sniffer and supported wireless cards

Archived from groups: alt.internet.wireless (More info?)

I'm using a Sitecom wireless card (WL 112) on a laptop (XP) and I'm trying
to get a sniffer program to work.

Unfortunately, sofar little success. Most of the available sniffer
applications do not seem to recognize my wireless card. In one case, it was
recognized but I was only able to see the traffic to/from my own laptop (and
I used the promiscuous mode of the sniffer appl).

Any suggestions? Is my card maybe not suited for this? Should I get another
card? If so, what would be a good choice?

Thanks, Dirk

Archived from groups: alt.internet.wireless (More info?)

"Dirk V" <dirk.velle@wanadoo.nl> wrote in message
news:41ce6f67$0$57765$1b2cd167@news.wanadoo.nl...
> I'm using a Sitecom wireless card (WL 112) on a laptop (XP) and I'm trying
> to get a sniffer program to work.
>
> Unfortunately, sofar little success. Most of the available sniffer
> applications do not seem to recognize my wireless card. In one case, it
> was recognized but I was only able to see the traffic to/from my own
> laptop (and I used the promiscuous mode of the sniffer appl).

This topic comes up repeatedly. The last time I checked - admittedly,
several months ago - I could not find any non-commercial analyzers that
worked on Windows. Commercial analyzers are expensive, but they come with
drivers for Windows. Ethereal, on the other hand, uses the WinPcap library,
which assumes that it can use the installed Windows drivers underneath it to
put the network adapter in promiscuous mode. This is true for the Ethernet
driver that comes with your Windows system. But, in general, the vendor
drivers for wifi adapters do NOT provide a function to put the card in
promiscuous mode. Also, the hardware interface to the adapter is usually
available only to licensees who are producing commercial software.

If you find *any* non-commercial wifi analyzer that comes with a driver
capable of promiscuous mode on Windows, please post.

>
> Any suggestions? Is my card maybe not suited for this? Should I get
> another card? If so, what would be a good choice?
>
> Thanks, Dirk
>