up vote 48 down vote favorite
24

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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It might be easier to use a smartphone/tablet and an app like Wifi Analyzer rather than wandering round holding a laptop open. – gmatht Sep 28 '15 at 10:54
    
A lot of useful information could be found 8 Linux Commands: To Find Out Wireless Network Speed, Signal Strength And Other Information - also about iwconfig and wavemon as in answers. – Anton Protopopov Dec 4 '16 at 12:11
up vote 71 down vote accepted

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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5  
you need to run it with sudo – Ramon Suarez Aug 20 '14 at 15:14
3  
@RamonSuarez Why run it with sudo? It works without. Tested on Ubuntu 14.04 – malisokan Nov 8 '14 at 12:54
3  
Doesn't show Link Quality or Signal level on Lubuntu 14.04 unless I run it with sudo. – gmatht Sep 21 '15 at 5:55
    
I can confirm @gmatht's claim. Doesn't show Link Quality or Signal level until run with sudo. Ubuntu 14.04. – cepradeep Sep 28 '15 at 10:22
1  
Worked just fine for me in Kubuntu 14.04 without sudo. Link quality and signal level are displayed. – Fred Larson Oct 11 '15 at 2:37
up vote 44 down vote

wavemon -- 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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1  
this one rocks! thanks! – ubuntico Mar 22 '13 at 15:47
    
Requires deprecated wireless extensions, doesn't work with modern cfg80211 – lkraav Jun 10 '16 at 20:03
    
worked for me! (16.04, with a one year old Thinkpad) – nickf Aug 15 '16 at 20:26
    
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 '16 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 '17 at 1:21
up vote 4 down vote

wavemon has a really nice interface:

wavemon is a ncurses-based monitor for wireless devices. It allows you to watch the signal and noise levels, packet statistics, device configuration, and network parameters of your wireless network hardware. It has currently only been tested with the Lucent Orinoco series of cards, although it should work (with varying features) with all devices supported by the wireless kernel extensions written by Jean Tourrilhes.

To install it enter the following commands:

 sudo apt-get update
 sudo apt-get install wavemon

To run it, type

wavemon
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1  
sudo apt-get install wavemon ;) – liquide Aug 12 '16 at 12:27
up vote 0 down vote

Con una pequeña modificación para medir la Calidad del enlace (Link quality) y el Nivel de la señal (Signal level).

    watch -n1 -d "awk 'NR==3 {print \"Calidad del Enlace WiFi =  \" int(\$3*1.428571429) \"%   (\"\$3\"00/70.00)\"; print \"Nivel de la Señal WiFi  = \" \$4 \"00 dBm\"}''' /proc/net/wireless"

En inglés:

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

Nota: El modificador -d de watch resalta los valores cuando cambian (highlight changes between updates).

Translation:

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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up vote 10 down vote

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 '14 at 15:00
1  
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" – mamiu Oct 2 '14 at 13:14
1  
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 – ppumkin Oct 31 '14 at 21:45

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