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Filter capture based on 802.11 signal strength

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I am trying to setup a capture filter that allows me to filter wireless traffic based on signal strength. This would be beneficial to do as it would allow me to cut out allot of the noise from AP's outside of my area. I have been able to accomplish this as a display filter but would really like to limit the capture size. Is this possible?

asked 27 Aug '13, 10:12

chakachim's gravatar image

chakachim
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accept rate: 0%

edited 27 Aug '13, 10:13


One Answer:

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As far as I know there is no way to filter on the signal strength as that would require support for it in libpcap and there is no such thing (yet).

So, the short answer to your question:

Is this possible?

No.

HOWEVER, as you only want to isolate the traffic of a certain AP, you can use it's MAC address and build a capture filter for that address.

Capture filter: wlan host xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx

This requires a version of libpcap that supports the wlan filter (see man pcap-filter on your Linux distro) and a wireless driver that returns the real 802.11 frames and not 'fake ethernet' frames.

See also here: http://wiki.wireshark.org/Wi-Fi

Regards
Kurt

answered 28 Aug '13, 06:22

Kurt%20Knochner's gravatar image

Kurt Knochner ♦
24.8k1039237
accept rate: 15%