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Software review: Socket software and drivers for SDIO Wi-Fi / WLAN - version 2

Version of this page: 1.

The exact version of this software that we review here is 2.01:

Before you could start using this software you must install it. Download it from here and install it (no need to put SDIO WLAN / Wi-Fi card before installing).

This software is designed for SDIO WLAN / Wi-Fi cards from Socket communications but rumor has it that also cards from SanDisk can be powered by it. However please don´t rely on it!

After the software is installed in your Pocket PC, you can can insert the SDIO WLAN / Wi-Fi card! Be sure that the card is inserted properly and eventually wobble it a bit. If the card is not inserted properly the drivers will not start working.

This software from Socket communications consists generally of 2 parts: drivers of the network card (that is visible in settings after installation) and tools. The tools help in finding access points, making peer to peer connections and in testing and troubleshooting problems.

Upon insertion of the card in the title bar of Pocket PC you notice additional icons (first 2 icons from the left):

The first icon from the left is an icon provided by Socket Communications and by tapping on it with stylus the tools are launching. This first icon also usually shows the state of the connections. The second icon is a standard Windows Mobile icon and denotes simply a network connection (it can be also Bluetooth PAN profile connection, not necessarily a wi-Fi connection).

After finding the network you can pick the one that you want to use:

... and even get more details about each of them:

On pictures above "b" and "g" means 802.11b and 802.11g respectively and denotes capability of these access points. Although currently SDIO Wi-Fi/WLAN cards are only 802.11b (11 Mbps), they can however recognize if given hot spot (access point) supports also 802.11g (54 Mbps). This is very good because it alllows you to estimate whether (in future) upgrading to 802.11g makes sense - it doesn´t make sense if your favorite hot spots or access points still work only in 802.11b.

The numbers "00:00:00:00:00:00" represent the place where MAC addresses of access points are placed. MAC address is a concept from computer networking and denotes physical, worldwide unique, address of a network card. The same MAC addresses are also used in regular (not wireless) Ethernet cards... In this article, to preserve privacy we have obfuscated these MAC addressses by replacing them by zeroes.

We must admit that if given access point has a MAC address blocking (only those configured allowed) then this software is not giving proper error message! Simply the connection to the access point fails - this is the sign that MAC address of your SDIO Wi-Fi/WLAN card is not on the "allowed" list of given access point. You need to contact the administrator then to get it added. In public Wi-Fi hot spots this problem however is never occuring.

Once the connection is succesfully established it is presented visually:

The subsequent screenshot shows the dialog with information about the connection:

... where you can also notice the speed at which the connection has been established, here: 11 Mbps. If you are relatively far away from the access points however, it may well be 2 or even 1.

You can observe signal quality also with help of graphs:

One of interesting part of these Wi-Fi tools is ping, that allows you to check the connection to servers. First, with Tools/Configure menu item you need to enter target server:

... and then you can observe the response times:

Please note however, that sometimes, for some servers, you don´t get any response with ping because they are blocking ping requests but allowing only HTTP requests.

Another useful tool is traceroute:

... that gives you idea about how many "hops" are needed to reach given network.

Of course usually wireless connection works exactly like Ethernet connection and is absed on obtaining a lease from DHCP server. In the subsequent dialog you can check when the lease expires:

Here are statistics about the communication:

... and here you can provide certificate if given Wi-Fi network supports it:

Conclusions: version 2 of WLAN / Wi-Fi software for SDIO cards shows, that even if your Pocket PC phone doesn´t have built-in Wi-Fi, it can easily connect to hot spots with SDIO cards, and even offer more features than some phones with built-in Wi-Fi have...