Getting the RSSI information in C

aztroboy · 06-07-2010, 05:09 PM

Hello everyone!

I'm studying socket programming in wireless devices and one of the main issues that I'm facing right now is getting the RSSI information from a client.

I'm running scripts on a WRT54GL router with OpenWRT. As far as I understand, getting the RSSI information is possible with "wl rssi <client MAC>". So I thought I could use a popen(); to run a command and get the output within the program.I tried it and it prompts:

Code:

root@mesh: wl rssi 00:23:08:B3:04:8C
rssi is -56

However, I noticed that even though I turned off the laptop's WLAN NIC, it still prompted something!!. Moreover, if I enter an imaginary MAC address, it still shows something:

Code:

root@mesh: wl rssi 11:22:33:44:55:66
rssi is -61

I found that this is not a reliable method, since after making another test that consisted in moving away from the router while running "wl rssi 00:23:08:B3:04:8C" every second, the values didn't change too much.

**
I also tried this method: http://bit.ly/aeiahG. I ran the code on the router, but I'm not sure where to specify the RSSI from a target client.

So I would like to ask: Is there a way to get the RSSI information from an specific client in C?.

Thank you.

aztroboy · 06-09-2010, 03:49 PM

bump! anyone?

usmanca · 09-06-2011, 10:41 AM

Hi,
Any success in reading RSSI from the client ?

Regards,

Bladerunner1989 · 09-13-2011, 02:29 AM

Hi,
I think you can try iwspy - it gives all you need. However, as far as I understand not all cards support it. Use command

Code:

sudo iwspy <interface name> <ip-address to monitor>

. However, it doesn't work on my card AR5413, so I have to find some other solution.