Wifi survey with the controller

[Mnyb]

We have all used the likes off netstumbler to survey our radio neighborhood,
when setting up our wifi.

Or some routers like the one's that can run tomato firmware can do it.

But I was asking myself ,why not ask the controller ?

NB! this will be blaring obvious to the seasoned Linux user, stop reading here (I'm still a n00b so I thinks it's fantastic ).

You can use ssh to access the controller via any Linux terminal or use for example "putty" on a pc.

The Controller being a small Linux machine (posix ?) does respond to many (but not all ) standard Linux commands.

iwlist and iwconfig and ifconfig can be usefull.

"iwlist eth0 scanning" will show you all wifi networks in range from the controllers perspective, nice.

"iwlist eth0 scanning essid ssid" replace ssid with *your* networks SSID name !this will show you properties of your network only

"iwconfig eth0" and "ifconfig eth0" can also give you facts about your network

if you want to view your own settings look into this files with the vi editor.

etc/network/interfaces and etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

Some examples with some of the data replaced by ****** signs

# iwlist eth0 scanning
eth0 Scan completed :
Cell 01 - Address: 00:1C:F0:66:A4:62
ESSID:"******"
Mode:Managed
Frequency:2.412 GHz (Channel 1)
Quality:0/100 Signal level=-82 dBm Noise level=-82 dBm
Encryption keyff
Bit Rates:54 Mb/s

Cell 02 - Address: 00:21:04:10:BD:16
ESSID:"******" [2]
Mode:Managed
Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
Quality:0/100 Signal level=-73 dBm Noise level=-82 dBm
Encryption keyn
Bit Rates:54 Mb/s

Cell 03 - Address: 00:1C:F0:88:58:14
ESSID:"**********" [3]
Mode:Managed
Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
Quality:0/100 Signal level=-68 dBm Noise level=-82 dBm
Encryption keyn
Bit Rates:54 Mb/s
IE: IEEE 802.11i/WPA2 Version 1
Group Cipher : TKIP
Pairwise Ciphers (2) : TKIP CCMP
Authentication Suites (1) : PSK
IE: WPA Version 1
Group Cipher : TKIP
Pairwise Ciphers (1) : TKIP
Authentication Suites (1) : PSK

Cell 04 - Address: 00:1D:0F:EA:C8:54
ESSID:"*******" [4]
Mode:Managed
Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
Quality:0/100 Signal level=-73 dBm Noise level=-82 dBm
Encryption keyn
Bit Rates:54 Mb/s
IE: WPA Version 1
Group Cipher : TKIP
Pairwise Ciphers (1) : TKIP
Authentication Suites (1) : PSK

Cell 05 - Address: 00:1C:F0:7D:16:56
ESSID:"*******" [5]
Mode:Managed
Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
Quality:0/100 Signal level=-75 dBm Noise level=-82 dBm
Encryption keyff
Bit Rates:54 Mb/s

Cell 06 - Address: **:**:**:**:**:**
ESSID:"******" [6]
Mode:Managed
Frequency:2.462 GHz (Channel 11)
Quality:0/100 Signal level=-38 dBm Noise level=-82 dBm
Encryption keyn
Bit Rates:48 Mb/s
IE: IEEE 802.11i/WPA2 Version 1
Group Cipher : CCMP
Pairwise Ciphers (1) : CCMP
Authentication Suites (1) : PSK

Cell 07 - Address: 00:01:38:79C:E1
ESSID:"***********" [7]
Mode:Managed
Frequency:2.462 GHz (Channel 11)
Quality:0/100 Signal level=-88 dBm Noise level=-82 dBm
Encryption keyn
Bit Rates:54 Mb/s

Neat !

And my own network stats.

# iwlist eth0 scanning essid ******
eth0 Scan completed :
Cell 01 - Address: **:**:**:**:**:**
ESSID:"******"
Mode:Managed
Frequency:2.462 GHz (Channel 11)
Quality:0/100 Signal level=-37 dBm Noise level=-90 dBm
Encryption keyn
Bit Rates:48 Mb/s
IE: IEEE 802.11i/WPA2 Version 1
Group Cipher : CCMP
Pairwise Ciphers (1) : CCMP
Authentication Suites (1) : PSK


and this

# iwconfig eth0
eth0 MRVL-GSPI8686 ESSID:"******" Nickname:""
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462 GHz Access Point: **:**:**:**:**:**
Bit Rate:54 Mb/s Tx-Power=13 dBm
Retry limit:9 RTS thr=2347 B Fragment thr=2346 B
Encryption key:<too big> Security modepen
Power Managementff

And finally:

# ifconfig eth0
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:04:20:**:**:**
inet addr:192.168.1.6 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:14706 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:11312 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:3724862 (3.5 MiB) TX bytes:1283757 (1.2 MiB)
Interrupt:52

have fun

cheers
Mikael

[funkstar]

It's pretty good that all that functionality is available in the basic system.

What should be relatively straight forward is to wrap that all up in a SqueezeOS plugin/applet/extension or whatever.

[Mnyb]

It's pretty good that all that functionality is available in the basic system.

What should be relatively straight forward is to wrap that all up in a SqueezeOS plugin/applet/extension or whatever.

Maybe straight forward if you are a programmer, you are probably right.
Some of it is already implemented during the setup sequence you can see and choose from a list of networks.

Someone with the wits can probably cut'n'paste that and expand it to something like a wireless survey applet

One could also expand the player information view advanced>information>player information> . This can show you firmware ip-adress mac and signal strength but thats all, what about all relevant setting per player (gateway subnet DNS settings SC adress etc ), in the palm off your hand. That would probably make support happy when someone calls.

2 ideas for the price of one.