6.0-REL && iwi && wistumbler2

[Sam Leffler]

Gregers Petersen wrote:
> guru at Sisis.de wrote:
> 
>> but the tool 'wistumbler2' does not see anything; is it somehow broken?
>>
> 
> It is the simple problem that wistumbler2 only works with Prism based 
> (wi driver) chipsets -> It is my impression that a (very) few people 
> have made the .app work with Atheros chipsets, but I'm not able to 
> figure out how :-(
> 
> You offen find the same problem when it comes to various .app's for the 
> monitoring of 'signal strenght' (via a gui)-> the only functional 
> solution I have found until now is to use 'ifconfig iwi0 scan' ..... 
> just as you did ..

The right solution is to use bpf to collect 802.11 frames either from 
the 802.11 layer or from the driver.  At the 802.11 layer you get raw 
frames.  At the driver layer you get much more info (rssi, channel, 
etc.).  This is how kismet, ethereal, etc. work.  I've had patches to 
dstumbler for several years to do this:

http://www.freebsd.org/~sam/dstumbler.tgz

Some cards require that you operate in monitor mode to get interesting 
information.  I do not know wistumbler2 to know if it works like 
this--but if it does then it can work with any wireless card that is 
properly integrated into the system.

	Sam