Mesh/Software tools

horst

Basically a command-line mesh-debugging tool :-) Recommended by Freifunk wiki.

website

"horst" is a small, lightweight IEEE802.11 wireless LAN analyzer with a text interface. Its basic function is similar to tcpdump, Wireshark or Kismet, but it’s much smaller and shows different, aggregated information which is not easily available from other tools. It is mainly targeted at debugging wireless LANs with a focus on ad-hoc (IBSS) mode in larger mesh networks.

Installation Instructions

Download, untar, install with make

wget http://br1.einfach.org/horst_dl/horst-3.0.tar.gz
tar -zxvf horst-3.0.tar.gz
cd horst-3.0
make

ncurses

If you have an issue with your ncurses library:

make clean
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/wrought/downloads/horst-3.0'
rm -f *.o *~
rm -f horst
rm -f .build_*
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/wrought/downloads/horst-3.0'
touch .build_debug0pcap0
cc -Wall -DDO_DEBUG=0 -g   -c -o main.o main.c
In file included from main.c:35:0:
display.h:23:20: fatal error: curses.h: No such file or directory
compilation terminated.
make: *** [main.o] Error 1

then install the dev library:

sudo apt-get install libncurses-dev

AirView Spectrum Analyzer

The Ubiquiti AirView Spectrum Analyzer running on a Bullet M5

This is a non-libre tool that comes with Ubiquiti's AirOS (that all of their routers run).

It can show both real time and averaged views of power levels (in dBm) plus a waterfall diagram view.

For the Ubiquiti Bullet M5, it operates at frequencies from 4.9 to 6.4 ghz.

It is a Java Web Start tool. Runs fine on Linux.

wavemon

Console-based signal strength indicator.

aptitude install wavemon

Other networking utilities

• EtherApe - a graphical network monitor
• WireShark - a network protocol analyzer