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A key tool mentioned in the article is Ekahau Pro. What are good alternatives for Ekahau? As I understand this require special hardware. Most Macs support WiFi

A key tool mentioned in the article is Ekahau Pro. What are good alternatives for Ekahau? As I understand this require special hardware. Most Macs support WiFi Monitor mode that should be possible to give the same functionality without extra hardware. And is only 5Ghz working on M1? So I would expect that there is some Mac software with capability of doing the same.

anonymousDan 5y ago
Be interested to know the answer to this question. Also would having something like a cheap SDR make a difference to what is possible?
- punnerud 5y ago
  Most (all?) cheap SDR don’t get close to the WiFi range. RTL2832U have one of the best price/range ratios and can detect 24-1766MHz and cost under $20. LimeSDR is probably one of the better choices and cost $199 without casing as $299 with. I have been waiting for my LimeSDR close to one year now because of the shortage of chips. You don’t get the raw data (SDR) on Mac like microwave and bluetooth, but you get all WiFi related data. Also broken packages and from other senders.
  - the_only_law 5y ago
    There was a thread recently, where some people mentioned confers about the limesdr[0]. [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28319647 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28319647
lsllc 5y ago
There was a thread yesterday about Ubiquiti's WiFiman iOS/Android app that does this sort of stuff (although the visualization featured in the submission is Android only). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28391112 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28391112 I don't know how the functionality compares to Ekahau Pro, since I've never used Ekahau Pro.
xvf22 5y ago
We use the Wi-Spy DBx dongle for spectrum monitoring / analysis.
wolverine876 5y ago
A challenge with evaluating such software is assessing its accuracy. Lots of software could draw you a map of signal strength, but how do you know it is accurate? It's like a lot of fitness devices: At least for early devices, they would display the number of steps you took, etc., but a few sources actually tried to verify the results and found they could be wildly inaccurate. (Most people didn't seem to care, of course.)

anonymousDan 5y ago

Be interested to know the answer to this question. Also would having something like a cheap SDR make a difference to what is possible?

punnerud 5y ago
Most (all?) cheap SDR don’t get close to the WiFi range. RTL2832U have one of the best price/range ratios and can detect 24-1766MHz and cost under $20. LimeSDR is probably one of the better choices and cost $199 without casing as $299 with. I have been waiting for my LimeSDR close to one year now because of the shortage of chips. You don’t get the raw data (SDR) on Mac like microwave and bluetooth, but you get all WiFi related data. Also broken packages and from other senders.
- the_only_law 5y ago
  There was a thread recently, where some people mentioned confers about the limesdr[0]. [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28319647 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28319647

lsllc 5y ago

There was a thread yesterday about Ubiquiti's WiFiman iOS/Android app that does this sort of stuff (although the visualization featured in the submission is Android only). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28391112 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28391112 I don't know how the functionality compares to Ekahau Pro, since I've never used Ekahau Pro.

xvf22 5y ago

We use the Wi-Spy DBx dongle for spectrum monitoring / analysis.

wolverine876 5y ago

A challenge with evaluating such software is assessing its accuracy. Lots of software could draw you a map of signal strength, but how do you know it is accurate? It's like a lot of fitness devices: At least for early devices, they would display the number of steps you took, etc., but a few sources actually tried to verify the results and found they could be wildly inaccurate. (Most people didn't seem to care, of course.)