Can Single Stream Sniffing Work?
A bunch of WiFi vendors made presentations at the Wireless Field Day events a couple of weeks ago, and the one that piqued my interest the most (at least in a positive way) was WildPackets'. The WildPackets OmniPeek software can now sniff 802.11ac traffic, with a catch. The catch? It only sniffs single streams 802.11ac traffic. Is that a useful thing? First things, first: In order to sniff 802.11ac traffic, you need a AE6000 (Linksys Wireless Mini USB Adapter AC 580 Dual Band) adapter. (And if you decide to buy one and want to support this blog, you can use that link to Amazon.) The AE6000 adapter is a single stream 802.11ac adapter with a Ralink chipset. WildPackets is developing a driver for the Ralink chipset and demonstrated the AE6000 in action. The expectation is that it will be a month or two before the OmniPeek drivers for the AE6000 actually get released, but I bought one so that I'm ready. Being able to sniff 802.11ac traffic may be great, but the eve