Notices

Is there a program for the n800 that would give information as far as which particular wireless access point its connected to, and its relative strength? Trying to use my n800 at work to determine which of our 6 access points are down. Thanks for any help

Nokia-N800-39:~# apt-cache search wifiinfo
wifiinfo - Shows current WLAN status

Search for the right repository here:
http://www.gronmayer.com/n800/repos/show_repos.php

can you expand on this? "Nokia-N800-39:~# apt-cache search wifiinfo" not sure what to do with that, i did a search from the link you provided for "wifi" and got nothing...sorry im pretty stupid

click on the connection icon top right, click change connection then it will detect all wifis. or go to connection manager it works the same.

nevermind i found it, that link put me into a search for chinook only. Thanks!

I was looking for a program that shows a more accurate signal strength, and also information about the specific access point im connected to, not just connected to "soso" network.

WIFIINFO is great for showing the signal strength, but i think its showing the mac address of the access point. We cant seem to find an easy way to pinpoint the mac address to any specific access point. Ideally there would be a program that i could load, and then stand anywhere on our lot and see all the available access points and their relative strength.

You'll probably find the MAC address of the AP is on a sticker underneath it...

Failing that, as it appears to be more of a scanner you are after, try kismet.

If you are the administrator of the APs, then just log into them and view the interface to get the MAC address of each AP. Or if that isn't possible then use WiFiInfo and stand next to each AP to ensure you are connected to the nearest one, then make a note of the MAC address that WiFiInfo is reporting.

You'll need to make a note of the MAC addresses anyway for any of the scanner software to be of use, since they all report the MAC address. There is no other info in the Wi-Fi packets that would identify which particular AP signal you are seeing.

Kismet is good, but unfortunately it is not working well on the N800... it stops picking up packets after a few minutes. But for the few minutes that it is working, it does the job.

You may want to install wireless-tools which includes iwconfig (it will be in /sbin/) which will tell you everything you wanted to know about your AP and more.

It is not auto-updating, so it won't tell you signal strength as you move around, but it will give you good info about the AP. You need to run it from an xterm.

If you want to war-walk (search for wireless APs) then I would suggest you search the forum for Kismet and how to install it. It works very nicely on the N800 (again in the terminal).

I hope this helps,

Craig...

awesome thanks for all the tips, now i get to play around with these tools all day tomorrow at work