Posts

How to Burn a New Image on Your WLAN Pi

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I'm often asked how to burn a new image on to the WLAN Pi, so thought a video might be useful for anyone who wants to update their WLAN Pi image. When we release new code for the WLAN Pi, it's released as a single image file that needs to be burned on to the micro-SD card of the WLAN Pi. This video provides a practical demonstration of the process.  Here are the links for the web sites shown in the video: Direct link to Youtube video: https://youtu.be/sD4WlNyyWDs WLAN Pi image repo: https://github.com/WLAN-Pi/wlanpi/releases balena Etcher web site: https://www.balena.io/etcher/ Get the micro-SD to USB adapter: https://amzn.to/30BO4cx

How to blog, win friends and influence people...

I was very fortunate to receive an award for my blog recently from the Cisco-sponsored IT Blog Awards . I also recently remembered an article I wrote quite some time ago for publication elsewhere that never made it to the presses. I thought it would be kind of appropriate to publish it myself to share what I've learned over the past 9 years or so of blogging. It will hopefully encourage others to sharpen their virtual pencils, helping them to learn, get their name "out there" and contribute to the wider community. Apologies for the length of the article, but I can't help myself when it comes to detail...sorry!   I was originally motivated to set up my own blog in 2011 after reading the articles of people like Andrew Von Nagy, Devin Akin and Keith Parsons. I was in awe of their depth of knowledge, and the fact they were performing such a valuable altruistic act, freely sharing their valuable knowledge and content. I was also starting to gain more real-w

My favourite WinFi features

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Ealier this year myself and a few other Wi-Fi pros were lucky enough to be asked to provide some input to a new Wi-Fi scanner application being created by Helge Keck . He called the tool "WinFi" and has now released as a free tool for Windows 10. WinFi is a feature-packed application that has many pro-level functions that have quickly made it the Wi-Fi scanner of choice on Windows for many wireless LAN pros. I thought I'd take a few minutes to run through the operation of WinFi and highlight some of my favourite advanced features that you may not have seen yet within the application by creating the video below:   References Application home page Video Link Helge Keck on Twitter

Using the WLANPi as a wireless serial console

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One lesser-known feature we added to the WLANPi image in v1.7 is Wi-Fi console that provides a wireless serial console. As this isn't too widely known, I thought I'd put a video together about it.  The Wi-Fi console feature allows you to hook up a serial cable to the serial port of a piece of nework equipment, then get your WLANPi to broadcast out an SSID you can join from a nearby location. You can then fire up terminal emulation software on your laptop and access the serial port on the nework equipment from a more comfortable location. Note this is a standard part of the WLANPi image since v1.7 - you do not need to install any additional packages, just follow the instructions in this video to flip your WLANPi in to Wi-Fi console mode. References YouTube Video GitHub repo & further information

Understanding Wireless Client Throughput From a Wireshark Capture

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I recently created a  video to look at how we understand the data throughput of a wireless client from an over the air Wireshark capture. We take a look at using the I/O Graph feature in Wireshark to achieve this. You can view the video below: References: YouTube video link Metageek Wireshark profile

Wireshark Showing FCS Fields as "Unverified" in Captures

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In a recent Wireshark 3.0.6 capture I noticed that FCS values for captured wireless frames were showing as "Unverified". I wasn't sure why this was the case, as I'm sure that Wireshark usually shows a "good" or "bad"  FCS indication. The image below demonstrates what I saw:   After some googling, I found a note that the FCS check was disabled by defaut in Wireshark 3.0.x as some NICs report the FCS check incorrectly.  The following process details how to re-enable the check:  Go to Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced in Wireshark. Enter "wlan.check" in the search bar: Double click on the "False" word for the attribute "wlan.check_checksum". This will toggle it to "True" (make sure you click on the "False" word, not anywhere else on the line).  Hit OK and see the change immediately in your capture decode: Hope this quick note may help someone in the future (...

Wireshark Plugin To Capture Wireless Frames Using a WLANPi (Windows 10)

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Want to be able to capture wireless frames via a WLANPi using just Wireshark on your Windows 10 machine? ...And be able to configure the capture configuration on the WLANPi using just Wireshark too?  Read on... (or checkout the video here ) Earlier this year, I put out a command-line script called WLANPiShark that allowed Windows 10 users to configure a WLANPi and initiate a frame capture stream in to Wireshark. Though a little clunky, it worked quite reliably for most of the time and, judging by feedback I received, was quite popular. As Windows users, we've always been the poor cousins to our Apple brethren who are able to use their Macbook to capture over the air using the internal NIC card of their Mac in monitor mode. Getting a low cost adapter that could be put in to monitor mode on a Windows machine was as rare as hen's teeth. Having access to the WLANPi and being able to fire up WLANPiShark opened up wireless capturing to many folks who have to use Wi