Wireless Software required

You don't need software, any wireless enabled PC can be used. Tell your friend/client to use his own PC and tell you which other networks show up. Then just change channels for him. If you can't do any of that then god help your customer! Tell him to come to the group and we will advise him directly as it sounds like you don't know much about computers and might confuse matters. If you really want analysis software to break encryption and passwords in order to hijack a connection - just say so! There are a few programs for that.

My god! Your 100% wrong about me on all counts.

This is a genuine request for genuine help to fix a genuine problem.

My client has a wireless network on channel 13 of the 2.4Ghz range and 2 audio/visual senders on channels 2 and 3 on the 2.4Ghz range. Using windows on my laptop I was able to do the usual simple site survey to determine that there were no other computer wireless network in the immediate area on the

2.4Ghz range. The problem persists even when the Audio/Video senders are turned off.

I have tested his wireless router and wireless network card off site and had no dropout problems. Therefore the dropout problems have to be with interference from some other device, not computer related, that is transmitting in the 2.4Ghz range. This is why I need software that I can use with my laptop and wireless card to analyse the 2.4Ghz range and see what other signals (other than Wireless Networks) I can detect and try to narrow down the problem.

I am not in the least bit interested in breaking encryption and gaining passwords. I set up the encryption and passwords for him. I'm not even interested in any packets of data that are being transmitted. And also for your information, I have worked in IT support for the past 25 years. I was setting up network and PC's, Mac's and Unix boxes when you were probably still in nappies.

Now. If you can get down of your high horse and if you are able to provide some useful information that will lead me to software for analysing the frequencies in the 2.4Ghz range then fine. If you cannot help then don't make assumptions about people you do not know.

I don't want software that can analyse packets of data, I just want to find out what frequancies are transmitting in the area without spending a fortune on professional equipment to fix one problem.

Rant Over

TheDysk

And before anybody suggest it. Yes I have tried the Wireless network on other channels and still seem to have problem with interference. Strangely enough the Audio/Video senders don't seem to have a problem.

TheDysk

knob

"TheDysk" hath wroth:

That was impossible to determine from the original question. Detail is always useful.

Use a tool, such as Kismet, that will detect wi-fi systems that do not broadcast their SSID. It might show additional systems.

currently get about 5-10 times as many hits with Kismet as I do with Netstumbler.

Checklist of possible interference sources: Microwave oven 2.4Ghz video or security camera link (X10). Municipal wireless networks. Bluetooth devices (mouse, phone, PDA, headset, cell phone, etc) Portable wireless TV camera used at sports events. Frequency hopping cordless phones (Panasonic Gigarange) 802.11b/g wireless keyboards, PDA's, and cell phones. 2.4GHz game pads and controllers. RF Excited Lighting (Fusion Lighting). 2.4GHz baby monitors. 2.4GHz ham radio operation. WISP (wireless internet service providers) which may be using non-802.11 type of modulation (i.e. WiMax). Breezecom/Alvarion/Symbol/Raylink frequency hopping networks. Western Multiplex or Proxim non-802.11 wireless links. (e.g Lynx). HomeRF frequency hopping network. Zigbee 802.15.4 sensor wireless network. Microwave fruit drying oven, plastic mold preheater. Unstable high power wi-fi power amplifier spraying garbage.

Most of these cannot be detected by a wi-fi sniffer or probe. They require a spectrum analyzer to see. Using a spectrum analyzer for intereference detection and location is tricky. You'll need a big directional antenna (24dBi dish). It's very difficult to see weak signals. Those that you see are difficult to identify without considerable experience. Reflections are always a problem. It's easy to get false signals from front-end overload. For some possible devices see:

Wi-Spy. Needs reflector or external antenna to be really useful. |

($99) Limited dynamic range (about 35dB). I would recommend this as a good minimum.

Proxim RangeLan2 card. ($20) |

but very slow and insensitive.

802.11 scanner. Prism 1 chipset only. | Cognio. | ($4000)

Berkeley Varionics Yellowjacket. |

sure to view the video on the bottom of the page so you can see what you're likely to run into.

Seriously professional spectrum analyzer. You don't wanna know the price: |

CATV and satellite portable spectrum analyzers. | I also use an MMDS downconverter feeding a lower frequency (i.e. cheaper) spectrum analyzer. These are fairly easy to find, but tricky to modify without an RF bench. A 2.4GHz receive pre-amplifier and bandpass filter are also handy to improve sensitivity and selectivity respectively. There are other spectrum analyzers that will also work along with some specialized techniques and tricks. Ask if you need details.

I think we have a different definition of "site survey". This is a site survey tool:

think what you want is an interference locator system.

Jeff Liebermann hath wroth: (...)

One more spectrum analyzer:

$2600 for the 1.8 to 2.9Ghz version. $4400 for adding 5.0 to 6.0GHz.

Snip

Yes your quite right. I should have given more information in my original post. I wrote it whilst very tired and wasn't thinking 100% clearly.

