wpa_cli signal level

[Dan Williams]

On Tue, 2009-03-03 at 21:19 +0200, Jouni Malinen wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 10:40:30AM +0100, Tamas Selmeci wrote:
> 
> > Just a short question: in wpa_cli, after the SCAN command the 
> > SCAN_RESULTS lists the results. I'd be interested in the "meaning" of 
> > the "signal level" column. What is its range? 0-255?
> 
> It depends on the driver..
> 
> > Signal quality/level information on the same AP:
> > 1) iwlist wlan0 scan: Quality=88/100  Signal level:-55 dBm
> > 2) wpa_cli result: 201
> > 
> > My interpretation:
> > 1) this is considered to be 88% (or not?);
> > 2) if the range is 0-255, then this is 79%;
> > 
> > Am I doing something wrong? I'd like to print a scale from 0-100% 
> > according to signal level of the selected AP. How to get relevant 
> > results with wpa_cli?
> 
> It is next to impossible to make any sense out of WEXT values in a
> general way, but you might want to take a look at how NetworkManager
> does its magic since it is trying to do more or less the same.

While NM does manage to do an OK job, note that it doesn't handle
drivers that use the IW_QUAL_DBM flag in quite the right way.  So after
you've looked at what NM is trying to do, ask about how to handle
IW_QUAL_DBM too :)

Dan