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On page 399 Configuring Your Wi - Fi Adapter When Performing Spectrum Analysis there is mentioned that their are some WLAN client utilities allow you to instruct the radio to not attempt to connect to any network, which essentially places the WLAN radio in listen - only mode.

Does someone know these utilities(or wlan adapters)?

Kind regards,

Hans

For scanning, the easiest way that  I know of to do this is to un-bind both TCP /IP 4 & 6 from the adapter.   That leaves the adapter running, and it cannot connect.

However, the easiest way during a SA is to just power off or disable the radio.    That way your SA won't be cluttered with your own radios transmissions.

I think what Hans may be trying to do is leverage a client adapter during SA to *also* extract 802.11 environment information for additional context (beacons, probes, etc.) without producing transmissions of his own (and cluttering up the SA).  

I know that in Linux we can place a physical adapter in monitor mode and it *should* only be passively listening, but I've never really looked too far into it on the Windows side.  

Howard, I'll have to check out this disabling of the upper layer protocols to see what the OS decides to do at that point.    What about turning off or disabling all the client supplicant software in Windows as well?  WZC, vendor specific packages, etc...  

Correct, I want to use Wi-Spy and Chanalyzer and also gather information about the 802.11 environment without producing any transmissions myself. Looking for something in Windows like the airmon-ng in Linux or a WLAN adapter you can put in monitor mode by itself.

When I turn off WZC I have sometimes found a driver that will enable the radio on its own.   So rather than fuss with it, I'll disable TCP/IP.

I know MetaGeek's Chanalyzer can make good use of the native Wi-Fi device, and when I want to use those features I do leave my device settings alone.    However, most of my work involves using only the SA part, and I don't want to see even a hint of my own radio in those cases.     Luckily my laptop has a switch.

OmniPeek has several drivers that work with specific adapters and/or chipsets.  These use Monitor mode.

On their website and installation notes they specifically state that all other uses are not supported and not authorized.