[Tool] tools/collect/802.11/Wifi-Scanner (v. 2009-04-15)

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the initial version.

@MISC{tools-collect-802.11-Wifi-Scanner-2009-04-15,
  author = {Jeffrey Pang and Ben Greenstein and Michael Kaminsky},
  title = {{CRAWDAD} tool tools/collect/802.11/Wifi-Scanner (v. 2009-04-15)}, 
  howpublished = {Downloaded from http://crawdad.cs.dartmouth.edu/tools/collect/802.11/Wifi-Scanner},
  month = apr,  
  year = 2009
}
					

Wi-Fi network scanner/wardriving tool used in the authors' MobiSys 2009 paper 
[pang-wifi-reports]. The main difference between Wifi-Scanner and other war 
driving tools is that it has a more complete Wi-Fi Network Manager that supports 
logging into WEP/WPA networks, remembering passwords for these networks, supports 
login through AP portal/splash pages, and performs a battery of measurement tests 
after you login.

See the indicated files for licensing terms for each of the following
packages:

gpsd:       gpsd-2.37/COPYING
kismet:     kismet-2007-10-R1/GPL
madwifi:    madwifi-0.9.4/COPYRIGHT
mdns:       mdns-scan-0.5/LICENSE
mitm-proxy: mitm-proxy-1.0/LICENSE
nuttcp:     nuttcp/nuttcp-5.5.5.c
stund:      stund/client.cxx
wicrawl:    wicrawl-0.4a/doc/LICENSE

All other components are licensed under the following terms:

(c) 2008-2009 Benjamin Greenstein, Damon McCoy, Jeffrey Pang

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a
copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"),
to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation
the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense,
and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the
Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

The names and trademarks of copyright holders may not be used in
advertising or publicity pertaining to the software without specific
prior permission. Title to copyright in this software and any associated
documentation will at all times remain with the copyright holders.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING
FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER
DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

INSTALLATION

   The easiest way to install Wifi-Scanner is to (as root) run the following:

   (1) Create the directory root/tw
   (2) Move mark-and-sweep (part of this package) to $HOME/tw/mark-and-sweep
   (3) Move mywifi (part of this package) to $HOME/tw/mywifi
   (4) Run the prepare.pl script in the mark-and-sweep directory. If you have
       a bluetooth GPS, edit the line at the top of the script to match your
       GPS's MAC address. Otherwise, comment out the config_gps() line.
       
   In order to perform some of the measurement tests, you need to run a few
   daemons on a Internet-accessable server that you control.

   (1) Enter mark-and-sweep/port_checker and run 'make'.
   (2) Enter mark-and-sweep/udp_test and run 'make'.
   (2) Enter mark-and-sweep/nuttcp and run 'make'.
   (3) Copy mark-and-sweep/port_checker/port_checker,
       mark-and-sweep/simple_web_server/webserver.pl,
       mark-and-sweep/nuttcp/nuttcp-5.5.5, and
       mark-and-sweep/udp_test/udp_test to
       /usr/local/sbin/ on the server machine.
   (4) Copy mark-and-sweep/init.d/mark-and-sweep-server to the server machine.
   (5) Copy mark-and-sweep/xinet.d/nuttcp to the server machine at /etc/xinet.d/
   (6) Run the mark-and-sweep-server script.
   (7) Restart xinetd on the server.
   (8) On the measurement client, you will need to modify a number of files:
       mark-and-sweep/wicrawl-0.4a/plugins/*/plugin.conf
       So that the config variables point to the IP address of your server.
       The plugins that you need to modify the config file for are:
       bandwidth_up bandwidth_down tcp_bw traceroute port_check

Before measurements:

    * Create a list of locations (one location per line) in
      /root/tw/mark-and-sweep/loc_manager/data/location-list.txt

    * Enter /root/tw/mark-and-sweep and type 'make install'

   Go to one of these locations and then (as root with a X-Windows display):

    1. Enter /root/tw/install/bin

    2. Type './doit'

    3. Select your location from the list.

    4. Click 'Try'. (DO NOT CLICK MORE THAN ONCE) To abort, click 'Ignore'.

    5. Wait for the measurement tool to run. It is done when the output
       screen says '[**] End plugin-engine'.

    6. When the tool is done, close the window and return the to
       location list window. If the run was successful, click
       'SUCCESS', if it failed and you don't want to try again, click
       'FAIL'. Click 'Ignore' to ignore everything that happened
       (nothing will be saved). Click 'Try again' to label the
       previous run a failure and try again.

    7. Repeat at another location.

After measurements:

    1. Save the directory /root/tw/mark-and-sweep/install/var. (The log
       directories are called log.*)

    2. See mark-and-sweep/scripts/README for how to process this data
       and a description of its format.

    3. Delete the file
       /root/tw/mark-and-sweep/install/var/loc_manager/location-status.txt.
       This will reset the location list so that no entries are grayed
       out (usually they get greyed out after you measure them).

Measurement details:

    * During the measurement run, the tool will pop up a firefox
      browser when it detects a portal page. You have to manually
      login or click through. Then close firefox and it should
      proceed. If it still can not proceed, it will ask you in a
      dialog box if you want to try again (either using a measurement
      proxy or not) or if you want to give up and skip this AP.

    * For APs that are encrypted, a WEP/WPA dialog box will pop
      up. You can either enter the password for those APs that you
      know it or choose to skip it. If you click 'ignore permanently'
      then it will not ask you about that AP for any future runs. You
      can undo the 'ignore permanently' status by deleting that AP's
      file in /root/tw/mark-and-sweep/install/var/keydb. Also, all
      successful passwords will be saved so you don't have to type
      them in in the future.

    * If there are SSIDs that you are sure you never want to measure
      you can add them (one per line) in
      /root/tw/mark-and-sweep/install/var/skip_ssids

Wifi-Scanner is a tool for scanning and measuring properties about
   visible 802.11 access points (APs). The intended use is as follows:

   1) Make a list of locations you intend to measure.
   2) Go to each location, run the tool. The tool will prompt you if
      user input is required (e.g., to add a password or bypass an
      AP portal page). Measurements will be taken automatically.

   The main difference between Wifi-Scanner and other war driving
   tools is that it has a more complete Wi-Fi Network Manager that
   supports logging into WEP/WPA networks, remembering passwords for
   these networks, supports login through AP portal/splash pages, and
   that it performs a battery of measurement tests after you login.

[Author] Jeffrey Pang

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[Author] Ben Greenstein

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[Author] Michael Kaminsky

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[Paper] pang-wifi-reports

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Wi-Fi clients can obtain much better performance at some commercial hotspots 
than at others. Unfortunately, there is currently no way for users to determine 
which hotspot access points (APs) will be sufficient to run their applications 
be- fore purchasing access. To address this problem, this paper presents 
Wifi-Reports, a collaborative service that provides Wi-Fi clients with 
historical information about AP perfor- mance and application support. The key 
research chal- lenge in Wifi-Reports is to obtain accurate user-submitted 
reports. This is challenging because two conflicting goals must be addressed in 
a practical system: preserving the pri- vacy of users' reports and limiting 
fraudulent reports. We introduce a practical cryptographic protocol that 
achieves both goals, and we address the important engineering chal- lenges in 
building Wifi-Reports. Using a measurement study of commercial APs in Seattle, 
we show that Wifi-Reports would improve performance over previous AP selection 
ap- proaches in 30\%-60\% of locations.