RE: [OT] wireless network sniffers

["Hawes,Timothy Edward \(GEG\)" <haweste@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

John,

NetStumber would be my first port of call (www.netstumbler.com). See the
downloads section for a free app to locate wireless networks. To find
out where the AP is you'll probably have to do a bit of wandering around
with a laptop/tablet running NS and figuring out which direction gives
the strongest reception. NS will return MAC address, SSID, AP
manufacturer, locked/unlocked etc.

There are loads of Linux tools out there too - I've not used any but
kismet and airsnort might be two to start with. A lot of these apps are
"sold" as network analysis tools and, apparently, the support
forums can
get a bit snotty if they suspect you are a hacker. Tread carefully :-)
(again, no personal experience, but a colleague was browsing round and
found some heated comments...although I don't know If it was on the
forums for those two specific apps or not.)

If you've got a PDA then there are other apps for that too,
Mini-stumbler (from NetStumbler), and even "wifi fo-fum" (or
something
like that) which runs on an XDA :-)

Good luck,

Tim.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Benfield, John (Penta)
>
> I have a wireless network at home that works most of the
> time. However on the occasions that I can't get a network I
> pickup another network with a very stone signal (I normally
> get 1-2Mbps, this give 11Mpbs). My PC gets allocated an IP
> address (via DHCP) but I don't appear to be able to do
> anything else. I'm trying to find out what this network is,
> the name that coming up is complete gibberish. The really
> strange this that we are quite literally in the middle of
> fields. The nearest house is about 1km away (as the radio
> waves fly), so I can't believe that it a home network. Also
> the icon in the control panel comes up as an oblong with a
> circle above it (rather than the normal aerial icon).
>
> Any ideas about what it could be, or how I would go about
> finding out would be most helpful. I did do some goggling but
> there is just too much information out there.
>
> JB