How to check the strength of a WiFi signal from the terminal?

Almost all of us who are users of a Linux distribution andWe are very used to managing our system from a graphical interface and do few things from the terminal.

And it's not that it's bad, it's just comfort, efficiency and above all to save time. But in the case of those who are system administrators, things change.

Even for anyone knowing how to handle various situations and problems from the terminal is quite advantageous and quite good.

When we make a connection to the network by Wifi we always use a network manager graphically, but what happens if we want to do it from the terminal.

The thing changes, for it we must make the connection with the help of iwconfig y if we want to review the intensity of the networks Before connecting to one we must know well.

For this we can make use of Wavemon which is an ncurses-based monitoring application for wireless network devices.

About wavemon

Record levels in real time, in addition to displaying information about wireless and network-related devices.

The wavemon interface it is divided into different 'screens'.

Each screen displays information in a specific way. For example, the "info" screen shows current levels as bar graphs, while the "level" screen represents the same levels in a moving histogram.

At startup, you will be able to see (depending on the configuration) one of the different monitor screens.

At the bottom, you will find a menu bar that shows the screens and activation keys.

Each screen is activated by the corresponding function key or by the key corresponding to the first character of the screen name. But in particular I prefer to use the keys that go from F1 to F10, it is much more practical.

How to install Wavemon on Ubuntu and derivatives?

Now we are going to do the Wavemon installation, to install this utility we must open a terminalYou can do it manually or if you prefer you can use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Alt + T.

Once the terminal is open, we are going to type the following commands:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install wavemon

Using Wavemon

WiFi

As said before, Wavemon is a tool that we are going to use via the terminal, so we are going to use everything on the command line.

All you need to do is run the following command and follow the instructions according to the shortcuts and what you want to check on your WiFi.

wavemon

When executing this command, a list will appear which is the following:

Scan window (F3 or 's')

A regularly updated network scan, showing access points and other wireless clients. It is classified according to the sort_order.

Each entry begins with the ESSID, followed by the color-coded MAC address and signal / channel information.

A green / red MAC address indicates an access point (not) encrypted, the color changes to yellow for non-access points (in this case, the mode is shown at the end of the line).

The colorless information that follows the MAC address lists relative and absolute signal strengths, channel, frequency, and station-specific information.

Station-specific information includes station type (ESS for access point, IBSS for Ad-Hoc network), station count, and channel usage.

Preferences (F7 or 'p')

This allows you to change all the program options, such as level and interface scale parameters, and save the new settings in the configuration file. To do this, select a parameter with and then change the value with e.

Help (F8 or 'h')

This page may display online help.

Envelope (F9 or 'a')

Release contact information and URLs.

Exit (F10, or «Q»)

Exit wavemon.

In the Levels section, you can see up to four bar charts that show:

1. Relative signal quality is displayed
2. The signal level in dBm
3. The noise level in dBm
4. The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in dB

The option number, 3 and 4 are only displayed when the wireless controller supports noise level information.