March 19, 2024

  


News:
11/22/2002 - Hello folks.

It is my pleasure to announce that AirTraf project has resulted in founding of a new company, Elixar, Inc.

I welcome the current users of AirTraf, as well as new users interested in AirTraf to visit our website at http://www.elixar.com from this day on to find out more information regarding the latest AirTraf versions for download, as well as other solutions Elixar has to offer.

I'm also happy to announce the release of AirTraf (1.0) available for download at the weblink provided above. The latest release continues to be OpenSource, and free for download for all that are interested, and it is my hope that it will continue to be so in the future.

I thank you all for the support given in making AirTraf a reality.

Sincerely,
Peter K. Lee (saint)

** The current materials presented through sourceforge will remain AS-IS and no further updates will be reflected back here.
** To find the latest materials, please visit us at http://www.elixar.com

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04/15/2002 - The "seventh" release of AirTraf (0.5.0) finally out today!!! I've had report that the last version incorrectly displayed 0.5.0 as the version # in the ncurses gui... Well, that's not correct, this is the REAL 0.5.0 version.

As mentioned earlier, general protocol analysis will be included in this release, as well as TCP Performance Analysis!!! Arg... I'm too tired to think right now, so I don't want to go into details about how it works, if you want to know, you know where to look (screenshots). It suffices to say that you definitely want this version...

Well, have fun with this version, and as usual please report bug reports to me! (saint@elixar.net)

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03/27/2002 - SNEAK PREVIEW (0.5.0): check out what's coming next in the screenshots section!
Sorry about not having the bug fix up yet... I'd rather have a full relase with newer features than release something that doesn't make all that much of a difference. So instead, I've posted the screenshot of the General Protocol Analysis feature, just to let you folks know about some cool things that will be rolling around the corner soon!

And don't worry about all the 0.00% stuff, it was hard for me to generate relevant traffic and make a capture all at the same time... I could've just as easily ping flooded the other machine to show the IP & ICMP traffic, but didn't want to frighten anyone. :)

Now that this general protocol analysis portion's complete, I'll be moving on to 2 more capabilities... One would be to show General Service Analysis, which would display the UDP & TCP ports in use (hopefully HTTP, FTP, etc. instead of numbers along with all the usage %, bandwidth, count/byte, etc.), and another one will be the TCP Performance Analysis tool, which would 'attempt' to analyze the performance of TCP over the wireless link by estimating RTT, incoming/outgoing latencies, bandwidth utilization, number of Retransmissions, state of TCP connections, max bandwidth, baseline latency, maximum throughput, etc.

Now doesn't that sound like lots of fun? :)

P.S. - Unfortunately, I'm still looking fer work. If anyone's interested in putting me to work, please contact me. Also upon request, I will give further directions on how to access the Web/PHP interface w/graphing & long-term data gathering thing I have setup (sorry folks, I DO need to eat...).

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03/23/2002 - BUG ALERT: running AirTraf (0.4.0) using Cisco Aironet card in interactive mode, channel scanning screen 'hangs'... It was a one-liner bug that's been fixed... I'll have the update up by tomorrow.
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03/18/2002 - The "sixth" relase of AirTraf (0.4.0) out today! Hah, I again decided to go back to 0.4.0 instead of skipping to 0.5.0... Well, the reasoning is that since I'm holding back the polling server web/php stuff (sorry), I shouldn't get to skip around on versioning...
I was really really tempted to hold back the new code as well, since I'm looking for work and my financial outlook looked grim (even thinking of stopping AirTraf's open-sourcedness.... heavens forbid).
But, I've done ALOT of work on the code over the last month, and since I DID add support for Prism2 based cards, and made the channel scanning feature way way cooler, I figured I should let this one go.

So here it is, check the download section as usual, but be warned, the entire engine has been re-worked, and it *might* prove to be not quite as stable as the older release... Well, enjoy, and let me know of any problems!
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03/15/2002 - It looks like it's already been a month since the last update... I've continuously worked on AirTraf during the last month, and new release, version 0.5 (okay, so I skipped 0.4... I believe its justified...) will be out soon, within the next couple of days.

This new release will introduce the following new features:
(1) web/php interface for viewing polling server's collected database data (graphing too!)
(2) completely souped up channel scanning feature, all you'd need is a powerful 2.4Ghz amplifier.....
(3) focused wireless traffic monitoring (now renamed detailed traffic) provides detailed traffic info by performing channel scan first, then uses the info acquired via channel scan to manually 'select' a specific access point to listen on. No more auto discovery stuff while in INTERACTIVE mode... however, when using AirTraf as long-term statistics gatherer (in Daemonized, Server-mode, stationary, polled regularly via polling server), it will still perform auto-discovery of new access points in dynamic manner. This has added advantage in 'amplified' environment, where there's lot of traffic, and you want to specifically focus your attention on one network...
(4) now higher protocol parsing, find ip address associated with wireless nodes, (tcp performance analysis will be on its way soon!)
(5) PRISMII - (host-ap driver) support!!! Now you can use AirTraf with your favorite prism2-chipset cards!

