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.
