AirPcap WLAN Packet Capture from CACE Technologies

AirPcap is the first open, affordable, and easy-to-deploy WLAN (802.11b/g) packet capture solution for the Windows platform.
- Wi-Fi Planet

MetaGeek is excited to provide the AirPcap family of WLAN packet capture solutions from CACE Technologies!  The AirPcap Product Family offers a complete range of 802.11 WLAN packet capture solutions for the Windows platform. Together with Wi-Spy, AirPcap provides easy-to-use troubleshooting of Wi-Fi networks at both the physical and protocol layers.

What's unique about the AirPcap family of solutions?

  • First open, affordable and easy-to-deploy WLAN packet capture solution for Windows.
  • Captures full 802.11 data, management, and control frames that can be viewed in Wireshark thereby providing in-depth protocol dissection and analysis capabilities.
  • Below we provide a feature matrix that gives a high-level overview of the feature sets of the adapters in the AirPcap Product Family.
  • More detailed information regarding each member of the AirPcap Product Family can be found on the relevant product pages.
  Classic
Full 802.11 Capture
WireShark Integration
Open API
Multichannel Monitoring
(requires 2+ adapters)
Packet Transmission
Antenna Connector
Form Factor
 USB USB USB USB
Wi-Fi Bands
 b/g b/g a/b/g a/b/g/n
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Price

 

What do the AirPcap USB Adapters do?

  • All of the AirPcap adapters can operate in a completely passive mode. In this mode, the AirPcap adapter will capture all of the frames that are transferred on a channel, not just frames that are addressed to it. This includes data frames, control frames and management frames.
  • When more than one BSS shares the same channel, the AirPcap adapter will capture the data, control, and management frames from all of the BSSs that are sharing the channel and that are within range of the AirPcap adapter.
  • The AirPcap adapter captures the traffic on a single channel at a time.
  • The channel setting for the AirPcap adapter can be changed using the AirPcap Control Panel, or from the "Advanced Wireless Settings" dialog in Wireshark.
  • Depending on the capabilities of your AirPcap adapter, it can be set to any valid 802.11 channel for packet capture.
  • The AirPcap software can optionally be configured to decrypt WEP-encrypted frames.
  • An arbitrary number of keys can be configured in the driver at the same time, so that the driver can decrypt the traffic of more than one access point at the same time.
  • WPA and WPA2 support is handled by Wireshark.