Using Linux Wireless Extension and Wireless Tools

The Linux Wireless Extension and Wireless Tools are an open source project
sponsored by Hewlett Packard. The Wireless Extension is a generic application
programming interface (API) that gives you information and statistics
about the user space. Wireless Tools is a set of tools that use the Wireless
Extensions. The Wireless Tools are:
iwconfig: Changes the basic wireless parameters.
iwpriv: Changes the Wireless Extensions specific to a driver (private).
iwlist: Lists addresses, frequencies, and bit rates.
iwspy: Gets per-node link quality.
We explore these tools in turn in the following sections. For each tool, we
provide an illustrative example. If you want to really understand the command
and its many parameters, however, please check out the man page for
the syntax and other information about any of these commands. If you have a
Web browser, you can use Google.
Linux Wireless Extensions are powerful additions to your ethical hacking
utility belt. Linux Wireless Extensions are available from http://pcmcia-cs.
sourceforge.net/ftp/contrib. Look for the entry wireless_tools.27.tar.gz
near the bottom of the available documents and programs. Wireless Extensions
v.14 is bundled in the 2.4.20 kernel, and v.16 is in the 2.4.21 kernel.
iwlist and the others are great tools. They get their information from the
standard kernel interface /proc/net/wireless. But these tools provide only
a snapshot in time; they do not provide statistics over time. If you favor the
Windows platform, you can use a great tool like NetStumbler (we cover this
tool in depth in Chapter 9). But when you work with Linux, you want to find a
better link-monitoring tool. The other tools in this section provide more functionality
than iwconfig, iwpriv, iwlist, and iwspy.