Sabtu, 31 Mei 2014

wavemon - wireless network monitor application




wavemon is a ncurses-based monitor for wireless devices. It allows you to watch the signal and noise levels, packet statistics, device configuration, and network parameters of your wireless network hardware. It has currently only been tested with the Lucent Orinoco series of cards, although it should work (with varying features) with all devices supported by the wireless kernel extensions written by Jean Tourrilhes.



These screens are currently implemented:

       Info (F1)
              This  is  the  most  "conclusive"  of  the  monitor  screens. It
              displays a condensed overview of all available wireless-specific
              parameters  and network statistics, as well as bar graphs of the
              current signal and noise levels. There are several  sub-sections
              to further separate the information.

              At  the  Interface  section, the name, ESSID and nickname of the
              current wireless interface are shown.

              Below, at the Levels section, you can see four bargraphs showing
              the  quality  of  the link to the next station (if established),
              the level of the received signal, the current  receiver’s  noise
              level  and  the  signal-to-noise  ration,  which  gives  a  good
              approximation of the overall signal quality. The colour  of  the
              signal  level  bargraph  changes from red to yellow and green at
              fixed levels, while the colour  of  the  noise  level  graph  is
              adapted  to  the  current  signal  level  (it turns red when the
              signal-to-noise-ratio gets below 0dB).  If  the  thresholds  are
              associated  with  any  actions,  two  arrows on the signal level
              graph will show the positions of the current thresholds. More on
              this topic later.

              The  Statistics  section  displays packet and byte counters. The
              first four values, preceded RX and TX, show  the  current  total
              number   of   packets   received   and   transceived  since  the
              initialization of the  interface.  The  following  three  values
              display  the  number  of  packets  that  were discarded from the
              interface because of invalid network ids, wrong encryption  keys
              and other errors.

              Below,   at   the  Info  subsection,  various  wireless-specific
              parameters of the interface are displayed. What  parameters  are
              actually  shown may vary and depends on the capabilities and the
              operation mode of your network device. The top  line  shows  the
              current  frequency  the  interface  operates on, the sensitivity
              threshold of the receiver and the transmission power. Below, the
              operation  mode  of  the  interface (managed, ad-hoc...) and, if
              appropriate, the MAC address of the  current  access  point  are
              displayed.  The third line shows the current data transfer speed
              in Mbit/s and the retransmission and  fragmentation  thresholds.
              Whether  or not the details about encryption show up in the next
              line depends on the permissions of the user. Finally,  the  last
              line  displays  the power management parameters, if this feature
              is available and active.

              The last section, titled Network,  shows  -  you  guessed  it  -
              network  parameters,  such  as  the  interface name and hardware
              address as well as  the  interface,  netmask  and  broadcast  IP
              addresses. These parameters are not wireless-related.

              Another keyboard shortcut for this screen is ’i’.

       Level histogram (F2)
              This  is a full-screen histogram plot of the signal/noise levels
              and the signal-to-noise levels. It shows the level changes  with
              time.  Below  the  plot,  the  key  is  shown. If available, the
              terminfo scanline  chars  are  used  in  order  to  enhance  the
              precision of the level plots, i.e. this screen will particularly
              look nifty in a xterm.

       Access point list (F3)
              This screen provides a list  of  MAC  addresses  specifying  the
              access  points  within  range.  This feature is currently _very_
              rudimentary and may not even work for you. Stay tuned, as a more
              useable access point list is on its way.

       Preferences (F7)
              This  screen  allows  you  to change all program options such as
              interface and level  scale  parameters,  and  to  save  the  new
              settings to the configuration file. Select a parameter with <up>
              and <down>, then change  the  value  with  <left>  and  <right>.
              Please   refer  to  the  wavemonrc  man  page  for  an  in-depth
              description of all available settings.

       Help (F8)
              This page will show an online-help in the  near  future;  it  is
              currently not implemented.

       About (F9)
              This  screen  contains  information  about  the  current wavemon
              release.

       Quit (F10)
              The associated function key will immediately exit  wavemon.   An
              alternative keyboard shortcut for quitting is ’q’.

OPTIONS

       -h     print  a  short  explanation  of  the command line arguments and
              exit.

       -i     interface
              override autodetection and use the specified interface.

       -r     generate random levels (for testing purposes).

       -v     dump the version number to stdout and exit.