Detect Wireless Access Point

[Coffmans]

Hello, I am new to this community and I apologize if I am posting this
message under the wrong group. I am interested in writing a C# application
that can be used to detect unauthorized wireless access points in my
company's network. The basics behind the application is to run a scan on a
range of IP addresses, trying to find all access points, and report the
access points to a file/report/etc. On my first attempt, I created a small
application that allows for the entering of an IP address and I hit all
addresses on the subnet. I was using the httpwebrequest, hoping to get a
good return which would signal an access point. The problem is that this
implementation times out almost every time, instead of returning anything.

Can anyone suggest an alternative means or point to be some examples? I am
not looking for anything fancy, just a simple means for detecting wireless
access points using C# with NET framework 1.1.

[Steven Nagy]

I would assume that there would have to be some sort of time out
involved when polling different IP addresses. BUT the bottleneck here
is the application waiting for a response, so perhaps you could keep
your same approach, but run multiple threads at a time?
Perhaps spark 255 threads to deal with all the IPs on a subnet, and
post their results to a database. Then repeat for the next subnet. That
way it should only take the same amount of time to do 1 as it takes to
do all 255.

Just be careful to limit your threads to 255 and not go overboard!
I'm not sure if even 255 is too many.

Coffmans wrote:

Hello, I am new to this community and I apologize if I am posting this
message under the wrong group. I am interested in writing a C# application
that can be used to detect unauthorized wireless access points in my
company's network. The basics behind the application is to run a scan on a
range of IP addresses, trying to find all access points, and report the
access points to a file/report/etc. On my first attempt, I created a small
application that allows for the entering of an IP address and I hit all
addresses on the subnet. I was using the httpwebrequest, hoping to get a
good return which would signal an access point. The problem is that this
implementation times out almost every time, instead of returning anything.

Can anyone suggest an alternative means or point to be some examples? I am
not looking for anything fancy, just a simple means for detecting wireless
access points using C# with NET framework 1.1.

[Michael A. Covington]

Can you do it with a separate utility program? Try NetStumbler.

[Tom Spink]

Coffmans wrote:

Hello, I am new to this community and I apologize if I am posting this
message under the wrong group. I am interested in writing a C#
application that can be used to detect unauthorized wireless access points
in my
company's network. The basics behind the application is to run a scan on
a range of IP addresses, trying to find all access points, and report the
access points to a file/report/etc. On my first attempt, I created a
small application that allows for the entering of an IP address and I hit
all
addresses on the subnet. I was using the httpwebrequest, hoping to get a
good return which would signal an access point. The problem is that this
implementation times out almost every time, instead of returning anything.

Can anyone suggest an alternative means or point to be some examples? I
am not looking for anything fancy, just a simple means for detecting
wireless access points using C# with NET framework 1.1.

Hi Coffmans,

I don't know if this will be of any help, but I see a Spanning-Tree-Protocol
packet every 2 seconds from my wireless access point on my network. Of
course, STP isn't just for wireless access points, it's used by managed
switches and routers and other exciting things, but it may be useful to
you. If you somehow managed to capture the STP packet, you may be able to
analyse it, and determine whether or not a MAC address is unauthorised, by
checking it against a list of authorised MAC addresses.

Just a thought.

--
Hope this helps,
Tom Spink