Sniff for Ad Hoc Networks

[Nick Marques]

Ok, we're on a wireless lan on a college campus... in Infrastructure mode.
We're having a huge problem with Windows XP Wireless Networking... for
whatever reason, even though you tell it not to connect to Ad Hoc networks,
it does anyway... Also, some students have either mistakenly or deliberately
added the preffered network name of "SSID1" as an Ad Hoc network, which is
the same name as the Infrastructure Ad Hoc network. We're not in any
position to change the network name... but its causing all computers around
these Ad Hoc systems to loose network connectivity.

Is there any way we can sniff for Ad Hoc network broadcasts??

Currently, the only way we have of tracking these down is to set a computer
into Ad Hoc mode with the SSID the same as the Infrastructure SSID, and then
walk around... which takes forever.

Any ideas??

Also, any way to PREVENT XP from doing this??

 

[Paul Russell]

You would need a commercial sniffer product one which provides spectrum
analyzer functionality.

In XPSP1 there is a little known Windows WIreless logging tool which you can
use too. I think it is on the XPCD but someone from MS support could
comment more accurately on that one.

 

[S. Pidgorny]

Kismet (www.kismetwireless.net) will do that for you - Linux is required but
it worth effort.

 

[Mihai Peicu [MSFT]]

The problem you describe below cannot be caused by the wireless networking
in Windows XP. It can be a problem in the wireless adapter driver, so I
suggest you check with the hardware/driver provider. All the parameters
configured by the user for a preferred wireless network (including the
Ad-Hoc or Infrastructure setting) are passed to the wireless adapter driver.
From your description below I understand that you configure the wireless
service to associate to Infrastructure networks only, so the driver is
configured to associate to an Access Point, however it ends up associating
to an Ad-Hoc network with the same SSID. I believe you need to identify the
machines exposing this behavior and the wireless adapters they are using -
and contact the company that provided the hardware and drivers.