How to View Complete Details About a WiFi Network in Mac OS

Whenever you’re connected to a Wireless network (WiFi) on your Mac OS X, you don’t get to see the complete details about that specific WiFi network. You can manage various WiFi settings by visiting Network preferences > WiFi > Advanced. While you can view very few details like your local IP address provided by the router, subnet mask, router’s IP address, setup DNS and proxies; from the Advanced settings window.

But there is a quick way, to view complete details about a WiFi network which includes BSSID, channel & country code of the router, signal strength, disturbance (noise), and the transfer rate of the network.

VIEW COMPLETE DETAILS ABOUT A WIFI NETWORK IN MAC

Make sure you’re connected to the WiFi network whose details you wish to view.

Now hold down option key and click on the WiFi icon on the menu bar. This time you’ll not only see the options to search and switch between the networks, you’ll also see a list of various technical details about the WiFi you’re connected to.

From the top are the interface name and the mac address of the WiFi adapter of your Mac system. The next extra option you get this time is Open Wireless Diagnostics. Without having to visit the advanced setting window you can directly diagnose WiFi problems, using this option.

BSSID is the mac address of the wireless access point (WAP).

RSSI is the strength of the signal of the Wireless network you’re connected to. RSSI stands for Received Signal Strength Indication, whose value ranges from -100 to 0. For a signal to have good strength, its value must be near to 0. That means, RSSI indication of -20dBm is better than -70dBm.

Tx Rate is the maximum speed of the network which is possible for data transfer inside that specific network.

PHY Mode shows which wireless technology standard does the network follow for the connection. Mostly, nowadays’s routers make use of 802.11n technology, but it might vary depending upon the router you’re using.

Troubleshoot Network Manager, Apache, Wireless...

Today's Blog is all about networking stuffs and I will be covering following points:

1. Know your Network Controller Device with lspci
2. Display all interfaces which are currently available, even if down with ifconfig
3. Enable the service networking 
4. Enable Apache server
5. Then Enable Network Manager with network-manager
6. Then  Enable your WiFi with nmcli nm

AND REMEMBER ALL THESE THINGS WILL BE DONE WITH OUR TERMINAL THIS IS WHY LINUX IS SO COOL...

Then we are all set to run the internet.And now we are some basic troubleshooter about networking, though networking is a huge this would be the first step. Not actually first first step in networking is always theory The Basics of Networking, but we are not dealing with it today. So lets begin

1. In order to know  the hardware devices assembled in your laptop open your TERMINAL CTRL+ALT+T and then type lspci .

This displays all the hardware devices  like PCI BRIDGE, SATA controller, SMBus, USB Controller, Audio Device assembled in your laptop / computer. 

My Network controller is:

02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11bgn Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)

2. So now we need to know the interfaces that are available in our UBUNTU.  To see this type ifconfig in the terminal and you will see the output like this :

3. To access the internet first your hardware device should be activated, In order to do so type 

sudo service networking  and press tab twice which displays  arguments like:

 force-reload       reload        restart       start         stop

Perform any you need.

4.  To enable apache server in terminal type:

      sudo service apache2 start

5.  Now enable the network manager. In order to do so in terminal type:

    

     sudo service network-manager start 

6. Now First view the available connecting points Wireless point or Ethernet. To view the available wifi points in terminal type

    

     sudo nmcli con list

This displays the available devices With its UID and SSID.

Now to enable the wifi in terminal type:

      Sudo nmcli con up SSID or the UID

You can manipulate these basic networking commands and  triubleshoot on your own.