Is there a way to monitor the signal strength of an access point? I'd like to monitor the strength of signals the AP is "hearing". I want to monitor from a workstation on the same LAN, connected (through a router) by wire to the AP.
I know how to monitor the RSSI of a wifi client hooked directly to a computer. (WiFi Analyzer on my Nexus works great.)
Ultimately what I want to do is monitor two APs (both on the same LAN with the workstation, each connected by wire to the router) to see if/when the APs are radio-visible to each other.
I'm more or less a network noobie. I've looked around, done lots of reading, but can't figure out if what I want to do is even possible. I know at least some APs communicate directly, since that's how (some?) repeaters work.
I'm comfortable doing some coding if that's necessary. But with all the tools for exploring wifi networks I feel like I'm missing something obvious.
Edit to add information: I have a region which looses wifi connectivity. The area has complicated, changing, environmental things going on - many of which could impact a wifi signal. I want to monitor wifi signal so I can (try to) correlate loss of good signal with other things going on. (For other reasons it is not appropriate to just add a strong AP in that region.)
My current thinking is to run a Kismet drone on an old WRT54G (placed in the region of interest). I haven't done that, but I am hopeful I can figure out how to do it. The Kismet drone will send info back to my workstation (running Kismet), I can get timestamped RSSI info, and go from there.
As I said, haven't done it, so still not sure if that's what I want, nor if I can do it, but that's the direction I'm headed at the moment. I am open to suggestions.