wavemon – ncurses-based Monitoring Application for Wireless Network Devices

Description

I recently came across this handy ncurses-based tool called wavemon for monitoring the status of both the wireless networks around my laptop as well as my wireless card. It offers most of the features that you’d find in any equivalent GUI. The impressive thing here is that all these features are made available in a terminal window.

Here’s a quick run down of features:

  • overview screen, displaying all important information like device configuration, encryption and power management parameters and network information at once
  • adaptive level bargraphs for link quality, signal/noise strength and signal-to-noise ratio
  • customizeable “level alarm” feature that notices the user of changes in signal level strength audibly and/or visually
  • full-screen level histogram displaying signal/noise levels and SNR
  • list of access points in range
  • menu-based configuration from within the program

Installation

On my Fedora 10 box wavemon was available from the standard repository. So installation was a snap.

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yum install wavemon

Usage

To run wavemon, simply type wavemon in your terminal.

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wavemon

Screenshots

wavemon Info Tab

wavemon Info Tab

wavemon Level Histogram

wavemon Level Histogram

I tend to spend a lot of time in terminal windows so I’m always glad when I find yet another ncurses-based app that gives me the same feature offerings as a heavier GUI.

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