Many thanks for the suggestions and information regarding spectrum analysers. That certainly gives me plenty to think about and investigate.

Cheers

TheDysk

TheDysk wrote: [...]

[...]

Unplug/turn off the wireless phones, microwave ovens, etc. Turn on one at a time at test. If none of the in-house devices is the source, then it's a 2.4GHz device at the neighbour's. Maybe your customer should think about converting to 5GHz band.

One other possibility is unknown metal in the walls messing up the signal (heating ducts, or metallised wallboard installed for heat conservation, for example).

Good luck.

I downloaded the Auditor security collection. So now I have a .ISO file. Using IsoBuster, I see that the .ISO file has three subdirectories, all named "Auditor", plus a "Bootable CD" directory. I tried extracting the contents of one of the Auditor directories (plus the "Bootable CD" files) to a CD, but my laptop (Toshiba Satellite M45) tells me it is not bootable when I try to boot from it.

How do I use this .ISO file?

Thanks.

Find a CD burner software such as Nero. Select "Burn Image File" (or something similar depending on software and version). It will offer a list of file types that include ".ISO". Burn it. It will be a Linux file system so you won't be able to read in on a Windoze box. Boot it on your laptop.

If this doesn't work, kindly disclose your operating system and what CDROM burner software you have available.

ISO image instructions for Nero 5.5:

finds plenty more similar instructions...

Thanks. The problem was that I didn't understand that the "Burn Image File" process was different from simply burning the .ISO file to a CD/DVD.

I downloaded BurnCDCC, and created a bootable DVD. However, the load process hangs at the point of "Automounter started for floppy cdrom." Nothing happens after that. I did notice that earlier in the process there was an error message "Autodetection seems to hang. please check your computer's BIOS settings". I see nothing in the BIOS that seems relevant.

Dave Rudisill hath wroth:

Disable ACPI either on the boot command line or in the bios. ACPI=off

If Knoppix doesn't give you the boot time command option, hold down the shift key during boot and it will ask for options.

It still hangs up at Autodection and still never gets any further than "Automounter started...". I tried PNPBIOS=OFF as well.

Again, this is a Toshiba Satellite M45.

Re-download the ISO, check the checksum is right, and check that you burned it to disk properly. Is it a CD or DVD iso? Mark McIntyre

I'm afraid that re-downloading the ISO is not an option currently. We are full-time travelers in our RV, currently connecting to the 'Net with our cell phone (144 kbps). 650 MB would take, what, forever?

How do I check the checksum?

There were no error messages when I burned the ISO to disk.

It's a DVD.

Thanks.

normally the website you got the ISO from would show an MD5 or SHA1 checksum. There are commandline tools to compare the checksum from your ISO to the expected value If anything got corrupted in transit, the checksum will be different.

There wouldn't be - the ISO is just data, the burner simply copies it byte by byte onto the disk. If one byte was corrupted in the d/l you'd never know.

650MB is a CD size. Are you /sure/ its supposed to be a DVD? The bootcode would be different I think.

FWIW the knoppix d/l that I got was a CD ISO, and I had to burn it onto a CD. Mark McIntyre

Dave Rudisill hath wroth:

Nice laptop. What's the rest of the model number? M45-Sxxx

Linux laptops has muddled notes on 2 different M45 mutations:

Linux on Toshiblah from Toshiba: None of the above mentions any necessary boot options. Therefore my guess is that you either downloaded a corrupted .iso image, or something was wrong with your cd burn proceedure.

This is what I have downloaded and run in the past: It appears to be current.

06:33p 666,091,520 auditor-200605-02-ipw2100.iso

The md5sum of auditor-200605-02-no-ipw2100.iso is "70a5f3e47c191c055366b3b0a3fa2c90"

The md5sum of auditor-200605-02-ipw2100.iso is "cdec4b975c1001ddc127a16a32ed1dd7"

Running MD5SUM on my .iso image, I get: md5sum audi*.iso cdec4b975c1001ddc127a16a32ed1dd7 *auditor-200605-02-ipw2100.iso which is correct.

You can get the MSDOS version of MD5SUM from various sources. I just grabbed the one from Activestate Perl:

you're not handy on the command line, there's a Windoze version at: $15 $15 windows, cmd line free. cmd line free. Plenty more found with Google. I didn't try any of these as I like the command line.

If the file size and MD5SUM appear correct, then it's a problem with your burner software or technique.

M45-S331.

Thanks for the links.

It's an M45-S331.

I checked the checksum. It's correct.

I reburned the DVD (using BurnCDCC), telling it to Read-verify. No errors were reported.

I tried ACPI=OFF and PNPBIOS=OFF

These screen shots show where it hangs:

Is it possible that the fact that I'm using a DVD rather than a CD is the problem? Unfortunately, I'm out of CDs, and we are camped out in the middle of the desert with no place to pick up a CD for many miles around.

I checked the links you sent regarding Unix on Toshibas but saw nothing that seemed to address this problem.

Thanks.