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I want to know if there exists any command line option or GUI tool (Ubuntu 11.10) so that I can measure the strength of wireless signal at a given location. I have a house where the wireless is not easily accessible at all corners I want to know at which corners or rooms the signal is weak.

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5 Answers 5

Reset to default
146

On the command line you can use iwconfig and look for "Link Quality" and "Signal level" values.

When walking around with a netbook I often use this command which updates the output of iwconfig every second:

watch -n1 iwconfig

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  • 3
    @RamonSuarez Why run it with sudo? It works without. Tested on Ubuntu 14.04
    – malisokan
    Nov 8, 2014 at 12:54
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    Doesn't show Link Quality or Signal level on Lubuntu 14.04 unless I run it with sudo.
    – gmatht
    Sep 21, 2015 at 5:55
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    I can confirm @gmatht's claim. Doesn't show Link Quality or Signal level until run with sudo. Ubuntu 14.04.
    – pradeepcep
    Sep 28, 2015 at 10:22
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    Worked just fine for me in Kubuntu 14.04 without sudo. Link quality and signal level are displayed.
    – Fred Larson
    Oct 11, 2015 at 2:37
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    It shows them on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS without sudo. Good answer.
    – SDsolar
    Jul 24, 2017 at 1:18
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wavemon

A console app with color display and lots of easy to read information.

To install it enter the following commands:

 sudo apt-get update
 sudo apt-get install wavemon

To run it enter:

 wavemon

wavemon in action

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  • Requires deprecated wireless extensions, doesn't work with modern cfg80211
    – lkraav
    Jun 10, 2016 at 20:03
  • 1
    worked for me! (16.04, with a one year old Thinkpad)
    – nickf
    Aug 15, 2016 at 20:26
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    wavemon stopped working for me in Ubuntu 16.04. I guess the problem is now in unique names of adapters which are 15 characters long in my case. It detects the adapter but it says "NO INTERFACE DATA" in Levels. Statistics and Info are also empty. It only shows Interface and Network data correctly.
    – nobody
    Dec 1, 2016 at 8:04
  • This is working fine for me on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. I am using a rt2800usb adapter. This is the one I was looking for. TNX
    – SDsolar
    Jul 24, 2017 at 1:21
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    Here is a tip: In order to use the F3 Scan function, you need to run wavemon with sudo.
    – SDsolar
    Jul 24, 2017 at 3:55
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A prettier one:

watch -n1 "awk 'NR==3 {print \"WiFi Signal Strength = \" \$3 \"00 %\"}''' /proc/net/wireless"

Source: http://www.upubuntu.com/2012/06/display-wifi-signal-strength-in-real.html

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  • 1
    You need to run it with sudo
    – Ramon Suarez
    Aug 20, 2014 at 15:00
  • 4
    This is not the true percentage of wifi signal strength. So I did a small fix: watch -n1 "awk 'NR==3 {printf(\"WiFi Signal Strength = %.0f%%\\n\",\$3*10/7)}' /proc/net/wireless"
    – miu
    Oct 2, 2014 at 13:14
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    Mine shows me 70/70 on iwconfig which mean 100%, so with awk its shows me 70% signal strenght, which is untrue. You need divide the two numbers times 100 to get the real percantage. using rtl8198. But still a neat one liner i can use on OSD
    – Piotr Kula
    Oct 31, 2014 at 21:45
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With a small modification to measure the quality of the link (Link quality) and the signal level (Signal level).

   watch -n1 -d "awk '{print NR == 3 \" WiFi Link Quality = \ "int (\ $ 3 * 1.428571429) \"% (\ "\ $ 3 \" 00 / 70.00) \ "; print \" level WiFi = \ "\ $ 4 \" 00 dBm \ "} '' '/ proc / net / wireless" signal

Note: The -d switch to watch highlights values ​​when they change (highlight Changes Between updates).

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A command line option that does not require installation of additional software is the iwconfig command. To get quality of a connection simply run 

iwconfig wls8 | grep -i --color quality

  • Output:

      Link Quality=56/70  Signal level=-54 dBm

wls8 may not be applicable to you, so replace it with whatever option you need. Or simply, run iwconfig to see all output.

Here is a blog post that describes plenty of other options 8 Linux Commands: To Find Out Wireless Network Speed, Signal Strength And Other Information

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