11.0 has more than 260.
Size isn’t the part I care about most, though. The part I care about is finding things. The home screen is now grouped into clear sections. Quick Reference, 103 items now, is sorted into 13 plain topic groups. The old Field & Trade Reference is folded in where you would look for it anyway.
When you are standing in a hallway with a ladder, or on a help desk call with someone waiting, you shouldn’t have to remember where a tool used to live.
The New Wireless Classroom
The Wireless Classroom is a whole new section, 88 items built for learning and teaching wireless.
29 Guided Lessons. Short, step-by-step lessons in plain language, where the pictures do most of the teaching. They cover the questions people ask you every week:
- how Find My works
- whether Starlink or Wi-Fi Calling will help
- why the hotel Wi-Fi says “connected” and nothing loads
- what Wi-Fi does (and doesn’t do) to your health
- why the TV and the printer vanish on guest Wi-Fi
Tap a myth and the fact appears under it.
48 simulators and models that show what the air is doing. Move a control and watch what changes:
- Wi-Fi through a wall
- multipath
- rate vs range
- OFDMA
- MIMO and beamforming
- airtime fairness
- roaming
- band steering
- DFS and radar
- Multi-Link Operation for Wi-Fi 7
There are dozens more.
11 Course Handouts. Channel allocation charts for 2.4, 5 and 6 GHz, the MCS index, the WLAN Pros bubble diagram, and our Wi-Fi checklists.
Presenter Mode, for When You Are the Teacher
The lessons and simulators in the Wireless Classroom have a Present button. It fills the screen with large type for a projector, a classroom or a shared screen:
- Arrow keys step through.
- R resets.
- Space reveals.
Here is how I’d use it on a support call. Someone says, “My Wi-Fi says connected, but nothing loads at the hotel.” Open the Guided Lesson Connected, No Internet: Captive Portals, share your screen, and walk through the pictures together. They see what a captive portal is, and why their browser has to open the sign-in page.
The same approach works for mobile hotspots, public Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS, and for the question every family asks sooner or later: is my router too old?
Still a Field Tool First
Everything the Toolbox already did is still there:
- Test Network, which checks the real connection and answers the everyday question: is it the Wi-Fi, or the internet?
- Networking Tools, such as ping, traceroute, Ping Plotter, nearby AP scan, DNS, WHOIS and port scan.
- RF and capacity calculators, such as link budget, Fresnel zone, PoE budget and SSID airtime.
Two smaller additions:
- A Wireless Glossary of 123 plain-language terms. 93 are Wi-Fi, and 30 cover the radios people mix up with Wi-Fi: cellular, Bluetooth, NFC, GPS, satellite and home internet. It is translated into Spanish, French, Italian and German.
- One app-wide setting for metric or imperial.
For K-12, Higher Ed, Help Desks, MSPs and Corporate IT
You can give this app to your users. Free.
A user who runs Test My Connection before opening a ticket shows up with an answer instead of a guess. A help desk that sends a caller to a Guided Lesson stops explaining captive portals for the hundredth time. That is time back for the people who fix the real problems.
For Instructors
If you teach wireless, there is more for you, free to download at toolbox.wlanpros.com under Guides & Books:
- the Teacher’s Guide: how to present the Classroom, and lesson sequences that work
- the Instructor Notes: what each simulator teaches, what every control is for, and a demo for each one
- the Field Manual, with every tool in the app documented
Questions, or a lesson you want me to add? Send me a DM on LinkedIn.
Each “Explained” lesson also has a free printable PDF guide. I’m posting one every weekday through October, and they are built to be passed on.
Get It, and Pass It On
Download or update at toolbox.wlanpros.com, or run it in your browser at toolbox.wlanpros.com/app/.
If you have a team, a class, a user group or a help desk, share this with them. Here is a note you can paste:
WLAN Pros Toolbox 1.11.0 is a free app with 260+ Wi-Fi, networking, reference and teaching tools, including a new Wireless Classroom with Guided Lessons, simulators and a Presenter mode for shared screens. No login, no data collected. Get it at toolbox.wlanpros.com.
Which question do you answer so often that you would hand the person a lesson instead, if you had the right one?