WiFi Stability Analyzer (WSA)

WiFi Stability Analyzer (WSA) is a command-line tool designed to monitor and log the stability of your WiFi connection. It measures signal strength, connectivity, system-level WiFi logs, and network speed over a specified duration and interval, then outputs both raw logs and a combined CSV report for analysis.

Features

• Signal Strength Monitoring: Logs WiFi RSSI and noise levels at regular intervals.
• Connectivity Check: Logs reachability and response times by pinging a known server (8.8.8.8).
• System Log Parsing: Captures WiFi-related kernel messages (e.g., retransmissions, PHY errors).
• Combined CSV Report: Aggregates all metrics (RSSI, noise, ping results, packet mismatches, retries, FCS/PLCP errors, etc.) into a single report.csv.
• Network Speed Test: Attempts a download of a 1 MB file via wget or falls back to curl, reporting success or error.
• Progress Bar: Displays a live status bar during data collection.

Installation

Prerequisites

• macOS: The tool is designed to work on macOS.

• Homebrew: Ensure Homebrew is installed on your system.

• GCC: Install GCC via Homebrew if not already installed:

  brew install gcc

• wget or curl: One of these must be available for the network speed test:

  brew install wget
  # or
  brew install curl

Clone the Repository

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/wifi-stability-analyzer.git
cd wifi-stability-analyzer

Build

Compile the C source into the wsa executable:

gcc -g main.c -o wsa

Usage

./wsa <duration_in_seconds> <interval_in_seconds>

• <duration_in_seconds>: Total logging time (e.g., 30).
• <interval_in_seconds>: Sampling interval (e.g., 0.5).

Example, log for 60 s at 0.5 s intervals:

./wsa 60 0.5

Output

All output files are placed in the output/ subfolder:

• signal_strength.log: Timestamped RSSI and noise readings.

• connectivity.log: Raw ping output per interval.

• system_logs.log: Captured dmesg | grep -i wifi lines and parsed counts.

• report.csv: Combined CSV report with columns:

  Timestamp,RSSI,Noise,PingSuccess,PingTimeMs,PacketMismatch,HighRetries,FcsFail,PlcpBad,GoodPlcps,CrsGlitches

After sampling completes, the tool runs a network speed test. If neither wget nor curl is installed, an error is printed.

Troubleshooting

• Empty signal_strength.log: Ensure the command-line WiFi utility is available:

  /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport -I

• Missing wget/curl: Install one of them via Homebrew.

• Insufficient Permissions: Some operations require sudo (e.g., reading dmesg).

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please fork the repository and submit pull requests.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.