Sniff Wi-Fi

Clickbaitttttttttt! "Three Essential Tools"...  Brilliant!  Years ago, I would've been embarrassed to have such a click-baity headline.  No longer. Why the change, you ask?  I don't know.  It could be that I'm in the Money stage of my career.  (You see, I relate most things in life to pro wrestling.  A pro wrestler's career has three stages: Titles, Money and Legacy.  When you're young and you don't know any better, you want titles.  Being " Intercontinental Champion " [or, in the case of an IT guy, " Network Administrator "] fulfills you.  Management takes advantage of that by underpaying people who are in the Titles stage.  Once someone reaches the Money stage, they are no longer impressed by titles.  "You want to make me Intercontinental Champion?  Great.  What's my paycheck?"  The final stage is the Legacy stage, which most of us never reach.   The Rock is in the Legacy stage.  He has won titles and he has mo

When I wrote a blog post recently extolling the virtues of WiFi protocol analysis, I expected some blowback.  Not because WiFi protocol analysis won't help performance (only a Garo falo -ian fool would assert that it won't), but because I touted protocol analysis at the expense of spectrum analysis.   Well, it's time to make amends.  Spectrum analysis is pretty darned useful, too.  And the spectrum analyzer that I use ( Metageek's WiSpy DBx with Chanalyzer ) underwent a notable update in recent months.  Here, then, is an update on Chanalyzer and a reminder of what spectrum analyzers can be useful for. For quite some time Metageek's spectrum analysis suite (consisting of the WiSpy USB adapter and the Chanalyzer software application) has been the thrifty man(and woman)'s tool of choice for analyzing WiFi frequencies.  The original Metageek WiSpy (a 2.4 GHz-only device without an external antenna interface) was a $100 (all prices in USD) USB adapter and the o