~ I'm researching a little into wireless troubleshooting and I'm ~ starting to get a little confused about the differences between ~ several modes available on Cisco access points.
The available set of roles for an AP is different depending on whether you are talking about autonomous IOS (aIOS) or Cisco Unified Wireless Network (CUWN.) Here I will assume the latter.
~ The ones I'm looking ~ at are: ~ ~ - monitor mode
A monitor mode AP never services clients, but only listens to the
802.11 bands, scanning through channels, for the benefit of services such as location, rogue detection, and wireless IDS.
~ - sniffer mode
A sniffer mode AP never services clients, but is locked onto a single channel, and captures 802.11 frames and forwards them in UDP to a packet capturer.
~ - scanner mode
A "scanner mode" AP is basically the aIOS version of a "monitor mode" AP. Its functionality as CUWN is the strategic architecture for large scale WLANs.
~ I take it some allow client connections and some do not.
None of the above allows "scanner mode".
~ And some look ~ at all channels and some do not. Is sniffer mode and scanner mode the ~ same thing?
No.
~ Also... some Cisco pages say that sniffer mode can only be used with ~ Airopeek. But a Cisco Press book I'm reading says it operates with an ~ Omnipeak, Airmagnet, or Wireshark server. Which is correct? Is there a ~ Wireshark server?
Sniffer mode works well with Omnipeek (which is Wildpackets' replacement for Airopeek.) It can sort of work with Wireshark, but we have open bugs (e.g. CSCsj62507) that keep this from being too useful for now.
Aaron