I’m a pretty competent home networker who has volunteered to help a friend figure out some persistent networking problems. I think there may be an issue of signal loss due to the positioning of the router, and I want to be able to demonstrate that with data.

Does anyone know of a network surveying tool that would display, at a minimum, signal strength at various sample points? Ideally I’d like to be able to use this on iOS, but I can also use it on MacOS. I’m very comfortable with the command line if there are tools you would suggest using there.

Thanks!

  • med@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    Honestly, though it may be overkill, go get kismet.

    It’s going to require some minor configuration, and there is no iOS support for sure - but if you’re going through the effort of investigating and need data - this will serve you, and set you up with skills for future investigations.

    You may require a usb wifi dongle, depending on what support for your mac’s wifi card is like. Look for one that is known to work. Hoping it’s a macbook!

    I have personally used kismet to prove that a device was too far away from an AP because it shows which packets were retransmissions, and can correlate that with signal strength of both device and AP over time.

    Also, I was able to prove that a bank’s CFO was getting dropped zoom calls because he’d joined two separate SSIDs on different and very locked down networks (broadcast from the same APs, and kept roaming between both of them every time he went for a coffee or to the meeting room

    It’ll definitely do what you need, and I’m happy to assist if needed - though my mac skills stop in 2019.

    Ps. Most of the iOS options suck, because of how locked down the wifi stack is. Basically everything is a worse, subscription-model, glorified version of speedtest.net

    Pps. Kismet is designed to be both client and server - i.e. it’s capable of being a wireless probe and a data collection point for other probes. You can just use it stand alone and display the data you captured locally.

    If you need simultanious data capture from multiple points for correlation, I’d suggest another laptop or raspberry pi - but because it takes over the interface in monitor mode when it’s running, you can’t also use it to be your network link.