Another look at the WIFI Radar application for Linux. A good tool for a wireless site survey.

The WIFI Radar application for Linux is used to perform a wireless site survey to determine the signal strength of a wireless network that you are deploying at a particular site. This application makes a survey of wireless signal strength very easy indeed. The SSID/MAC address of the access point is shown, as well as signal strength in a bar graph. The mode, 802.11 status & channel is displayed for easy reading. This makes a scan for wireless access points lots of fun.

Install on Fedora like this.

yum install wifi-radar

When the user of a machine is connected to an AP, they may use other command line tools to find out about the AP. Below is an example using the iwconfig command.

[homer@localhost Documents]$ iwconfig wlp0s29f7u3
wlp0s29f7u3  IEEE 802.11bg  ESSID:"GTLHOUSE"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.472 GHz  Access Point: 84:C9:B2:BD:C2:E8   
          Bit Rate=5.5 Mb/s   Tx-Power=20 dBm   
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=70/70  Signal level=-31 dBm  
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:4  Invalid misc:9   Missed beacon:0

Or the iwgetid command.

[homer@localhost Documents]$ iwgetid 
wlp0s29f7u3  ESSID:"GTLHOUSE"

This command will list all available wireless interfaces on your Linux machine.

[homer@localhost Documents]$ iw dev
phy#0
	Interface wlp0s29f7u3
		ifindex 5
		wdev 0x1
		addr e0:91:f5:23:fd:ad
		type managed
		channel 13 (2472 MHz), width: 20 MHz (no HT), center1: 2472 MHz

use the station dump parameter to get more information about the wireless network you are connected to.

[homer@localhost Documents]$ iw dev wlp0s29f7u3 station dump
Station 84:c9:b2:bd:c2:e8 (on wlp0s29f7u3)
	inactive time:	19687 ms
	rx bytes:	684520
	rx packets:	12269
	tx bytes:	16436
	tx packets:	320
	tx retries:	23
	tx failed:	6
	signal:  	-31 dBm
	signal avg:	-31 dBm
	tx bitrate:	11.0 MBit/s
	rx bitrate:	1.0 MBit/s
	authorized:	yes
	authenticated:	yes
	preamble:	long
	WMM/WME:	no
	MFP:		no
	TDLS peer:	no

This tool and these useful commands should be very helpful when you are performing a wireless site survey.