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Wi-Fi Network Monitoring Tools?

Posted by Cliff on from the watching-those-airborne-packets dept.

Brian the Wise asks: "For all of you with large and/or complex wireless networks out there, what tools (commercial or otherwise) do you use to keep an eye on the health and state of your network? I'm not only interested in the security/IDS side of things, but also bad packets, reflections, clients flip-flopping between APs, etc. I've looked at all the usual open source projects, and so far Kismet comes the closest to my needs, but the wireless drivers on Linux do too much sanitizing of packets so I never see the bad ones. I know the FreeBSD drivers show more, but some of the advanced stuff (ie extra info from the Cisco Aironet drivers) is not supported by tcpdump or ethereal. Is there anything I can do besides getting up close and personal with the Linux network stack and drivers?"

6 of 29 comments (clear)

  1. Get one of these by bluewee · · Score: 5, Informative

    I say get one of these: http://www.proxim.com/products/wifi/client/abgcard /index.html This is a Scanner tool, I find it to be usually faster and better at finding access points / cards. http://www.wellenreiter.net/

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  2. Security by bluewee · · Score: 3, Informative
    http://airsnort.shmoo.com/ after looking at this page, I havent tried the software yet, but it seems that it would be quite easy to break a WEP secured system.

    What should I do to allow for secure wireless internet access?

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  3. Re:Best Linux supported Wi-Fi card? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Senao Card info (they appear to be good cards - and Linux support is good since they're Prism-based)

    This page lists cards by receive sensitivity. IIRC, the Demarc/Senao/Engenius cards at the top of that list are all Prism-based and have antenna ports.

  4. AirDefense by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    If you've got the cash to spare, AirDefense is a great product. It gives you all the info that you're looking for, including some of the layer 2 error reporting that you need, with easy to use remote sensors.

    It ain't cheap, however.

    It also does so much reporting that you need to go in an turn some of the alarms off because it's usually too sensitive.

    If you're trying to do it on the cheap, I suggest Kismet with WRT54G remote sensors. It's not the best solution in the world, but you can build a heck of a monitoring system for $1000.

  5. Many products reviewed... by raga · · Score: 3, Informative

    ... here.

    cheers- raga

  6. WiFi Monitoring by plwweasel · · Score: 4, Informative

    there are really only 2 commercial vendors out there that do monitoring/management/configuration management of wireless networks. Airwave and WaveLink I have used both and would advise anyone to go with Airwave. Currently using them to management 1000+ Access Point network and working to extend that out to manage the other 5000 that are not being managed.