You cannot take a good wireless sniffer trace if it is running on the device under test (the client machine you want to get a wireless trace of). Step 2: Use a separate device to act as your wireless sniffer. This allows your sniffing device to capture a good approximation of what your client device hears over the air. Step 1: Since the sniffing device, client device and AP are useng RF generating radios for transmission or reception, it helps to have your wireless sniffer close to your target device (the client machine). You want to capture the raw wireless frames from over the air, as seen by the wireless sniffing device itself. With wireless sniffing, it helps to have an idea of what you want to do. There are a few things to bear in mind to help simplify and speed up this process. This process can be a difficult and time intensive operation. WiFi Signal Strength Explorer is a handy little utility which unlike the normal WiFi icon, shows you the strength of connection via dots/percent in the menu bar and by clicking it, you can access some basic details about your current network.This document describes the process to collect a good wireless sniffer trace in order to analyze and troubleshoot 802.11 behavior. But it also comes with a downside which is it will also disconnect you and you have to reconnect again. JamWiFi is another free little tool which can not only analyze devices connected to your wireless network, but you can also disconnect them from using your WiFi.

While normally you’d need an external WiFi adapter to these kinds of things, most Macs have a network card that supports monitor mode which overall works out pretty well. WireShark is also capable of working in monitor mode, thereby letting you see what other devices are browsing/watching on your network.

Although it comes with a steep learning curve, it is one of the best packet analyzer apps available. WireShark is an open source and very powerful network analyzer used mainly by network admins and developers.

Wifi sniffer ios