UGN Security
Posted By: Infinite Wifi Scanner... Sorta??? - 10/27/05 09:41 AM
I have a problem. My wifi is sketchy at best. I'm wondering if anyone is aware of any tool out there that will allow you to use your wifi card to scan the 2.4GHz spectrum and assess/identify what is happening.

Allow me to explain my dilema in deatil so you get what I mean:

I have a linksys wrt54g wifi router. I also have an IBM ThinkPad T40 with built in wifi(centrino), an intel pro wireless 2100 . I run Gentoo Linux

On average they are about 3-4m apart. I have a one bedroom apartment so I only travel so far with my laptop.

Constantly, and I mean constantly, my connection is very unpredictable at best. Not all the time, but it happens in spurts up to an hour at a time.

What I want to do is find something that will allow me to analyze the 2.4GHz specturm with my wifi card so I can see what is going on.

Using /proc/net/wireless stats I see that my Rx signal level is between -40dBm and -50 dBm, decent. however my "link quality" fluctuates all over the map. I want to konw why?

Is it a micowave? A cordless phone? Something else that uses the 2.4GHz ISM band? I want to know.

Any ideas?


Edit:

00:52 <Skull> You might also try changing the channel
00:52 <Infinite> ahh, thought of that
00:52 <Infinite> I'm on 1...
00:52 <Skull> It seemed to help when i had that problem
00:52 <Infinite> and I'm there because when I moved in I scnanned the specturm
and found a shitlod of defaults at 6, and then 3 others on 11
00:52 <Infinite> nothing on 1
00:53 <Infinite> I usually scan the area once a week to seee what's out there
00:53 <Infinite> now there 2 others on 1, 3 on 11, and the usual boatlods of
defaults on 6
00:53 <Infinite> i can see about 25-30 other AP's fome my apartment
00:53 <Infinite> frome
00:53 <Infinite> er
00:53 <Infinite> from
00:54 <Infinite> so I've look at that wuite a bit
Posted By: Gremelin Re: Wifi Scanner... Sorta??? - 10/27/05 09:53 PM
You're using Sveasoft; set the channel, to auto then restart your router, if it sees interfearance from another source on startup it'll scan for a new channel with none; it's also good to have "AP Watchdog" enabled, when it "senses" a problem with no clients attached, it'll restart the wireless service.
Posted By: Infinite Re: Wifi Scanner... Sorta??? - 10/28/05 09:40 PM
Channel was looked at long ago. AP Watchdog is not what I'm looking for.
Posted By: Gremelin Re: Wifi Scanner... Sorta??? - 10/28/05 10:44 PM
Humm, I know Sveasoft "reloaded" the 1.1 package; want to reflash? PM me on the IRC (i get alerted) and I'll rebuild.
Posted By: Infinite Re: Wifi Scanner... Sorta??? - 11/10/05 08:34 PM
No.

I'm am 100% positive this is outside interfearence. I simply wnat to see how bad it is on what channels.
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