How To Monitor WiFi Connection From Command Line In Linux

I bought a new Netgear wireless router last week. I was wondering if there is any utility to monitor wifi connection. After a bit of search on Google, I found a feasible solution that worked perfectly as I expected. I would like to share it with our readers. Meet Wavemon , a simple wireless network monitorthat can be used to monitor your wifi network connection from Terminal in linux. It is an ncurses-based monitoring application that can be used to monitor your wireless network’s signal and noise levels, packet statistics, device configuration and network parameters etc. It will work with almost all type of wireless devices supported by the Linux kernel.Wavemon is freely distributed under the GNU general public license v3. That means you can use it for free, distribute and modify the code.

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In this short tutorial, we are going to see how to monitor your wifi connection from Terminal with few practical examples.

Monitor WiFi Connection From Command Line In Linux

Wavemon is available in DEB based system’s default repositories. To install it in Debian, Ubuntu, and its derivatives, run:

sudo apt-get install wavemon

On Arch Linux and its derivatives, run:

sudo pacman -S wavemon

On RHEl, Fedora, CentOS, you need to install EPEL repository. To do so, run:

sudo yum install epel-release

And then, install wavemon using command:

sudo yum install wavemon

Or,

sudo dnf install wavemon

Once installed, launch it by running the following command from Terminal:

wavemon

Or,

sudo wavemon

This will bring you the Wavemon’s main screen. Each function is associated with a specific function key. Just press the associated to open the respective function.

As you see above, Wavemon utility displays,

Wireless interface name, Link statistics, Signal level, Noise level, Connection statistics, IP address, MAC address.

To view the graph of your signal levels, press F2 key.

F3key will display the list of wireless networks available to your system along with signal strength and the channel details.

F7 key will display the preference details such as wireless interface name, scan type, dynamic updates and more.

F8 key will display the screen. And F9 key will display the wavemon developer details.

To close this utility, hit F10 key.

Got any bugs or suggestions? Send a mail to the developer gerrit@erg.abdn.ac.uk .

Don’t like Wavemon (I hope you will like it), there is another easy way to quickly watch your wifi network interface status, run:

iwconfig

That’s all for now. I hope this helps. I will be here soon with another interesting article.

Cheers!

Resource: Wavemon GitHub page