AirDefense, one of the leading Wi-Fi security firms, is now part of Motorola. We tested their AirDefense Mobile 4.3 kit, which includes a dual-band a/b/g adapter card and several high-gain antennas. It’s also possible to use a fairly restrictive set of other adapters as well, the restriction again being due to the need for custom drivers provided by Motorola. Installation was easy, although a reboot is required after the install. This product hasn’t been updated in a while, and it doesn’t support 802.11n at this time.
As an omnibus assurance suite – especially considering its relatively low price – AirDefense Mobile is still pretty competitive. But with respect to packet capture and analysis, functionality is weak. One must globally enable a packet capture via an Options setting, and then captured data for all selected (“scanned”) channels is written out using a proprietary file format. These files can be converted to the PCAP format, which can then be read by Ethereal, Wireshark or tcpdump, but this involves DOS commands and is thus a less convenient alternative to the other products. Overall, the packet capture and analysis services in AirDefense Mobile are difficult to use and not competitive with the other products tested, marring an otherwise fine assurance tool.
WLAN sniffers pass the sniff test >
