KisMAC
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Dear Aunt TUAW: Help me find a WiFi stumbler app for Lion
Dear Aunt TUAW, I'm a Mac IT professional, and often find myself configuring, troubleshooting, and optimizing wireless networks. In the past I used AP Grapher to graph wireless strength and find competing Wi-Fi networks as I walk around my clients' offices. This allows me to pick the best channel to use with the least competition, troubleshoot wireless strength, and find the optimal location for my hardware. In Lion, AP Grapher has gone from unstable to unusable. I've found that it hasn't been updated since 2007. I have tested other Mac stumbler applications, but have yet to find one that works with Lion. Most crash on launch and others don't reliably detect wireless networks. Can you recommend a Mac application for graphing my wireless strength and recording info about competing wireless networks? Thanks! Your loving nephew, Aaron Dear Aaron, Auntie asked around and it looks like iStumbler will be your best bet. Note that it's currently at its 100 GM Candidate 3 beta stage of development. Another suggestion is the open source KisMAC. You might also want to try out the Wi-Fi diagnostics app that's bundled with Lion's Core Services. Hugs, Auntie T. Special thanks to Fraser Hess, Adrian Burgess, Alex Patsay, Harris Kleyman, Alex Sebenski and Julian Kussman.
Ask TUAW: DVD Sharing on an iMac, menubar calendar, network scanning, and more
Welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we have questions about using DVD Sharing on an iMac (instead of a MacBook Air), ignoring Software Updates, getting a drop-down calendar in the menubar, seeing Wi-Fi network channels, using iChat with other services, and more. As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Leave your questions for next week in the comments section at the end of this post. When asking a question, please include which machine you're using and what version of Mac OS X is installed on it (we'll assume that you're running Snow Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify), or if it's an iPhone-related question, which iPhone version and OS version you have.
KisMAC dev calls it quits
Reader Andrew dropped a note that Michael Rossberg, developer of KisMAC, the wireless network sniffer based on Kismet, has declared the project discontinued. I can't get the project's website to load (most likely because it's been Slashdotted), but apparently the reason Rossberg gave was that a change in Germany's laws would make it dangerous for him to continue working on it. The law apparently makes it illegal for anyone to sniff out a password that "allows access to data", and since that's a big part of KisMAC's function, Rossberg is calling it quits.But he is asking for interested parties to continue his work, in the EU or the US, so if the site ever returns, feel free to grab the source and check it out yourself. Of course, from what Slashdot commenters are saying, this isn't much of a loss anyway-- the program hasn't seen any real updates in a long time, and apparently it didn't even work with the new MacBooks. In terms of network finders, there's lots more to choose from (including iStumbler, which I didn't mention in the other article), but in terms of cracking WEP and WPA keys (legally, of course), are there any other OS X specific options out there?Update: Clarification: the program will run on MacBooks, but it doesn't do anything but find networks, which is just a fraction of the intended functionality.
