Wifi channel scanning application for Linux?

[Greg_E]

Is there an application that can scan and display which channels/bandwidth are being used with a wifi system? I need to do some investigation in a room where I work and see exactly what might be free to use before I put a plan in place.

Target device would be my litle Clockwork Pi uConsole which is running Parrot security, there are hundreds of included tools, but a quick search didn't really show me what I might need. Not looking to crack into wifi, just want the channels in use so I can see if there are some available for a new network.

Specific use case, I'm looking to install some Birddog X1 PTZ cameras, and running ethernet might be very difficult. If I could find a couple extra 5GHz channels, I could put up a 5GHz AP and use that to backhaul the video streams to my production network. 2.4GHz in this area is generally saturated, and the slower connections are risky. These cameras are around 60mbps each, and I'd need 2 of them working at the same time.

This might also be a job for an SDR, so I might need to go down that path too. Or I might be forced to use Windows, just didn't want to drag out my laptop.

 

[nexox]

If you want a specific tool to investigate local wifi networks/traffic then look at Kismet, if you just want to survey local APs and channels you can use iw and a bit of grep, using an SDR sounds much more difficult.

Unfortunately if you're in a crowded area then there will be enough APs set to automatically select channels that you won't find any empty.

 

[BlueLineSwinger]

If you just need a listing: nmcli dev wifi

If you want some real-time info: wavemon

sudo may or may not be needed.

 

[Your name or]

I heard about linssid but I dont use them (yet).
Can someone recommend a Software who support that multiple instance only receive one Band like with 3 Dongle one each: 2,4Ghz the other only 5ghz and one only 60Ghz so more AP in a shorter Time get found sure with the current Position.

 

[nexox]

Kismet will do multiple adapters and you can configure each to a set of channels, I don't know the exact details of how to set it up though, the software has changed quite a lot since I last used multiple wifi adapters.

 

[homeserver78]

OpenWRT has a nice tool that shows channel usage, if you have access to an OpenWRT AP for example. Very practical!

 

[Stephan]

Why over-complicate things: WiFiAnalyzer | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository

Also a word of caution, wifi scanner apps were or are one of the most trojanized apps on Windows and Google app store. And also read https://stackoverflow.com/a/65121412

On Linux, get wpa_supplicant, connect to some AP, then use "wpa_cli scan" to initiate a scan, wait like 10 seconds and then dump results with "wpa_cli scan_results".