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Wifi analyzer Is a thorough application on android for managing WAP, wifi strength signal etc. I was wondering if there was a similar tool for ubuntu

1
  • If you don't require a fancy GUI, kismet will give you all the software tools of the fanciest (i.e. most expensive) consultants. If you need a fancy GUI, I don't know what to use. I'm prepared to bet stuff like the one you linked is probably just a GUI wrapper around something like kismet anyway :-)
    – user60235
    Jan 8, 2013 at 18:00

4 Answers 4

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Network manager command line interface nmcli

nmcli d wifi

This is an output of command:

*  SSID           MODE   CHAN  RATE       SIGNAL  BARS  SECURITY  
   151022         Infra  4     54 Mbit/s  74      ▂▄▆_            
   mary           Infra  4     54 Mbit/s  74      ▂▄▆_  WPA2      
   151022         Infra  40    54 Mbit/s  70      ▂▄▆_            
   mary5          Infra  40    54 Mbit/s  60      ▂▄▆_  WPA2      
   Don Ceci       Infra  6     54 Mbit/s  34      ▂▄__  WPA1 WPA2 
   epg72          Infra  11    54 Mbit/s  34      ▂▄__  WPA1 WPA2 
   Mitio Paynera  Infra  2     54 Mbit/s  24      ▂___  WPA1 WPA2 
   Nina           Infra  1     54 Mbit/s  17      ▂___  WPA1 WPA2 
   Filka          Infra  10    54 Mbit/s  17      ▂___  WPA1      
   Mihaylov       Infra  11    54 Mbit/s  14      ▂___  WPA1 WPA2 
   HomeS2000      Infra  6     54 Mbit/s  7       ▂___  WPA1 WPA2 
   alex1          Infra  7     54 Mbit/s  7       ▂___  WPA1 WPA2 
   epg72          Infra  11    54 Mbit/s  7       ▂___  WPA1 WPA2 
   Valia          Infra  11    54 Mbit/s  7       ▂___  WPA1 WPA2 
   Silviq         Infra  10    54 Mbit/s  4       ____  WPA2      

But you can use:

nmcli -f "CHAN,BARS,SIGNAL,SSID" d wifi list ifname wlx10feed21ae1d  | sort -n

and output will be sorted by channel:

CHAN  BARS  SIGNAL  SSID          
1     ▂___  17      Nina          
2     ____  0       Yankovi       
2     ▂___  24      Mitio Paynera 
3     ____  4       JORODLINK     
4     ▂▄▆_  70      151022        
4     ▂▄▆_  70      mary          
5     ▂___  7       Hristo        
6     ____  0       HomeS2000     
6     ▂___  27      Don Ceci      
6     ____  4       malevi        
6     ____  4       milcho.uzunov 
7     ____  4       alex1         
10    ▂___  10      Filka         
10    ▂___  7       Silviq        
11    ▂___  10      Mihaylov      
11    ▂▄__  34      epg72         
11    ____  4       Valia         
11    ▂___  7       epg72         
40    ▂▄▆_  60      mary5         
40    ▂▄▆_  67      151022        

For continues scan you can combine with command "watch":

watch  "nmcli -f "CHAN,BARS,SIGNAL,SSID" d wifi list ifname wlx10feed21ae1d  | sort -n"
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  • 4
    is nmcli a wifi analyzer?
    – Anwar
    Aug 30, 2016 at 20:23
  • 4
    @Anwar Yes, it is a wifi analyzer in that it can show you all wireless signals, their strength, channel, and security. It appears to be part of the NetworkManager package, so most distributions probably have it already!
    – Johann
    Dec 28, 2016 at 18:59
  • You can save defining the columns by hand use nmcli d wifi | ( head -n1; sort -k1.44 -n ) to sort by channel where 44 is the 44th character column which is the channel column at my system. The head command keeps the header row on the top. Jan 25, 2019 at 1:06
  • 1
    I use nmcli -f "CHAN" d wifi | tail +2 | sort | uniq -c | sort - first column is number of occurrences, second column - channel Feb 20, 2020 at 2:16
  • 1
    I love this tool. Thanks!
    – wappy
    Jan 10, 2022 at 15:56
52

You could use Wavemon. It's available in the Software Center, (or via apt, sudo apt-get install wavemon).

Screenshot of Wavemon

Screenshot from Wavemon's Github (GPLv3).

Once you have installed wavemon, open a terminal (CTRL+ALT+T) and type wavemon.

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  • 3
    I like wavemon more than kismet for most quick purposes due to no extra groups and stuff.
    – dhaupin
    Sep 22, 2015 at 23:21
  • Any idea how they pull that data out of the device. Mine shows a signal to noise ratio I can't see anywhere else
    – GuySoft
    Jun 16, 2022 at 10:00
37

You could use linssid which offers a nice easy to use GUI for both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz channels. http://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2013/08/linssid-wifi-scanner-for-ubuntu-linux-mint/

https://www.kitploit.com/2014/09/linssid-graphical-wireless-scanning-for.html

To install linssid in Ubuntu 16.04 and later type:

sudo apt install linssid
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    You may need to run it from the terminal as sudo linssid despite being able to install it from the software center. (clicking the icon may just do nothing)
    – jocull
    Sep 18, 2018 at 17:43
  • yes, clicking the icon does nothing ~
    – monkut
    Apr 14, 2020 at 0:55
  • Using icon has worked for me over the years and most recently also on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. Installed it using the command line
    – Hannes
    May 2, 2020 at 1:54
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    Agreeing with Hannes- The icon in GNOME launcher works for me (20.04, linssid 3.6-4build2 via apt), note that it prompts for a password upon launch in order to function. Jul 15, 2020 at 16:06
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There is one more tool In Ubuntu software Centre named as Kismet.

Kismet is a 802.11b wireless network sniffer. It is capable of sniffing using almost any supported wireless card using the Airo, HostAP, Wlan-NG, and Orinoco (with a kernel patch) drivers.

Can make use of sox and festival to play audio alarms for network events and speak out network summary on discovery. Optionally works with gpsd to map scanning.

you can install it from terminal( CTRL+ALT+T) also with

sudo apt-get install kismet
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  • Kismet is a complex tool, it consists of a scanner daemon element and a client. These can be run on diffrent machines. So a network of Raspberry Pi can scan an area and display on a central machine. Or it can be run on a single machine. It will identify hidden networks as well but only if a client in range connects to them.
    – Stuart
    Aug 23, 2019 at 14:30
  • Note that Kismet has its own ppa if you want to get an up-to-date build. Install instructions are here: https://www.kismetwireless.net/docs/readme/packages/#installing-kismet Jul 15, 2020 at 16:29

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