"wireless network connection" icon

[Paul Unger]

This may well earn the 'frivolous question of the month' award, but I've always been curious about what the three concentric arcs to the right of the windows wireless icon--the little 'computer icon' in the 'tray'--are supposed to indicate. I figure that when the 'computer' screen is dark there is no traffic and that when it is blue there is traffic. But what do the yellow and green arcs attempt to show? Any ideas?

[jjesusfreak01]

This may well earn the 'frivolous question of the month' award, but I've always been curious about what the three concentric arcs to the right of the windows wireless icon--the little 'computer icon' in the 'tray'--are supposed to indicate. I figure that when the 'computer' screen is dark there is no traffic and that when it is blue there is traffic. But what do the yellow and green arcs attempt to show? Any ideas?

Theoretically, signal strength, but I am not sure if they do in Windows (I know on my Palm PDA when I was making OS overlay skins, the icon would do that) and I think in Vista it does, but I dont trust XP.

[tomh009]

They are non-functional, I'm afraid -- they just indicate that the connection is wireless (with the "waves" emanating from the screen).

[Stargate199]

Those arcs indicate data transfer over the wireless network. IT may be hard to see, but they do light up when data is being sent. I wish M$ would of did that icon differently to show network signal strength. Oh, well.