bobpeers -> blog

While playing around with my wireless connection it occurred to me that there’s no way to see which channels are the busiest in my area. I know the command shown below lists all the scan details including the channel number for each router, but to see the most heavily congested channels I have to search the list manually.

$ /sbin/iwlist eth1 scan

It occurred to me that a simple python script could do the job, so here it is.

#! /usr/bin/python
# set to the number of channels available
MAX_CHANNEL=14
# enter your wireless device name
DEVICE="eth1"
import os
f=os.popen("/sbin/iwlist " + DEVICE + " scan")
str=f.read()
channel=range(1,MAX_CHANNEL+1,1)
for i in channel:
 if i<10:
  ch="0" + `i`
 else:
  ch=`i`
 sChannel="(Channel " + `i` + ")"
 print "Channel " + ch + ":" + `str.count(sChannel)`
f.close()

It simply runs the Linux command using popen, parses the output and counts the channels producing an output like this.

Channel 01:3
Channel 02:2
Channel 03:2
Channel 04:0
Channel 05:0
Channel 06:2
Channel 07:1
Channel 08:0
Channel 09:1
Channel 10:0
Channel 11:0
Channel 12:0
Channel 13:4
Channel 14:0