Ubuntu Manpage: horst - Highly Optimized Radio Scanning Tool

NAME

       horst - Highly Optimized Radio Scanning Tool

SYNOPSIS

       horst  [-h]  [-q] [-s] [-i interface] [-t sec] [-c IP] [-C] [-p port] [-e mac] [-d ms] [-o
       file] [-b bytes]

DESCRIPTION

       horst is a small, lightweight IEEE802.11 wireless LAN analyzer with a text interface.  Its
       basic function is similar to tcpdump, Wireshark or Kismet, but it's much smaller and shows
       different, aggregated information which is not easily available from other  tools.  It  is
       mainly  targeted  at  debugging wireless LANs with a focus on ad-hoc (IBSS) mode in larger
       mesh networks. It can be useful to get a quick overview of what's going on on all wireless
       LAN channels and to identify problems.

       • Shows signal/noise values per station

       • Calculates  channel  utilization  ("usage")  by adding up the amount of time the packets
         actually occupy the medium

       • "Spectrum Analyzer" shows signal levels and usage per channel Graphical packet  history,
         with signal/noise, packet type and physical rate

       • Shows all stations per ESSID and the live TSF per node as it is counting

       • Detects  IBSS  "splits"  (same  ESSID  but  different  BSSID  - this  is a common driver
         problem)

       • Statistics of packets/bytes per physical rate and per packet type

       • Has some support for mesh protocols (OLSR and batman)

       • Can filter specific packet types source addresses or BSSIDs

       • Client/server support for monitoring on remote nodes

OPTIONS

-h Show summary of options.

-q Quiet mode. Don't show user interface. This is only useful in conjunction with
running in server mode (-C) or writing to a file (-o).

-s Show "spectrum analyzer". The same can be achieved by running horst as normal and
pressing the button 's' (Spec); then 'c' (Chan) and 'a' (Automatically change
channel).

-i intf
Operate on given interface instead of the default "wlan0". Note that the interface
is assumed to be in monitor mode already. See MONITOR MODE below on more
information about monitor mode.

-t sec Timeout (remove) nodes after not receiving packets from them for this time in
seconds (default: 60 sec).

-c IP Connect to a horst instance running in server-mode at the specified IP address.

-C Allow client connections. Server mode. Only one client connection is supported at
the moment (default: off).

-p port
Use the specified port (default: 4444) for client/server connections.

-e mac Filter all MAC addresses except these. This option can be specified multiple times
to show only packets originating from the specified MAC addresses.

-d ms Display update interval. The default value of 100ms can be increased to reduce CPU
load.

-o filename
Write a summary packet info into file.

-b bytes
Receive buffer size. The receive buffer size can be explicitly set to tune memory
consumption and reduce lost packets.

MONITOR MODE

       horst should work with any wireleass LAN card and driver which supports monitor mode, with
       either "prism2" or "radiotap" headers. This includes most modern mac80211-based drivers.

       You  have  to  put your card in monitor mode and set the channel manually before you start
       horst. Usually this has to be done as root.

       Using iw:
              iw wlan0 interface add mon0 type monitor

       Using iwconfig:
              iwconfig wlan0 mode monitor
              iwconfig wlan0 channel 1
              ifconfig wlan0 up

       Using madwifi:
              wlanconfig wlan0 create wlandev wifi0 wlanmode monitor

       Using hostap:
              iwconfig wlan0 mode monitor
              iwpriv wlan0 monitor_type 1

AUTHOR