Which wireless card for sniffing?

Hello,

Can someone recommend a PCI 802.11b/g card which has good driver support
and permits RF monitoring? Preferrably something I can pick up at a
local store.

Thanks.

Sumit Birla <sumit_REMOVEME_@_REMOVEMETOO_birla.cc> wrote:
>Hello,
>
>Can someone recommend a PCI 802.11b/g card which has good driver
>support and permits RF monitoring? Preferrably something I can
>pick up at a local store.

What is your definition of "RF monitoring"?

The Linux driver for rt2500 cards doesn't report signal strength
with the "iwlist dev scan" command with a Linksys WPM54G card as
one example. The Windows XP driver, loaded with ndiswrapper
does.

I've also used two Broadcom based wifi clients (Linksys WPC54GS
and a buildin unit in an HP laptop), all of which report signal
strength.

None of them report "noise" correctly, nor do they report
"Quality" correctly.

The Broadcom units work best for things like adjusting antennas,
because the rt2500 based drivers are unstable and cause kernel
panics on a regular basis if they are reconfigured.

--
Floyd L. Davidson <http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska) (E-Mail Removed)

What I meant was something that can sniff on all channels simultaneously
and not just the one it is joined to.


Floyd L. Davidson wrote:
> Sumit Birla <sumit_REMOVEME_@_REMOVEMETOO_birla.cc> wrote:
>
>>Hello,
>>
>>Can someone recommend a PCI 802.11b/g card which has good driver
>>support and permits RF monitoring? Preferrably something I can
>>pick up at a local store.
>
>
> What is your definition of "RF monitoring"?
>
> The Linux driver for rt2500 cards doesn't report signal strength
> with the "iwlist dev scan" command with a Linksys WPM54G card as
> one example. The Windows XP driver, loaded with ndiswrapper
> does.
>
> I've also used two Broadcom based wifi clients (Linksys WPC54GS
> and a buildin unit in an HP laptop), all of which report signal
> strength.
>
> None of them report "noise" correctly, nor do they report
> "Quality" correctly.
>
> The Broadcom units work best for things like adjusting antennas,
> because the rt2500 based drivers are unstable and cause kernel
> panics on a regular basis if they are reconfigured.
>

Sumit Birla wrote:
> What I meant was something that can sniff on all channels simultaneously
> and not just the one it is joined to.


Then you're looking for a spectrum analyzer and not a WLAN card.

Looking for war-driving tools?

--

Tauno Voipio
tauno voipio (at) iki fi

Tauno Voipio wrote:
> Sumit Birla wrote:
>
>> What I meant was something that can sniff on all channels
>> simultaneously and not just the one it is joined to.
>
>
>
> Then you're looking for a spectrum analyzer and not a WLAN card.
>
> Looking for war-driving tools?
>

Yup. Similar application. I heard that you can channel-hop using any
card but was wondering if there was a card that would listen on all
channels simultaneously.

Sumit Birla <sumit_REMOVEME_@_REMOVEMETOO_birla.cc> writes:

>Tauno Voipio wrote:
>> Sumit Birla wrote:
>>
>>> What I meant was something that can sniff on all channels
>>> simultaneously and not just the one it is joined to.
>>
>>
>>
>> Then you're looking for a spectrum analyzer and not a WLAN card.

Depends on what you mean by channel. If it is a standard wireless channel,
then cards are precisely designed to detect stuff on those channels-- ie
they already have a spectrum analyser on the card for the frequencies of
those channels.

>Yup. Similar application. I heard that you can channel-hop using any
>card but was wondering if there was a card that would listen on all
>channels simultaneously.

iwlist scan
Will show you all active access points available to your card.