I Spy a Wi-Spy

On By haydnandrewsIn MFD4, Wireless, Wireless Tools

I have been a long time user of Metageek’s products like Channelyzer and inSSIDer but there have been many times that I wished that i could leave my laptop in the office and use my tablet. Well MetaGeek has released the Wi-Spy Air which fixes this.

Now the WI-Spy Air is a combination of both the Air Viewer App which is available for both Android and IOS and the Wi-Spy Air Hardware which is tiny and connects into you mobile device. The Wi-Spy Air has a Dual band Spectrum Analyser and also Wi-Fi chipset to unlock the mobility to use a handheld device. They even though of adding batteries to it so it doesn’t suck all your battery from you mobile device.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

There is a roadmap to have the Wi-Spy also compatible with inSSIDer and Channelyzer which I am looking forward to seeing happen. The question did get asked about using it as a sensor for WiFi Explorer and I hope Adrian reaches out to make this happen

Check out the presentation from MFD4 from MetaGeek giving a brief history of the company and then showing off the new Wi-Spy Air:

So after getting a look at the Wi-Spy Air the questions from the MFD delegates started to come around to can we save this data or access the Wi-Spy data remotely – in the case of sending a junior technician out to do the hands and feet wireless troubleshooting and the senior engineer can review the results remotely – similar to what NetAlly does with Link-Live.
So after reminding us that currently none of the MetaGeek tools remember they announced Rampart.
Rampart is a new cloud system and for those playing MFD4 bingo at home we did ask about AI and Machine learning, which we were informed not currently but who knows in the future.
So now with Rampart available inSSIDer and Air Viewer can remember with roadmaps already in place to bring in the rest of the MetaGeek applications in to Rampart.
One of the nice things was when you save a snapshot to Rampart it had the ability to feed back to inSSIDer so when you attend the same site again and open inSSIDer it picks up you are in the same building from the BSSIDs that it was seeing.
So what is the use of the applications remembering? Well I can for one see quite a few use cases:
  • The ability to benchmark a site to use to compare to when troubleshooting issues
  • The ability to use junior technicians to do the hands and feet scans and the senior engineer logging in remotely to view the results
  • The ability to collaborate within the team

We were treated to a demo of the beta inSSIDer application coming out. It looks like normal inSSIDer but now you can add a wifi adapter that you can do wireless packet capture on which gives inSSIDer the ability to show utilisation and who is actually talking. When you drill into a BSSID the adaptor will scan that channel and the builtin NIC will scan all the other channels.

it also has the ability to add model of AP and it uses AP Taxonomy. From using the cloud solution they will consolidate from all the customers what they are saying the AP model is so it will learn.

inSSIDer will also have the ability to same PCAP files of roaming events which are saved.

For a look at the upcoming features coming up for inSSIDer watch the MFD4 presentation here:

To learn more about AP Taxonomy and identifying clients WIFI signature which was discussed at DEF CON 25 you can watch the  DEF CON presentation here:

Now Adam Miedema the Product Manager at MetaGeek did say if you have any feedback or suggestions on how to improve the Metageek products to email him adam@metageek.com

 

One thought on “I Spy a Wi-Spy”

  1. Pingback: CTS 188: MetaGeek @ Mobility Field Day 4

Leave a comment