Wireless tools: signal strength?

[Moustafa A. Youssef]

> Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 20:33:42 +0100
> From: maline at post.cybercity.dk (Martin Schiotz)
> To: wireless at lists.samba.org
> Subject: Wireless tools: signal strength?
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> 
> Hi,
> 
> I'm using wireless tools v.25 on my Linux laptop with a wireless Orinoco pcmcia card. I use the commands iwlist or iwspy to get the signal strength from all access points in range. 
> 
> My question is, if the signal strengths I get from these commands are calculated from beacon frames which is send out by all access points all the time as part of 802.11. Which means that no packages are send from my laptop to obtain the signal strengths?
> 
> Best regards,
> Martin Schiotz
> 

Beacons frames are usually sent every 102 ms (a configurable parameter). 
However, the way that scanning work is by sending a probe request message 
and waiting for a probe response (similar to the beacon frames). You can 
control the spacing between these probe requests by controlling the 
frequency of calling iwlist command. So you still has some time to send 
some data.

Best,
	Moustafa