Wifi
[Components, Stand-Alone Components, IceBox Services, C++, Linux]

Provides wireless interface data. More...

Provides wireless interface data.

Wifi is a component that accesses the wireless interfaces on a host and gets their data such as signal strength.

Provides

• orca_interface_home
• orca_interface_wifi [Wifi.Provides.Wifi]
• orca_interface_status

Requires

None.

Configuration

• Wifi.Config.Driver (string)
  • Type of driver
  • Valid values: { 'hardware', 'fake' }
  • Default: 'hardware'

An example configuration file is installed into [ORCA-INSTALL-DIR]/share/orca/cfg/ directory.

Signal strength

The hardware driver above uses the following thresholds for the signal-to-noise ratio to determine a discrete signal level (see (see http://www.osuweb.net/wireless/faqs.html#whydoesmysignalstrengthsaylow)

• very low: < 10db
• low: 10db < x < 15db
• good: 15db < x < 20db
• very good: 20db < x < 25db
• excellent: > 25db

In general, the reported values for signal, noise, and link quality are totally hardware and driver-dependent. Here's a loose list of what we know about certain drivers:

MadWifi (see http://madwifi.org/wiki/UserDocs/RSSI)

• Signal: signal in dBm
• Noise: noise in dBm
• Link quality: represents Signal-to-Noise (SNR) ratio (SNR=signal-noise)
• SNR values:
  • 10: weak signal
  • 20: decent signal
  • 40+: very strong signal

Authors

• Tobias Kaupp