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Folks, my Hack the Mac report has landed me some new wireless business.
Since I have been out of this game for awhile and in the Cisco QoS and R/S world do you folks know what you feel is best suited tool wise for a basic wireless cell leak survey and protocol analysis. I have a lot of tools but you folks are more up to date than me.

I need a basic enumerator, i.e is Netstumbler still relevant? Etc.
Wireless sniffer? I know, I know, the free Omnipeek, but I may need commercial grade.

I have a spectrum analyzer. Aerocomm SA 3000

I also have a Network Chemistry RF protect A/B/G IDS/IDP probe that can be used as a wireless sniffer receiver.

I would appreciate any of your thoughts before I set out on the tool selection for this gig.

Regards and stay cool..

If I had to buy one set of tools that is relatively easy to use and fairly consistent throughout all the tools, I'd probably choose AirMagnet's Survey Pro because it contains Spectrum Analyzer, Laptop, and Surveyor. Then I'd get some different WLAN cards for my laptop and use them with the software.

One of the cards should have external antenna connections. I'd get a variety of antennas as well: a Yagi, a sector, and a high-gain omni. For my laptop, I'd try my hardest to get a dual-core pentium with tons of memory and probably WinXP. Anything else just won't have the power to run all that stuff simultaneously when you need it most. Also, get some extra battery life by either buying more batteries or having an external one (APC makes a good one that lasts 5+ hours, is light, and costs about $225). I'd use XP because that's what most drivers are written for these days and things work well right when you plug them in (usually). Also, get a laptop with an embedded radio as well -- it kicks butt when you can analyze a relatively poor client connection coming from you laptop with awesome tools plugged into that laptop... keeps you from having to use two laptops. You also get to see what happens when you don't upgrade Centrino drivers. ;)

The only real caveat to this solution is the cost -- it will be relatively expensive to get all this stuff AND the recurring annual maintenance will kill you but if this is what you do for a living then it will be worth it in the long run.

Joel