Monitor radio parameters in real time using Wavemon, a curses-based tool for Linux.
When using Linux, the standard
wireless tools provide a wealth of status information. These tools
get their information from the standard kernel interface
/proc/net/wireless
. While ideal for providing
pinpoint accuracy in measuring signal strength and noise data, these
tools are not designed to give an indication of performance over
time.
Wavemon (http://www.wavemage.com/projects.html) is a
terrific little tool that does precisely this. It polls
/proc/net/wireless
many times each second to
give you a rolling report of how your wireless connection is
performing. Its simple curses interface keeps the code quite small,
and is ideal for including in embedded distributions (such as Pebble
[Hack #53]) to get real-time link
data from remote access points.
The main interface provides a nice graphical representation of the current link state (Figure 3-29).
All of the statistics are updated in real time, making it ideal for monitoring point-to-point links and fine-tuning antennas on long distance shots. For an even easier to read display, hit F2 to bring up the Level Histogram (Figure 3-30).
This display is easy to read on a laptop even in bright sunshine, making it an ideal tool for outdoor work. The histogram slowly sweeps to the left, giving you a history of the last few moments of wireless connectivity. Since Wavemon runs in a terminal, you can easily run more than one instance to monitor multiple radio links simultaneously.
When you need a high performance signal and noise meter for Linux, Wavemon is hard to beat. The current version is available from Freshmeat at http://freshmeat.net/projects/wavemon/.
18.119.131.72