I'm going to have new screenshots of the new look soon, so be sure to check out the screenshots page!
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02/28/2002 - The next scheduled release of AirTraf is version (0.4). As you might have noticed, this page has been redesigned. Now, its completely my own design :), so there should be no more changes... Besides, I'm trying to learn PHP now, to get the promised polling server web interface to work, and this wasn't such a bad practice (other than taking up my entire weekend). If you're interested in seeing what the next AirTraf will look like, check out new screenshots available. "A picture's worth 1000 words" they say...
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02/15/2002 - The "fifth" release of AirTraf (0.3-4) out today! The fourth release, (0.3-3) has been eliminated due to its new introduction of bug... This release fixes the bounds issue with IDS code that resulted in the program segfaulting after extended period of run-time when working in synch with the polling server for about 5 hours. Also, changed the make utility to be able to 'make nodb', being able to just build sniff server if you don't have database installed in your system.
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02/14/2002 - The "fourth" release of AirTraf (0.3-3) out today! Not a major release, but changed the entire build structure, has better dependency checks, and makes usage of library feature to bind common files and common interfaces together. Can now run single 'make all' to build all the AirTraf-related programs. Also now supports 'make install' to install into system directory.
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02/13/2002 - The "third" relase of AirTraf (0.3-1beta) out today! It has much improvement over the older releases, fixing countless issues, as well as making the sniff_server's GUI incredibly faster (separately threaded) eliminating the slow refresh rate that resulted in loss of packet data, as well as plugging memory leak holes. And the polling server is out, with the promised database extensions, and now long-term data tracking is made possible! As noted, the web/php interface for viewing collected data is not yet available, but it should be out soon, so don't worry, the goodies are on their way!
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02/01/2002 - The current release of AirTraf (0.2-1beta) is available for download. However, there's been major changes since the last public release, meaning that another update is scheduled to take place very soon.
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The newest release will feature full-blown polling-server capabilities with Database extensions, meaning that now all data collected will be stored inside the database, and some statistical plots and charts of long-term data can be realized.
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Introduction:
AirTraf is one of the first wireless 802.11(b) network analyzers. With the growth of interest in wireless networks, network administrators of today are faced with a challenge. The challenge is to effectively deploy numerous access points within their organization to provide wireless coverage for all users, and at the same time make sure that everyone who is granted access is able to operate in a fast, robust network environment.

AirTraf is a 100% passive packet sniffing tool for the wireless 802.11b networks. It captures and tracks all wireless activity in the coverage area, decodes packets, and maintains acquired information associated by access points, as well as detected individual wireless nodes. It dynamically detects any access points in the area, finds association between wireless clients and access points, and builds information table for each packet that is transmitted via the air. AirTraf is able to maintain packet count, byte information, related bandwidth, as well as signal strength of nodes.

And best of all, its open-source, and distributed under the GPL. Other comparable products that perform wireless network analysis price their products above $10,000 (such as Sniffer Wireless), and is limited to single-licenses of copy, while AirTraf can be installed at any detection location you choose, enabled to run in (Server Mode), and polled periodically via the polling server to retrieve active wireless data from multiple stations at once, resulting in consolidation of wireless information over your entire organization into a single point of access (database), and able to be administered via a web interface, visualizing your wireless network performance in a single glance. At absolutely no cost to you, or your organization.

However, AirTraf is still a work in progress, meaning much of planned features, such as injecting packets into the network to test Access Point security, are not available yet. But it is constantly being worked on, and soon it will prove to be a critical tool in managing healthy wireless networks in the future.




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© 2002 AirTraf, A Wireless 802.11(b) Network Analyzer
Designed By: Peter K. Lee

AirTraf is a package with many features. It is enabled to operate as a standard real-time data gathering tool for solving location specific problems, as well as operating as a long-term data gathering tool for your wireless networked organization.

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If you have experience working with wireless 802.11b, and would like to contribute in meaningful way to the development and testing of AirTraf, please feel free to contact us.

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Go to AirTraf's main project page on sourcforge.net

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Copyright © Peter K. Lee 2002 -- Any software presented in this site is open-source software, distrubuted under the terms of the GNU General Public License.