Windows

Capturing WLAN traffic on Windows depends on WinPcap and on the underlying network adapters and drivers. Unfortunately, most drivers/adapters support neither monitor mode, nor seeing 802.11 headers when capturing, nor capturing non-data frames.

Promiscuous mode can be set; unfortunately, it's often crippled. In this mode many drivers don't supply packets at all, or don't supply packets sent by the host.

If you experience any problems capturing packets on WLANs, try to switch promiscuous mode off. In this case you will have to capture traffic on the host you're interested in.

If anybody finds an adapter and driver that do support promiscuous mode, they should mention it at the bottom of this page, for the benefit of other users.

See [WWW]MicroLogix's list of wireless adapters, with indications of how well they work with WinPcap (Ethereal uses WinPcap to capture traffic on Windows), for information about particular adapters.