# Does my wireless card support network monitoring

## jeanluca

Hi All

I'm trying to use aireplay. But it doesn't return anything useful (waiting for beacon, and nothing happens). I might be doing something wrong, but I'm more concerned right now about the fact that my card might not support this network monitoring

I can set the mode of my wifi card, which is an Ralink RT3090, to 'monitor'. But if you can do this, does this also mean the card supports network sniffing/monitoring ?

What can I do to find this out ?

thanks a lot

Luca

----------

## Ant P.

Yes, monitor mode means it can do network monitoring. You still need to have it on the right channel though.

----------

## jeanluca

it seems the firmware/driver needs to support injection, found this link: http://forum.aircrack-ng.org/index.php?topic=7029.0

Furthermore, if I change the mode to monitor

```
$> iwconfig ra0 mode monitor

```

I cannot change it back to Auto like

```
$> iwconfig ra0 mode Auto

```

Any suggestions ?

----------

## bus_drivr

recent changes in wireless have wireless-tools as a candidate for emerge --depclean  

and emerge --unmerge

Try emerge iw wireless-regdb crda

these are listed at http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Documentation

as is aircrack-ng

You can create an account and subscribe to feeds as well

Current Gentoo docs should be recommending what the kernel does.

wpa_supplicant, iw and pointing to wireless.kernel.org for getting users involved in making 

wireless support better.

In other words wireless-tools is outdated.

----------

## jordanwb

I believe the command to put a wifi chip into monitor mode is "airmon-ng start wlan0". If possible buy an Atheros wireless chip. Atheros is God tier for wireless support under Linux.

----------

## cwr

It might be worth checking out Kismet; it seems to cover most cards.

Will

----------

